2.1 KiB
In reciting the story of how Clara Barton happened to be the founder of the first successful public school in New Jersey, at Bordentown, I have drawn from diaries, letters and other memoranda, which I have found in my work of examining the vast accumulation of her literary relics, for the purpose of procuring material for the final biography of Clara Barton. I have so arranged the matter that it may appear largely as though written by herself, in fact, the most of my paper is in the form of quotations from her writings.
While Miss Barton was a student at Clinton Institute, Oneida County, N.Y., she became acquainted with Miss Mary Norton. "She had been much with me," Miss Barton writes, "and almost unconsciously to myself, my teacher instincts had doubtless made her school life easy. Her letters home had called from the parents a most urgent request for me to promise them a visit in the future. This was of so genuine, hearty and at the same time delicate a nature that I could not find it in my heart to utterly decline. This was the home of the Veteran Quaker, Richard Norton, of Hightstown, N.J.
Early in the autumn of 1861 Miss Barton made the promised visit.
"As the October leaves commenced to fall," she continues, "I ventured some remarks concerning home, but these were met by a protest so general and vigorous as to unbalance my decision and lead me to consider. My suggestion that I ought not pass so much time in mere idleness, and that there was nothing there to occupy me, drew from Uncle Richard the rejoinder, "If thee could teach our winter school, Miss Clara, thee could find plenty to do. But thee could not keep a school could thee?" I thought "perhaps I might." "I know thee could teach them Miss Clara, but these farmer boys that go to our school in the winter are men grown, and sometimes rough. They would not dare to undertake them." "I thought I 'might be able to manage them', and it was decided that I attempt the winter school, consisting of about forty pupils, a venture never before essayed by a woman; "Graded School?" Ah no! not even a free school. Public schools were merely a