Lowest Common Denominator

In the year 1639 the town of Dorchester (in Massachusetts) levied a land tax for the support of a “free school.” Two years later the Massachusetts General Court decreed that all “masters of families” should “once a week (at the least) catechise their children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion.” And six years after that the General Court provided that every township must, “after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders,” name a teacher and furnish a school for him to teach in, enabling the act on the following grounds: “It being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures,” etc.

In 1789, and again in 1827-when it re-enacted the 1789 statute-the Court charged the “President, Professors, and Tutors, of the University at Cambridge, and of the several Colleges of this Commonwealth, Preceptors and Teachers of Academies,” with responsibility

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Willmoore Kendall

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In the year 1639 the town of Dorchester (in Massachusetts) levied a land tax for the support of a “free school.” Two years later the Massachusetts General Court decreed that all “masters of families” should “once a week (at the least) catechise their children and servants in the grounds and principles of religion.” And six years after that the General Court provided that every township must, “after the Lord hath increased them to the number of fifty householders,” name a teacher and furnish a school for him to teach in, enabling the act on the following grounds: “It being one chief object of that old deluder, Satan, to keep men from the knowledge of the Scriptures,” etc.

In 1789, and again in 1827-when it re-enacted the 1789 statute-the Court charged the “President, Professors, and Tutors, of the University at Cambridge, and of the several Colleges of this Commonwealth, Preceptors and Teachers of Academies,” with responsibility