Public secondary education in Connecticut in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries with special reference to its support by private bequests and gift

The secondary schools established in New England from the outset were close copies of their English prototypes, the Latin Grammar Schools, with narrow classical curricula, supported by town and colony subventions, tuition fees, and income from private endowments, and intended for college preparation of youth destined for service in Church and Commonwealth.;A study of the earliest records of the New Haven and the Connecticut Colonies indicates that the efforts of the former were much more sustained and consistent than those of the latter, and we see how much the later success of the Grammar Schools in both was dependent upon the encouragement provided by the bequests made by Governor Hopkins and others. After the union of the two colonies in 1665, and the subsequent requirement that Grammar Schools be maintained in the County Towns, we find that New London was able to maintain its school throughout the period in question, largely as a result of the Bartlett Bequest, while the lack of any assistance from endowments was probably the main cause of the speedy disappearance of the Fairfield Grammar School. In the latter case, the secondary educational needs were met by the privately established Staples Free School and the Greenfield Hill Academy.;Outside the four County Towns, in the period preceding and following the Revolutionary War, we find schools being established in many of the main centers of population. Those schools which were unendowed and whose reputation was founded principally upon the ability of some outstanding teacher, prospered during his period of activity, but speedily declined or disappeared wholly from the scene. On the other hand, those schools whose direction was in the hands of Trustees, administering an established foundation, continued to render more or less effective service over an extended period, many of them being the direct lineal ancestors of present day secondary schools of the State.;One finds the academy movement established in Connecticut with the opening of the Academy at Lebanon in 1743, and sees its spread throughout the State during and following the Revolutionary War, when the general tendency to found "proprietary schools" for boys and girls, offering a broader popular curriculum, gained marked momentum.;It is found that the bequests and gifts of private individuals to the schools of Connecticut had much to do with the high reputation which these institutions gained in the closing years of the eighteenth century, and that such funds did much to off-set the pernicious effects upon secondary schools of the drastic features of the legislation of 1799.