A Family Legacy 2 — Reading, Writing, and Arithmetic
When I was in school, Mother would sometimes send me to school with coins tied in a handkerchief for some small school expense. At the beginning of each school year, she would go to the 5 and 10-cent store a short walk from our house to purchase the consumable workbooks I would need that year. I don’t remember ever owning a textbook until I went to college because the school system provided our textbooks in elementary school and high school.
Charlene, the schoolgirl, c. 1959
All of my textbooks were secular. However, when I was in first grade, I remember our class saying grace before lunch. I also remember memorizing the 23rd Psalm and Psalm 19:14 in school and singing “Whispering Hope” with a group of girls in 5th grade.
During the colonial period of American history, Puritan doctrine required everyone to read the Bible. Therefore, learning to read the Bible was the main goal of a child’s education. Children learned to read and spell from books that included Bible teachings. The Copp Collection in the Smithsonian’s National Museum of American History contains several schoolbooks the Copp’s purchased themselves, plus some school supplies.
This is the Copp family’s writing slate. Students used one side for handwriting practice and one side for arithmetic.
Students used wooden crayon holders to hold wax crayons for drawing or coloring. They also used them to hold chalk while writing on a slate. The Copp’s crayon holder was homemade.
Closed crayon holder
Open crayon holder
The family owned Description of Three Hundred Animals, published in 1753. This illustrated book used information about birds, fish, insects, and snakes to teach reading. Surprisingly, the book included mythical creatures, including the unicorn, the dragon, and the manticore, a Persian mythical creature that was part lion and part scorpion with a human head.
Description of Three Hundred Animals
Noah Webster, writer of the famous Webster dictionary, produced schoolbooks that became wildly popular. One of the most famous was The American Speller. This was the Copp’s copy of this textbook, more popularly known as the blue-backed speller.
Blue-backed speller
Yesterday I showed you the embroidered sampler Esther Copp made when she was 11. This is the spelling book Esther had when she was 13 in 1767.
Esther Copp’s spelling book
A later generation of Copps learned from Webster’s Little Folks’ Speaker, a collection of stories from various authors, published in 1875. The stories progress in difficulty. The purpose of the book was to teach children to read. Webster’s Little Folks’ Speaker has no known connection to Noah Webster. Perhaps the publisher included Webster in the title to connect it with Webster’s more famous textbooks.
The Copps owned several geography books, including a geography encyclopedia, an atlas, and a book of maps of New York. The Copp’s edition of New Universal Geographical and Historical Grammar was dedicated to King George the Third, the British king who infuriated the American Patriots before the American Revolution. This textbook was so popular in New England education that over ten editions were printed.
New Universal Geographical and Historical Grammar
The Copp’s owned both volumes of New System of Modern Geography, published in the Pennsylvania colony in 1795. Theirs were American versions, revised to remove the British bias of the first edition. New System of Modern Geography had tests in the back.
New System of Modern Geography
I am thankful that you, too, can choose books that include teaching about God and His Word and can also choose topics that help your children know what God is doing in every place and time.
The God who made the world and all things in it,
since He is Lord of heaven and earth,
does not dwell in temples made with hands;
nor is He served by human hands,
as though He needed anything,
since He Himself gives to all people
life and breath and all things;
and He made from one man
every nation of mankind
to live on all the face of the earth,
having determined their appointed times
and the boundaries of their habitation,
that they would seek God,
if perhaps they might grope for Him
and find Him, though He is not far
from each one of us . . .
Acts 17: 24–27
First photo from the Boyd family collection.
Other photos courtesy of Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of American History, gift of John Brenton Copp.