444 HISTORY OP 



without so much as crediting the source from whence derived 1 

 Nay morci how often is it that they and we. have seized upon 

 apian devised by them for the education of youth — crude, 

 and it may be ill-digested, because of its novelty — and im- 

 proving upon it, have as unceremoniously and unblushingly 

 claimed for ourselves, the credit of the discovery 1 With no 

 other people would it have been attempted ; and they 

 have submitted to the moral wrong, only because they re- 

 joiced more in the good that followed to others, than in the en- 

 joyment of the honor that was due to the discovery, for them- 

 selves."'^ 



We are led to introduce these remarks, in consequence of 

 our now approaching a period in the history of education in 

 Lancaster county, where we are, as a faithful historian, to claim 

 for — comparatively speaking — an obscure German, the honor 

 not only of suggesting, but also of successfully carrying into 

 practical operation, the never-to-be-too-much-encouraged Sab- 

 bath Schools of the present day. About the year 1740, af 

 German by the name of Ludwig Hacker, a man of much 

 learning and great piety, the teacher of the school which had 

 been previously established by the society of Seventh-day 

 Baptists at Ephrata, proposed the plan of holding a school in 

 the afternoon of their Sabbalh, which was and is, the seventh 

 instead of the lirstday of the week. It was at once carried out 

 by the brethren into practical operation, and continued to dis- 

 pense its blessings among the children of the neighborhood, 

 until September 1777, when — after the battle of Brandywine — 

 the room used for the school, was with the whole building, con- 

 verted into a military hospital for the accommodation of the 

 American soldiers wounded upon that sanguinary field. After 

 this event, the school was never again opened; but the plan 

 years afterwards, was revived in England ; and the poor Ger- 

 man scholar, Ludwig Hacker who sleeps in the bosom of his 

 mother earth, without a stone to mark his resting place, is for- 

 gotten in the praises and blessings which are lavished upon 

 the memory of him:}^ who but resuscitated and improved upon 

 his plan. 



*.MSS. by Gedrgf. Ford, Esq. 



■j-Robert Railvcs. 



4P.igc22'i antca. 



