It’s back to school season in Connecticut. The school buses are out, Labor Day has come and gone, and stores are full of families shopping for new clothes and school supplies. While children today are looking for new binders and markers, children growing up in colonial Connecticut would have had school supplies of a very different kind.
From its early years, the education of young children was valued by Connecticut colonists, mostly due to the heavy role of religion in the young colony. Education was important primarily because it taught children how to read the Bible. Early childhood education took the form of “dame schools”. Children went to the home of a local woman who taught the students simple reading and arithmetic. The first “school book” colonial children encountered was the hornbook. A small piece of wood was covered with a piece of paper with the lesson. The printed lesson, consisting of the alphabet, letter combinations forming simple syllables, and the Lord’s Prayer, was mounted on a piece of wood. To protect the paper, a thin sheet of cow horn covered the paper, thus the name "hornbook."
As early as the 1640s, Connecticut towns had public schools funded by towns for further learning. However, the vast majority of students at these public grammar schools were boys. If colonial girls continued their education, they were either taught by family members or tutors, or attended a girls’ boarding school. A Connecticut school girl wishing to further her formal education might travel to Boston, where girls’ boarding schools existed by the early 1700s.
A common educational exercise for many colonial girls, whether at boarding school or at home was to embroider a sampler. Samplers had the twofold benefit of teaching both needlework and literacy. Samplers featured the alphabet, possibly numbers, and could include verses, images, decorative elements, and the maker’s signature. Surprisingly, a few colonial boys also made samplers, but most practiced writing their ABCs rather than stitching them. Both girls and boys learned to draw by copying engravings and copied maps to learn geography.
Different methods, but still the same lessons—learn your letters, study hard, and plan ahead. Here at the Connecticut Historical Society, we’re also getting ready to go back to school. Our calendar is quickly filling up with school tours, where children can learn more about the history of their state. Students can even make their own hornbook in our “Growing Up in Colonial Connecticut” program. For more information about our school programs, visit chs.org/education.
