xxn A MODEL TO OTHER LANDS 287 



Ulster and Munster, and continue to flourish to this 

 day. 



Friends were moving also in a like manner in several 

 parts of America. Their efforts in some of the provinces 

 had had Fothergill's sympathy and practical aid. New 

 England Yearly Meeting in 1780 decided to found a 

 boarding school, and in its letter issued in 1782 makes 

 much reference to Ackworth, with large quotations from 

 Fothergill. A school was in consequence opened at 

 Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1784, which, though it 

 lasted only a few years, was the precursor of the large 

 and well-known Friends' School at Providence, at this 

 day under the care of Seth K. Gifford. A plan for a 

 school in New York was formulated in 1781 ; it became 

 eventually the foremost public school in that city, and 

 still pursues, under John L. Carver and Alice S. Palmer, 

 a useful career as the Friends' Seminary. The excellent 

 school at Westtown, Pennsylvania, instituted in 1799, 

 after T. Scattergood had spent some months at Ackworth, 

 was planned after its pattern, but adapted to the more 

 democratic ways of America. 1 George L. Jones is the 

 present superintendent. 



The Friends' Schools which were afterwards set up 

 in England at Sidcot, Wigton, Croydon (successor to the 

 Islington school already spoken of, and afterwards moved 

 to Saffron Walden), and elsewhere, upon the Ackworth 

 model, did not lessen the number of its scholars. The 

 boarding-school system had become part of the life of the 

 society, and it has had no doubt a great influence in its 

 continuance. 



The schools gave not only to the middle class of 

 Friends but to the poorest members a good education, 

 nearly a hundred years before this was attained by the 

 community in general. It was a " guarded education " : 

 perhaps this was not so unmixed an advantage as was 

 thought, but it helped to keep very many within the 



1 Letter from the Meeting for Sufferings for New England to the several 

 Quarterly and Monthly Meetings. Providence, 1782 ; R. M. Jones, Quak. in 

 Amer. Col. p. 261 ; The Friend, Phila. loc. cit. ; W. W. Dewees, Hist. Westtown 

 School. 



