The First Schoolmaster of Boston. 223
��THE FIRST SCHOOLMASTER OF BOSTON.
By Elizabeth Porter Gould.
When Agassiz requested to go down and in 1643, while receiving this salary,
the ages with no other name than his name is sixth in the list of planters
"Teacher," he not only appropriately and their estates, his estate being valued
crowned his own life-work, but stamped only at twenty pounds. In the year
the vocation of teaching with a royalty following, his salary was raised to thirty
which can never be gainsaid. By this pounds a year. This probably was an
act he dignified with lasting honor all actual necessity, for his family now
thosf to whom the name "Teacher," consisted, besides himself and wife, of
in its truest meaning, can be applied, a son Samuel, five years old, and a
In this work of teaching, one man daughter Mary of four years. Ezekiel,
stands out in the history of New England born two years before, had died . This
who should be better known to the son, Samuel, it may be said in passing,
present generation. He was a bene- was graduated at Harvard College in
factor in the colonial days when educa- 1659, and was settled as a clergyman
tion was striving to keep her lamp at Marblehead, Massachusetts, where he
burning in the midst of the necessary died at the age of eighty-five, having
practical work which engaged the been universally esteemed during his
attention of most of the people of that long life.
time. His name was Ezekiel Cheever, Besides being the teacher of the
When a young man of twenty-three new colony, Mr. Cheever entered into
years, he came from London — where other parts of its work. He was one of
he was born January 25, 16 14 — to the twelve men chosen as "fittfor the
Boston, seven years after its settlement, foundacon worke of the church." He
The following spring he went to New was also chosen a member of the Court
Haven, where he soon married, and for the plantation, at its first session,
became actively engaged in founding and in 1646 he was one of the depu-
the colony there. Among the men ties to the General Court. It is sup-
who went there the same year was a posed that during this time he wrote
Mr. Wigglesworth, whose son, in later his valuable little book called The Acci-
years, as the Reverend Michael Wiggles- dence. It passed through seventeen
worth, gave an account of Mr, Cheever's editions before the Revolution. A copy
success in the work of teaching, which of the eighteenth edition, printed in
he began soon after reaching the place. Boston in 1785, is now in the Boston
" I was sent to school to Mr. Ezekiel Athenaeum. It is a quaint little book
Cheever, who at that time taught school of seventy-two pages, with one cover
in his own house, and under him in gone, and is surely an object of interest
a year or two I profited so much through to all loving students of Latin. A copy
y« blessing of God, that I began to of the tenth edition is found in Har-
make Latin & to get forward apace." vard College, while it has been said
Mr. Cheever received as a salary that a copy of the seventh is in a pri-
for two or three years twenty pounds ; vate library in Hartford, Connecticut.
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