by Barbara Rimkunas
This "Historically Speaking" column was published in the Exeter News-Letter on Friday, September 24, 2021.
“We believe that most of the schools in this town would be better managed and better taught by properly educated females than by males.” The Superintending School Committee of Exeter in 1848 had had just about enough with the poor quality of teachers when they submitted their annual report. The town was divided into six school districts by state law. Each district had its own Prudential Committee to oversee the finances and hiring of teachers. The Superintending Committee was charged with overall control and would visit individual schools several times each year. Most of the time, the visits went smoothly. District number two had suffered from teacher turnover and the man hired to finish one term turned out to be disaster. “The floor was black with mud, and the children were wading about in it in the enjoyment of the largest liberty. There was neither law nor order – authority nor obedience – study nor improvement.” In the adjoining classroom, Miss Ann Wiggin kept her classroom “neat – the scholars orderly and studious.”
The corps of teachers in the first half of the 19th century tended to be a mix of male and female instructors. Men were preferred due to the belief that they were better scholars and would maintain order. Order was important, and most male teachers ruled (or tried to rule) with harsh discipline. One such teacher was Ferdinand Ellis. He arrived in town in 1818 to serve as the pastor for the First Baptist Church. Born in Medway, Massachusetts, he’d attended and tutored at Brown University. Even the History of the Baptist Church, Exeter, NH, found him a difficult person to describe. “Conscious of his own intellectual powers, of deep convictions, he was unyielding to the opinions and beliefs of others and could see no medium line of compromise.” He served as pastor for ten years and after a few years preaching in Maine, he became a teacher at the Spring Street School in Exeter. At times, he had to teach classes of over one hundred students – a challenge to any teacher. Dr. William Perry said of him, “I think he taught the boys well, but he had a most ungovernable temper that must have impaired his usefulness. He used a rawhide, as it was called in those days, a cruel weapon, as some living here now can testify. This temper, I judge, was the obstacle to his higher advancement.” A short biographical sketch of Ellis in the 1872 Town Directory agrees with this assessment, “he was a teacher of a high sense of honor, but of unforgiving disposition, and although there are hundreds of Exeter boys who received their education under him, all feared and none loved him.”
Spring Street Grammar School had two classrooms. While the Reverend Ellis lorded over the older children in one room, Perry indicates that the younger pupils were taught by Ellis’s daughter, Charlotte, in the adjoining room. Of the six children in the family, two of them became teachers. But neither Charlotte nor her younger sister Rhoda took the same harsh disciplinary tactics with students. Both became beloved and respected long-term teachers in the Exeter schools.
Charlotte was born in 1808 in Rhode Island. Of her education we know very little. She was ten years old when her family arrived in Exeter. At that time, there were few opportunities for women’s education. It’s possible that she was tutored by her strict father and may have learned some skills teaching at the Baptist Sunday School. Teaching requirements were loose when she first entered the profession in 1827 as a primary school teacher. Working with upwards of 70 children ages 5 – 8 was no small feat. Yet Charlotte seemed to take to it naturally. Superintending Supervisory reports laud her abilities. The same 1848 report that decries the disorderliness of District Number Two, calls Charlotte Ellis “one of our most experienced and successful teachers.” She utilized a method called ‘monitorial’ teaching, which had older students teaching younger ones. Her classroom attendance in 1848, averaged 58 children. Somehow, in a time when rote memorization was the standard way of teaching lessons, Charlotte Ellis managed to keep the children orderly when broken into smaller learning clusters. The Supervisory Committee was amazed that she was able to cope. “But that one, shut up in a school-room, should be able to exercise them all continually and in their highest tension, week after week and year after year, without any apparent bias towards an Insane Asylum, is to a man, accustomed to the variety and activity of outdoor life, one of the mysteries of nature.” In 1852 she was awarded a $120.00 bonus for 25 years of continual teaching in Exeter – a recognition that had never been so awarded before. The following year she was given control of the new Grove Street School. It was there that she taught a shy young pupil name Daniel Chester French. French went on to become a world-renowned sculptor. He was a poor student, prone to dreaminess. It’s comforting to know that his early school experience was with a capable teacher.
Charlotte Ellis taught for 36 years in the Exeter school system right up until her early death in 1863 at the age of 55. Her younger sister, Rhoda, had an even longer career. Rhoda was born in 1813. She may have attended the Exeter Female Academy, which was chartered in 1826. There are no existing class lists for the school during that time, but another sister, Anne, attended in 1841. A slightly more academic finishing school than others offered to girls at the time, The Exeter Female Academy assigned older girls as ‘principal students’ to assist the teachers. Like Charlotte, she most likely used a similar system with her students. She taught at the Court Street Primary school, ending her career of 40 years only a few years before her death in 1891. Her classes, like her sister’s, were large – averaging 50 students. The 1856 report states, “The best exercises in reading to which it has been the pleasure of the committee to witness, in any primary school were witnessed in this school.”
Of the two sisters, the Supervisory Committee would comment, “We have so often spoken in terms of high commendation of these Teachers, and they are so well and so favorably known, that it is hardly necessary for us to attempt ‘to throw perfume on the violet.’” Indeed, they served Exeter well.
Barbara Rimkunas is curator of the Exeter Historical Society. Support the Exeter Historical Society by becoming a member! Join online at: www.exeterhistory.org
Image: Primary School teachers in Exeter often had large classes. This group of 47 children attended the Grove Street Primary School – a one room school with a single teacher.