Excerpt from Henry S. Nourse’s “History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893,” written in 1894.

In March, 1832, the advisory committee presented a code of regulations for schools, which was adopted by the town and 400 copies were printed in the United Society for the use of teachers, school committee, and families. This little pamphlet of eight pages contained the state laws respecting schools, as passed in 1827, regulations for schools, including a list of text books, and regulations for teachers.

In these rules of 60 years ago there is very little that might not well be observed in the schools of today. For instance, the first article in the regulations for instructors is: “The teachers are required during the hours prescribed for instruction to devote their attention exclusively to the oversight and improvement of their schools; and it is especially enjoined upon them to pursue a systematic course, ‘having a time for everything, and everything done in its time,’ and that they be less solicitous to hasten the progress of their pupils through a multitude of studies, than to make them thorough in a few; and that the important branches of spelling, reading, writing, and arithmetic receive their first and principal attention.”

The committee making this report of 1832 was composed of seven men, among the ablest in Harvard—Reverand Abisha Samson, Reverend George Fisher, Reverend Washington Gilbert, General John P. Whitcomb, Daniel Robbins, Calvin Haskell, Esq., and Augustus Granville Hill.

The little unventilated school-rooms of that period were crowded, especially in the winter term, almost to suffocation. Two or three prolific families sometimes sent more pupils to a district school than its total enrollment in 1892.

Under the usual conditions of the period it is not matter for wonder that what was meant for a hive of intellectual industry sometimes degenerated into a pandemonium, and that the anxious prudential committee, in his selection from the candidates who applied to him for the pedagogic chair, often looked more to muscular than mental accomplishments.

There was always some pedagogue of athletic mould and large experience in the taming of wild youth, who was called upon when the riotous spirits in a district succeeded in getting control of the school, as they often did. Master Daniel Robbins was one of these heavy-handed worthies, remembered with genuine respect by many surviving pupils.

275 Years of a Town:  In June 1732, the town of Harvard incorporated within the colony, after nearly 100 years of settlement in the area and several years of petitions, objections, and re-petitions to the legislature. To celebrate this milestone, the Press is running extracts from Henry S. Nourse’s History of the Town of Harvard Massachusetts 1732–1893.