who came to Ephrata in 1739, took charge of the school soon after, and continued to discharge the duties of the office for more than forty years. He was a good scholar, fond of children, ingenious and progressive in his methods, and entirely forgetful of himself in his devotion to the service of God and man. Master Höcker was the author of three school books, a Primer or "A-B-C Büchlein," a Spelling-Book and Reader or "Namen Büchlein," and an Arithmetic or "Rechen Büchlein." These were printed on the Ephrata press, "for the schoolmaster," about 1786. The Arithmetic, the only book of the three that we have been able to find, is quite elementary in its character, but bears evidence of having been written by an earnest man and a teacher of considerable skill. The school was closed while the room it occupied, with other parts of the buildings, was used as a hospital for sick and wounded American soldiers after the battle of Brandywine. Towards the close of the century, the Society began to decay, and by 1814 only a few of the single Brethren and Sisters remained. In that year, an Act of Assembly was passed incorporating the "Seventh-Day Baptists of Ephrata" as a Society, with the right to hold the property in trust for "religious, charitable and literary objects.' Under this charter a school was opened in the Brethren's House. In 1820, Joseph Bowman performed the duties of schoolmaster. In 1837, a two-storied building was erected for an Academy; and here a school of an advanced grade was continued for some years. A Sabbath-school was established at Ephrata, about 1740, forty years before Robert Raikes commenced his benevolent work on the Sabbath day among the poor children of Gloucester, England. The projector of this new plan of opening a way for the instruction of the poor was the schoolmaster, Ludwig Höcker, “ Brother Obed,” as he was called in the cloister. There were in the neighborhood of Ephrata, even at that early day, indigent children whose employments prevented their attending the regular school. It was the forlorn condition of these children that touched the heart of the pious schoolmaster and moved him to make an attempt to do something for their education. Thus originated the Sabbath-school, which was held on the afternoons of the Sabbath day. The instruction imparted was both secular and religious, and, in addition to what was done for the poor children, religious instruction was given to all who were willing to receive it. The Sabbath-school was closed during the Revolutionary war by the same cause that closed the Week-day school. Branches of the Society at Ephrata were established at Bermudian Creek, York county, in 1738, in Bedford county in 1903, and at Snow Hill, Franklin county, at a somewhat later date. In Bedford county there are at the present time two congregations, one of which worships in a church of its own, and the other in a schoolhouse near Baker's Summit. At Snow Hill a small remnant of the Society still keeps up the old church and social customs. Belonging to it there is a farm of one hundred and thirty acres, with a grist mill. The buildings consist of a church and a large brick structure, two stories high, used as a Brothers' and Sisters' House. Snow Hill has always been an Ephrata on a smaller scale. SEPARATISTS. Scattered individuals of a small German sect called "Separatists" were to be found at Germantown and elsewhere in the early days of the Province, but the first body of emigrants of this class came to Pennsylvania from Würtemberg, under the leadership of George Rapp, and settled in the Conoquenessing Valley, Butler county, in the year 1804. Included in the number were many possessing considerable property, and some who had enjoyed the advantages of a liberal education. They were non-resistants, and their tendencies were towards a monastic life. Soon after their arrival at their new home, they formed an organization called the "Harmony Society," and agreed to hold all property in common, to wear a plain, uniform dress, and to occupy dwellings built alike. In 1805, they adopted a life of celebacy, marriages were no longer permitted, and husbands and wives consented to live in future as brothers and sisters. The Society flourished, but wanting additional land, they sold all their property, and, in 1814, removed in a body to the State of Indiana. Not satisfied there, they returned to Pennsylvania in 1824, and settled on the Ohio river, sixteen miles below Pittsburgh, where they still remain. Their village is called Economy. Once numbering seven or eight hundred, the Society has now shrunk to a mere handful of old men and women. Their possessions, however, are very extensive and valuable, consisting of a fertile and well-equipped farm of many hundred acres, the Bank and Cutlery Works at Beaver Falls, manufactories of various kinds, tracts of oil and coal lands, stocks, and money at interest. From the first these plain people have been friendly to education. As long as they had children of their own, they provided ample means for their instruction, and there is not a single individual ambag the Brethren or Sisters who is not something of a scholar. Since their children