the whole amount appropriated for public education in this county for that year was $3,993.60. This was a creditable and flattering commencement. In the following year a tax of $3,000 was levied, and, with the exception of two or three townships, the excellent system of free education was permanently established.

Hon. J. P. Wickersham, in his history of education in Pennsylvania, has this to say of Luzerne county:

"This chapter can not be closed without some notice of the introduction into a portion of the State of a system of schools that had an important bearing upon subsequent educational history. We have reference to the system of free public schools brought by the Connecticut settlers into the valley of Wyoming. Pennsylvania as a province, of course, had nothing to do in establishing them; in principle they were an advance upon the schools then existing in Connecticut, and in most essential respects were similar in design and management to the public schools of the present day.

"The first settlements in Wyoming valley were made under the auspices of the Susquehanna company,' organized in 1753, by some 600 citizens of Windham county, Conn., and approved the following year by an act of the colonial assembly. The surveyors of the company were sent out in 1755, and at that time and subsequently seventeen townships were laid out, each five miles square and containing fifty shares, each of 300 acres. They were located in blocks on the bottom-land along the rivers, and embraced territory now within the limits of Luzerne, Lackawanna, Wyoming, Bradford and Susquehanna counties. The names of these townships are Huntington, Salem, Plymouth, Kingston, Newport, Hanover, Wilkes-Barre, Pittston, Providence, Exeter, Bedford, Northumberland, Putnam, Braintrim, Springfield, Claverack and Ulster.

"The first attempt to settle on the lands laid out by the company was made in 1762, and continued in 1763, but owing to the hostility of the Indians, no permanent settlement was effected until 1769. Constantly harassed by the savages, compelled to carry on a continuous struggle, amounting at times to open warfare, with rival claimants to the land on which they had built houses and established homes, almost annihilated by the terrible massacre of Wyoming during the Revolutionary war, these brave and hardy men of Connecticut still maintained their ground; and in 1783 the population of the seventeen "certified townships" is estimated to have reached 6,000. It has now swelled to 200,000.

"The first action taken in regard to schools was as follows: 'At a meeting of the Susquehanna company, held at Hartford, Conn., December 28, 1768, it was voted to lay out five townships of land within the purchase of said company, on the Susquehanna, of five miles square each; that the first forty settlers of the first town settled, and fifty settlers of each of the other towns settled, shall divide the towns themselves; reserving and appropriating three whole shares or rights in each township for the public use of a gospel ministry and schools in each of said towns; and also reserving for the use of said company, all beds and mines of iron ore and coal that may be within said townships.'

"It was also voted to grant Dr. Eleazer Wheelock a tract of land in the easterly part of the Susquehanna purchase, ten miles long and six miles wide, for the use of the Indian school under his care; provided he shall set up and keep said school on the premises.

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This proposed Indian school was never established, although it is stated that Joseph Brant and other Indians attended Dr. Wheelock's school at Lebanon, Conn. Instead of coming to Pennsylvania, Dr. Wheelock went to New Hampshire and became the founder of Dartmouth college. The directions of the company in other respects were carried into effect in all the townships as soon after settlement as possible. The 'three shares' in each township amounted to 960 acres; in a general way the whole was set apart for school purposes, but in a number of instances land

was voted for the support of ministers of the gospel. The funds arising from the sale of these lands were not husbanded as they might have been, but in some townships they still exist, and are used for the benefit of the public schools. The schools as well as other local affairs were managed, as in New England, by a general town meeting. The mode of proceeding is thus described: 'A school meeting was called, by public notices posted in the district. The inhabitants of the district met, and elected, in their own way, three of their number to act as school committee, which committee hired teachers and exercised a general supervision over the schools. The teacher was paid by the patrons of the school, in proportion to the number of days they had sent children to school. A rate bill was made out by the teacher and handed to the committee, who collected the money.' The general township fund was used to build schoolhouses and to pay teachers.

"A few scraps of history have been gathered up that will serve to show the interest taken in education by these pioneer settlers in a Pennsylvania wilderness.

"At a town meeting held in Wilkes-Barre, August 23, 1773, a vote was passed 'to raise three pence on the pound, on the district list, to keep a free school in the several school districts in the said Wilkes-Barre.' 'A subsequent meeting,' says Charles Miner, in his history of Wyoming, 'especially warned, adopted measures for keeping open free schools, one in the upper district, one in the lower, and one in the town plot.'

"A town meeting in Kingston, held December 21, 1773, voted 'that Nathaniel Landon, Samuel Commins and John Perkins, are appointed committeemen to divide ye town into three districts, for keeping of schools.'

"The other townships, without question, passed similar votes, thus recognizing at that early day the fundamental principles of all true systems of public instruction-the common education of all classes; schools supported by a general fund or a tax on property; local management and responsibility.

