Liane, Thanks so much for the statement below. I have often wondered that people would indicate on census that they could read but not write. Your explanation makes perfect sense. "Many people who went to school for, say, 7 years or so could read quite well. What they weren't so good at doing later in life was writing. I suppose if you did very little writing between the time you left school at 12 or 14, signing an X was sometimes easier than trying to write your name. Most writing at school was done on blackboards without the luxury of pads of paper and notebooks that those of us who grew up post-WWII had. Plenty of pencils and pens, too." Judy Oklahoma City

I have particular interest in todays topics, education and schools in Chester cO. I have been told that This area had a school census back in the early 1800's. I would be looking for such for maybe 1810ish. Are you aware of such? Also, I cannot open your attachments. Thanks barb parshley looking for Samuel Clark born March 1803 in Chester county ----- Original Message ----- From: pa-old-chester-request@rootsweb.com To: pa-old-chester@rootsweb.com Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 12:11:38 PM Subject: PA-OLD-CHESTER Digest, Vol 7, Issue 130 Today's Topics: 1. Re: Need to check on whether London Britain township hadpublic schools 1800 - 1810 (George) 2. Edit your posts (Sandra Ferguson) 3. Education (Sandra Ferguson) 4. Re: Need to check on whether London Britain township hadpublic schools 1800 - 1810 (Dora Smith) 5. Re: public schools in Chester County (Dora Smith) 6. Re: public schools in Chester County (Lorraine) To contact the PA-OLD-CHESTER list administrator, send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-admin@rootsweb.com. To post a message to the PA-OLD-CHESTER mailing list, send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER@rootsweb.com. __________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of the email with no additional text.

Regarding Presbyterians and education, Scotland had one of the earliest systems of public schools in Europe. From Wikipedia: "In 1616 an act commanded every parish to establish a school "where convenient means may be had", and a tax on local landowners was introduced to provide the necessary endowment. An act of the Scottish parliament in 1696 (reinforced in 1801) underlined the aim of having a school in every parish. In rural communities these obliged local landowners (heritors) to provide a schoolhouse and pay a schoolmaster, while ministers and local presbyteries oversaw the quality of the education. In many Scottish towns, burgh schools were operated by local councils. By the late seventeenth century there was a largely complete network of parish schools in the lowlands, but in the Highlands basic education was still lacking in many areas." I am reminded of a recent article in the Wall Street Journal about education and success levels of various groups in the U.S. today. Those who sit at the top are of Asian descent. Somewhere, and if I wasn't babysitting I would look for it, I have an article from the NYT or another paper dated about 30 years ago that said that the group with the highest level of education in the U.S. late 1800s and well into the 1900s were those of Scottish descent. Many people who went to school for, say, 7 years or so could read quite well. What they weren't so good at doing later in life was writing. I suppose if you did very little writing between the time you left school at 12 or 14, signing an X was sometimes easier than trying to write your name. Most writing at school was done on blackboards without the luxury of pads of paper and notebooks that those of us who grew up post-WWII had. Plenty of pencils and pens, too. I attended schools in England in the early 1950s and we had pencils with NO erasers. And awful yellowish erasers that fell apart when you used them. Our pens were wooden with nibs that slipped on the end which you then dipped into inkwells in the desk. My first ballpoint was in 5th grade in an American school. Between the Quakers and the Scots-Irish, I would bet there was a fair amount of educating going on, somehow or other. Look at all the Presbyterian colleges they founded. Liane

One of the saddest things I see is when people place todays standards on our ancestors and judge them for what they did and didn't do. The New Science (1725) by Giambattista Vico showed that the past should be understood sympathetically -- the historian should not judge the past according to present standards and values. The past ought to be examined in light of its historical context (the "pastness of the past"). When I first started genealogy with my father 10 years ago, he told me there were two things required when researching. 1. Do not take anything personally. 2. Do not judge. While Pennsylvania may not have had much for public schooling does not mean they were ignorant in the need for an education. My Revolutionary War Ancestor had one son scalped and another kidnapped by Indians and taken to Detroit. With the dangers our ancestors constantly faced, I doubt even I would have allowed my children to walk to school with the very high chance of being killed versus teaching them myself at home. Regarding WDYTYA. This is exactly the reason I stopped watching the show. Watching people cry and apologize over what their ancestors did was truly sickening. Our ancestors did the best they could with what they had and what they knew. We should not be so quick to judge. ======= Email scanned by PC Tools - No viruses or spyware found. (Email Guard: 9.0.0.898, Virus/Spyware Database: 6.20820) http://www.pctools.com/ =======

And my ancestors are also Smiths: John and Susannah Smith who emigrated from Northern Ireland to Chester in 1720. Presbyterians. 13 children--is it any wonder Smith is such a common name? And researching all the Johns, James, Samuels gives all of us fits. Fortunately my ancestor, grandson of John and Susannah, was named Gideon. If only the biographer of the Smiths had not pronounced him dead before 1779, I might not have had to start from scratch. Nancy

