A Short History of Rye’s Schools

By Paul Hicks

The Rye City School District’s website states, with justifiable pride, that its three elementary schools and Rye Middle School are all National Blue Ribbon Schools of Excellence. It also notes that Rye High School is ranked among the top high schools in the country by both U.S. News and World Report and Newsweek.

In addition to its successful public schools, Rye is also home to three strong private day schools: Rye Country Day School (K-12), School of the Holy Child (5-12) and Resurrection School (K-8). To appreciate fully the development of such superior academic resources, it is useful to consider how far primary and secondary education programs have progressed in Rye since the colonial period and particularly in the last 100 years.

Timothy Dwight, a distinguished president of Yale, wrote in the early 1800s about his visits to Rye and other Westchester towns, commenting that, “Neither learning nor religion has within my knowledge flourished to any great extent … the ancient inhabitants had scarcely any schools, at least of any value.”

Charles W. Baird’s “History of Rye” mentions that one of the earliest records of a local school appears in 1711. That year, the land owners in the area known as Ponengo’s Neck voted to “build a schoole house upon their own charge … and to mark out a quarter of an acre … for a garden for the use of the schoole master.”

About the same time, the English Society for Propagation of the Faith in Foreign Parts sent a missionary, John Cleator, to be a schoolmaster for Rye and surrounding communities. According to historian William Kemp, Cleator taught in the area from 1707 to 1720, but the students received only an elementary schooling and left by age 13 to work. Interestingly, girls outnumbered boys in some years and otherwise represented roughly one-third of class rolls.

In 1728, Rev. James Wetmore, the Episcopal minister then serving Rye and the surrounding area, wrote: “As to schools, there are several poor ones in different parts of the parish. Where a number of families live near together, they hire a man and woman at a cheap rate, subscribing everyone what they will allow … but there is no public provision for a school in this parish.”

The missionary society did not replace Cleator until 1733 when a respected Rye resident, Samuel Purdy, was hired as schoolmaster. School enrollment declined during the early years of Purdy’s tenure, which he attributed generally to parents putting their children to work. Also, he reported a growing number of dissenting parents who objected to the “teaching of the church Catechism in the school.” However, the enrollment decline may have been due also to Purdy’s inferior skills as a teacher.

Several attempts were made to establish independent schools in the Rye area in the 1740s, but each of them failed quickly. Thereafter, the opposition to Purdy’s school appears to have faded, and enrollment levels improved, peaking at 50 students. Parents paid fees for almost all of the students, but it appears that some children received free tuition.

When Purdy died in 1753, the missionary society appointed as his successor Timothy Wetmore, a son of Rev. James Wetmore, who ran the school until 1769. Many of the students initially were from families who did not belong to the Episcopal Church. However, when his enrollment fell to fewer than ten students, Wetmore explained in a report to the missionary society that the “school was surrounded by Presbyterians” and that a competing school had been established.

After a troubled period, Timothy Wetmore’s brother, James, was chosen by the missionary society in 1771 to run the school, but he resigned in October 1776, escaping to Long Island because of his Loyalist sympathies. A month later, the Rev. Ephraim Avery, the Episcopal rector in Rye and also a Loyalist, was killed by a band of rebels before he could carry out his plan to establish a day and boarding school.

His advertisement for the school stated that “He will teach the reading of English properly; writing, arithmetic, the Latin and Greek languages, geography, surveying, trigonometry, etc.” In 1774, John Adams spent a night in Rye and recorded in his diary that, “They have a school for writing and ciphering, but no grammar school.”
If Rev. Avery had lived, his plan would have filled the need for a classical grammar school to prepare students for college and the professions.

In the post-Revolutionary period, however, American interest in so-called Latin or classical grammar schools diminished, and emphasis was placed instead on opening “common” schools. The eminent educational reformer Horace Mann viewed the common schools as the “great equalizer” that would bring together children of different backgrounds and teach them literacy, moral values and the patriotism necessary for informed democracy to work.

In 1812, New York passed the Common School Act, which provided the basis for a statewide system of public elementary schools under the supervision of town commissioners. The Town of Rye acted swiftly to implement the new state school laws, voting to appropriate money for support of schools in addition to the town’s share of state funds. Three school districts were established in Rye, and the voters in each district elected commissioners and inspectors to oversee the schools.

The New York legislature also encouraged the opening of private academies by giving the State Board of Regents the power to charter, supervise and provide funds for these uniquely American schools. The state support for the spread of academies was partly aimed at having them train teachers needed by the common schools. It was also in response to the demands of the growing middle class that sought a better approach to education for their children than the classical grammar school model.

Although independently governed by boards of trustees and supported by tuitions and donations, academies were generally viewed as quasi-public institutions until late in the nineteenth century. They often taught college preparation subjects along with “English” and practical courses, and many provided both primary and secondary departments.

According to Rev. Baird, an academy was established in Rye during the 1820s and was taken over in 1831 by Samuel Berrian. A noted grammarian, Berrian taught classes for a number of years in the Square House before opening a school for day and boarding students at his home north of the village. The school, known as the Chrestomathic Institute, seems to have continued operating at least until 1850.

In many ways, schooling in the Rye area in the mid-1800s was a microcosm of education outside of the bigger cities in New York and other northeastern states. The typical school had one room in which students of various ages were taught by a single teacher. Although attendance was voluntary, it has been estimated by New York’s Department of Education that as early as the 1830s, as many as 90 percent of all non-urban children in New York attended school for some period of time.

Note: This is the first of a two-part article on the history of Rye’s schools. The second part, covering the period from 1850, will appear in the next issue.