1 Mather, Cotton “An Essay on the Memory of my Venerable Master, Ezekiel Cheever,“ in Corderius Americanus (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1828), 25; Cassian was a early Christian schoolmaster who died at the hands of his students during the persecution of Christians in Imola, Italy. A more extensive description of the life of Cassian can be found in Herbert Thurston and Donald Attwater eds., Butler's Lives of the Saints, vol. III (July August September), New York: P.J. Kenedy & Sons, 1956.Google Scholar

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7 Geraldine Murphy in her “Massachusetts Bay Colony: The Role of Government in Education” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1960) argues that many seventeenth-century town schooling was publicly sponsored rather than public because students had to pay to attend. I use public schools to refer to all publicly sponsored schooling.Google Scholar

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16 Kamensky, Jane Governing the Tongue: The Politics of Speech in Early New England, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), ch. 3.Google Scholar

17 See Gildrie, Richard Peter “Salem, 1626–1668: History of a Covenant Community,“ (Ph.D. diss. University of Virginia, 1971), 196–200 for a discussion of Mary Oliver's conflict with Puritan leaders; John Winthrop, The History of New England from 1630 to 1649, ed. James Savage, (Salem, New Hampshire: Ayer Company Publishers, reprinted edition 1992) I: 281–282.Google Scholar

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27 The diary of Samuel Sewall Feb. 18, 1676/77 and Peter Burr's account book October 7, 1696 as cited in Robert Seybolt, Private Schools of Colonial Boston (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1935), 4–5, 8).Google Scholar

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45 Murphy, See “Massachusetts Bay Colony,“ chs. 4 & 5.Google Scholar

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50 Murphy, “Massachusetts Bay Colony,“ discusses the on-call Latin Master in ch.4.Google Scholar

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52 Murphy, “Massachusetts Bay Colony,“ 33–39; Cremin, American Education, 187.Google Scholar

53 Christen, “Boundaries between Liberal and Technical Learning,“ 31–50, describes the traditional division in England between the perceived technical skills of the writing master and the intellectual talents of university-educated master and the demise of this division over the course of the seventeenth century.Google Scholar

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55 Morrison, Samuel Eliot A History of Harvard College (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1968), 390–445 discusses internal conflicts within the college during this period.Google Scholar

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58 Small, Early New England Schools, argues that schooldames sometimes served as the only town teacher as a cost-cutting measure. Since most of his evidence is derived from town records that can no longer be located, it is hard to verify the validity of his claim.Google Scholar