If there is an answer to this question it will be found in- Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealocial and Personal by Gilbert Cope and Henry Grahm Ashmead Volume 2 Look for Common Schools which is what Public Schools were firt called ----- Original Message ----- From: "Dora Smith" <tiggernut24@yahoo.com> To: "Eliz Hanebury" <elizhgene@gmail.com> Cc: <pa-old-chester-l@rootsweb.com> Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 00:04 AM Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Need to check on whether London Britain township hadpublic schools 1800 - 1810 Public schools didn't happen in what sense of the word, where? Massachusetts was committed to public education from its beginning. Dora -----Original Message----- From: Eliz Hanebury Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2012 2:55 PM To: Dora Smith Cc: pa-old-chester-l@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Need to check on whether London Britain township had public schools 1800 - 1810 What we consider "Public Schools" didn't happen until the middle 19th Century. It doesn't mean education didn't happen. There could have been someone in the area who gave classes for a small stipend. It is possible weavers would pay with woven goods and farmers with food - someone with drive could learn in so many other ways. You didn't need fancy schooling to run a good business - it might be easier but not impossible without. Quakers did have schools, Westtown is the only one I know, just because it is "here" but I am sure there were many small schools in Meetings. from the school website Establishing the School <<Westtown School first opened it doors to students in May, 1799. Twenty boys and twenty girls, most in their teens but some as young as eight years old, entered the school from Quaker families living primarily in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area. The opening of Westtown School was the result of many years of decision-making, planning, and fundraising by members of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The Philadelphia Quakers established a boarding school so that their children might be in a setting where their moral development could be attended to along with their schooling>> wikipedia Wilmington Friends School, the oldest existing school in Delaware,[1] is a preschool through 12th grade Quaker school in Wilmington, Delaware. The school was founded in 1748 by members of the Wilmington Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers).[2] Eliz On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Dora Smith <tiggernut24@yahoo.com> wrote: > I need to verify something. I ‘ve repeatedly been told that my 2x great > grandfather could not have attended school, because his parents were > impoverished village weavers barely able to support their family. His > own children attended local private academies. Yet his son married a > local Quaker school teacher, and there wasn’t no local Quaker school,, so > where did she teach. It was London Britain township, I don’t know, > Coatesville or Mercersville or something like that; there was a village of > succesful small town businessmen. The small Smith farm was not far from > the village center, across from where a tavern that was used as the town > hall was eventually built by the parents of William Smith’s future wife. > Today the town hall is on another corner of the same intersection. The > town was not in the back woods, but on the southeastern edge of Chester > County, on the border of Delaware, which leaves one wondering how they > could possibly not have had a public school. My 2x great grandfather > was extremely successful in business, bought and ran a thousand acre farm, > then served in the Delaware state legislature, though at the time his land > was in Maryland and Pennsylvania (sometimes it was in Delaware, and today > the three state marker is on what was his land). His son my great > grandfather was extremely literate. I have a sample of his writing, and > it was equal to the standards of published authors of that time. My 2x > great grandfather must have been highly literate and excellent at both > arithmetic and geometry. He also helped build a local church, and has a > window with his name on it. Of course he could read the Bible, well > enough to read it to the congregation in church. > > He would have attended school between 1803 and 1815, and would have seemed > well educated if he’d had half that amount of schooling as it was done at > that time. I have ancestors as bright in 18th and 19th century New > England who half educated themselves after a few winters of school, and > the schoolmaster emphasized giving advanced writing lessons to one of > them. I know how well educated they were from reading their > autobiographies. One of them taught school. > > Are y’all sure there was no public school in London Britain township? > Because if there wasn’t, atleast one of William’s parents must have been > able to teach the children, and teach them a lot, quite well. It gets to > what their background was. Little is known about them before they came to > Pennsylvania. > > I’m about to write to a historian in a town in Scotland where I have a Y > DNA match, that his cottage weaver parents must truly have been something, > because their children were quite well educated in a home with no money > and a town with no school, even though the boys weren’t even kept at home > but apprenticed out to become stone masons. So if London Britain > township managed to have a school, now would be a good time to tell me the > truth. > > Yours, > Dora > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message ------------------------------- To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Lorraine Dora, Was thinking I was on FaceBook and wanted to hit the like button! Thanks so much for that! I also have Smiths who were Baptists and were buried at Great Valley Baptist Cemetery. Evans and Evan were very common first names in our family. hen we had an Emma Smith who married an Evan Smith (no relation) which really threw a monkey wrench into my research! Thanks so much for your post! ------------------------------ o unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com ith the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of he message

somewhat paraphrased from Futhey and Cope; The Soc of Friends were the "pioneers in educational matters in Chester Co." The Yearly meetings gave earnest and practical advice in relation to the settlement of schools, and in 1778 advised that in the "compass of each MM ground, should be provided sufficient for a garden, orchard, grass for cow, etc, and a suitable house and stable be erected, as an encouragement to and making provision for the accommodation of a teacher of staid character and proper qualifications; and it was also recommended that funds should be collected for the establishment and support of schools. " Thus, most meetings " provided such property and created ample funds to aid in the support of schools." These Friends' schools were "numerous in those positions of the county where that society formed the bulk of the population, and imparted a solid education to all the youth of their respective neighborhoods, keeping pace in the studies taught, with those usually "pursued in ordinary academic institutions." "Chester Co was fortunate in the character of her early settlers, and that education was so universal among all classes from the earliest settlement of the province, that she owes the pre-eminence which her people have attained for intelligence and general culture." Thus, it appears that the MMs of Chester county erected schools, provided for the teachers and made educating their children a priority in their lives. S.