have grown up, they have constantly maintained a school for the benefit of the children of their workmen and laborers, and for the many orphan children of whom they have assumed the care. In addition, they have aimed at something beyond elementary instruction; for soon after their settlement at Economy, they constructed a large building for a public hall, in which they established a museum of natural curiosities, a collection of minerals, a library, and schools of mathematics and drawing. CHAPTER IX. SCHOOLS OF OUR FOREFATHERS. NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOLS. THE TRANSITION FROM CHURCH TO FREE W SCHOOLS. HILE, as we have seen, the several religious denominations represented by the early settlers in the State built many schoolhouses and maintained many schools, while church and school were planted together in almost every locality where a congregation of Christians of like faith could be collected large enough to sustain them, yet the number of schools established in this way was entirely inadequate to the accommodation of all the children who desired to obtain an education. Had there been a school at every church, many children lived at too great a distance to attend it. But vast sections of thinly settled country were wholly without churches, and in others the churches were so scattered that they could not be reached by young children going to school. Adults frequently traveled on horseback or in wagons five or even ten miics to church; it was impossible for little boys and girls to walk such long distances, often through unbroken forests. Hence arose multitudes of schools, sometimes composed of the children of a single family or of several families, and generally growing into schools of little communities or neighborhoods. Such schools may be appropriately called neighborhood schools, although widely known by the name of "pay" or "subscription" schools. In England, such schools are called "voluntary schools." The establishment of these neighborhood schools was most rapid in sections settled by people of different religious denominations. In communities composed of a single denomination, and in towns, churchschools were generally established in preference; but as the first settlers in Pennsylvania were divided into many sects, and as these soon became very much intermixed, it was not long before the neighborhood schools greatly outnumbered the schools of all other classes. Acrelius, writing, about 1750, of the country in the vicinity of Philadelphia, says, with some exaggeration: “In almost every ridge of woods, there is a schoolhouse;" and of course the churchschools were in small proportion to the whole. In proportion to population, the neighborhood schools were fewest in the oldest settled parts of the State; for as the people moved west into the Cumberland Valley, along the Susquehanna and Juniata and over the Alleghanies, intermingling socially and in business, out of common toils, common privations, common dangers and common interests; there necessarily came to be common schools. The churches in the early days were foremost in the work of education everywhere and always, but distinctive church schools were not numerous in the middle or northern counties, and very few of them were ever established in western Pennsylvania. Ministers founded schools in these sections of the State and taught them, but they rarely formed a part of the church organization, as was so frequently the case in the older settlements. After the Revolutionary war, tending as it did to unite the whole people into one body, and to stimulate enterprise and quicken intellectual activity, there was a rapid increase in all parts of the State in the number of schools the people established for themselves. Without any controlling law on the subject, and therefore necessarily without system, prompted by the wish to obtain at least some education for their children, but guided only by the light which a rough experience in an American wilderness furnished as to what should be provided, and limited always by the scanty means at their command, our fathers built schoolhouses, employed teachers, and sent their children to school as best they could, and the wonder is not that under the circumstances so many sections of the country were poorly supplied with schools, but that education was so general. McMaster, in his history of the People of the United States, speaking of the educational condition of America directly after the close of the Revolutionary war, states that "In New York and Pennsylvania a schoolhouse was never to be seen outside of a village or a town." He is mistaken. In Pennsylvania there was scarcely a neighborhood without one. At the time of the adoption of the common school system, in 1834, there must have been at least four thousand schoolhouses in the State, built by the volunteer contributions of the people in their respective neighborhoods. Thoroughly republican in principle, these schools of the people grew apace with the progress of republican sentiment, and it only required the legislation of after years to perfect the form and systematize the working of what had already in substance |