"A general county school organization seems to have been established, doubtless to give more efficiency to the local management. At a general meeting of the whole. settlement, held on December 6, 1774, it was voted: "That Elisha Richards, Capt. Samuel Ransom, Perrin Ross, Nathaniel Landon, Elisha Swift, Nathan Denison, Stephen Harding, John Jenkins, Anderson Dana, Obadiah Gore, Jr., James Stark, Roswell Franklin, Capt. Lazarus Stewart, Capt. Parks and Uriah Chapman, be chosen the school committee for the ensuing year.' These were leading men from every part of the settlement, showing how important they considered the subject of education. Well may Miner say: 'It may justly be regarded equally honorable and extraordinary that a people just commencing a settlement in a wilderness, wrestling steadily with the yet rude and unbroken soil for bread, surrounded by so many extrinsic difficulties and causes of alarm and disquiet, should be found so zealously adopting and so steadily pursuing measures to provide free schools throughout the settlement.'

"This system substantially continued in operation in the Wyoming region up to the time of the adoption of the common school system in 1834, when, with little change and no disturbance, it was merged into it; and, as the nearest approach to our modern public schools of any class or schools then known in Pennsylvania, it had considerable influence in shaping the school legislation which culminated in the act of 1834. It was Timothy Pickering, of Luzerne, as will be more fully shown hereafter, who, in the constitutional convention of 1790, secured the adoption of the article on education upon which was subsequently based the whole body of laws relating to common schools in Pennsylvania, up to the year 1874; and by so doing saved the convention from the threatened danger of committing itself to a much narrower policy."

As already mentioned, the Susquehanna company made all possible provisions for schools, in its allotment of its lands in this section. It granted large bodies of

land, and in all cases reserved a certain portion as a permanent school fund. Generally this was wasted practically and but little benefits accrued. Unfortunately the school authorities were allowed to sell the land at discretion and it often happened that some friend or sometimes a member of the committee would want the school land and it was sold at a time when the price was merely nominal. Had these lands been given in perpetuity, without the right to sell or transfer except upon short leases, in that case the school fund of Luzerne county would now have sufficient income to rebuild all the school buildings in the county and pay the entire expenses of a far more liberal system than we now have. In short, the school would have been one of our richest institutions, without the levy of a cent of taxes. This same story may also be told of nearly every county in the country. The fathers in this respect were most unwise and imprudent. In the matter of education how important it is to be started right, otherwise it is miseducation and an incurable act of injustice that ruins all in its evil course forever. Those men builded the best they knewthey followed precedent and for a song fooled away a fortune that belonged to their children's children forever. But there is another side to the subject. Possibly both the school and the church should be always very poor to be the best good. A very rich church is not after the fashion of the world's Redeemer. It is not an unmixed good to mankind.

Three thousand years ago there was a university in Athens, and the entire institution was not worth in cost a dollar. The president and all the professors of that immortal school were Epicurus. The school was in the gardens and groves and sometimes on the porches of the public buildings. The pupils were grown people and the teachings were conversations. To this school and to similar ones students repaired from the then known quarters of the world. Here was poverty in one respect, but immeasurable wealth in another.

Then, 1,900 years ago the church, so far as property was concerned, was about as poor as it could be. Is it possible the great founder of the church ever dreamed that the time would come when a $6,000,000 house, wrung from the sweat and toil of the unpaid and often starving poor, would disfigure the earth in the name of His holy region? A religious or educational institution clutching at the world's wealth is an anomaly in both education and religion. There is no royal road to educationthis much is certain. The children of kings and emperors demonstrate this fact completely. There is infinite sadness in this prevalent idea fastened in the minds of our children that a teacher can teach them.

Of the earliest attempts at schools in this part of the world, Mrs. M. L. T. Hartman contributed to Dr. F. C. Johnson's Historical Record a very interesting paper, which is briefly summarized. The subject of education came with the very first settlers. The people mostly were from Connecticut, itself then only a colony, and the ideas they came with were constantly engrafted upon as they would see progress in the mother colony. Therefore schools were not neglected, although books, paper and all had to be brought all the way from the old home. Hon. Charles Miner in his history relates as follows: "Throughout the year 1777 schools engaged the greatest attention. They levied an extra penny to the pound for free schools. Each township was established a legal school district with power to sell the lands sequestered by the Susquehanna company therein for the use of schools, and also to receive of the school committee appointed by their town their part of the money according to their respective rates. In the settlement of Huntington were young men and women competent for teachers on their arrival; and, therefore, here at least, their rude log cabins had hardly more than been built until they built schoolhouse cabins as comfortable as the best of the houses, and the supposition is that desks and seats made of planed boards were in use as early as 1800. She says her first recollection of a schoolroom was in 1822 in the old schoolhouse nearly opposite the site of the Harveyville church, and then the desks and seats seemed to be old, but were made of