I found some histories of education in Pennsylvania, and, shockingly, it is correct that there were not many public schools in even the most settled, prosperous and civilized places in Pennsylvania by 1810. Evidently the citizens massively thought public schools would interfere with their religious freedom. To be sure, back in England, where they'd lived over a hundred years before, schools were generally run by religious institutions. And I thought that Texas was medieval. Many communities here can barely manage street lights and paved roads, and don't even dare to dream of public libraries or health care for the poor - even on the outskirts of its capital city, Austin. Honest, they have big communities in the suburbs of Austin that have unpaved streets with nary a street light, no other public services, and it's a battle to pave the streets, and in some of them, the residents are charged fees to pave a street! Home schooling is popular among some of that element but far from all. Many of them send their children to private religious schools. But they'd all be shocked at the notion there should not be public schools, and more shocked at the notion that kids shouldn't have a basic education. All of New England gave greater priority to the education of their children than this, and most communities had public schools from the first settlement of the colonies. They were Puritans, and they thought children needed to be able to read the Bible. They didn't think everyone could go to Heaven, but everyone had to have a chance, and church maintained the moral fiber, and harmony, of the community. Everyone had to attend church and their children had to attend school. Whatever all of these religious zealots in Pennsylvania were thinking . No accident, I guess, that the Appalachian trail of migration begins in Pennsylvania, and ends in Texas. Pennsylvania was a civilized, sophisticated society, founded on principals of religious liberty and other advanced values, and it's shocking that education of their children could have had such low priority. Of course, now, that is my values. Other, morally superior people might not agree with me. The earliest public schools were specifically aimed at the poor, and one wonders if John Smith wouldn't have had too much pride to apply, if such an option had been available. Now, allegedly, most Presbyterian churches in Pennsylvania had school houses attached to them. Allegedly most churches in Pennsylvania where the Scotch Irish settled had Presbyterian churches. I know that this was not true; actually, the central Presbyterian church bodies had a lot of trouble providing enough clergy for Scotch Irish communities in Pennsylvania to have Presbyterian churches. This was a leading factor in the success of Methodism in this area. However, it does seem that the communities where my Smiths were involved with were luckier. John and Isabella Smith had their little farm in London Britain township. They owned a wagon, and a single horse, and they had seven children, and they attended New London Presbyterian Church. They drove that lot of children 12 miles to church every Sunday. They were poor and busy, and I find it hard to imagine them driving the children to New London all other six days of the week to attend school, but it is worth checking on whether the New London Presbyterian church ran a school. The Smiths were indentured servants of a wealthy Baptist farmer, whose family led and founded both of the two Welsh Baptist churches on the border of Delaware, both in Delaware. The closer of those churches was closer to the Smith home than the Presbyterian church was, so it's worth looking into whether they might have run a school. The Whittens had given the Smiths money to buy their 30 acres on completion of their indentured servitude, though the Whittens owned slaves and the provision for a livelihood was required by law, and the Smiths, who seem to have been on good terms with people around them, may have remained on good terms with the Whittens. My father benefitted from that sort of thing more times than I can count. I rechecked the story of William Smith's childhood. He was born in 1797, his parents lived in northern London Britain township, and he was apprenticed to a mason named Robert Cristy, in Cecil County, Maryland. Robert Cristy/ Cristie, other spellings, of Cecil County Maryland, lived in Fair Hill, Cecil County, "near the Centre School House", died in 1841, and was an elder of the Rock Presbyterian Church. It would have been too far away for William Smith to have lived with his parents while he was apprenticed to this man, and in fact I've got a clear picture of William having had little to do with his parents once he was apprenticed. He did marry a daughter of the family who ran a tavern/ town hall across the street from the Smith farm, but the story I've got is that William as a jaunty young man and virtual stranger happened in there many years later and connected with Mary Dehaven. I don't know at what age William would have been apprenticed. The story I've got here is that he would have been nearly a young man, but if he was young enough conceivably his master sent him to school. Indentured servants were often sent to school with the children of the household. Both families were Presbyterian, and both were devout. Now, his mother, was actually described as slight of form, sprightly of step, and intellectual of feature, by her grandson, who would have known her as an elderly woman when he was a small boy. It could not be more clearly untrue that William Smith never needed no reading, writing or ciphering to be as successful as he was in the fields of endeavor at which he succeeded. And can you imagine that one way or another his mother didn't see that he had altleast the basic education of his day. Only question is, specifically how did she manage that? So how old was that Centre Creek schoolhouse, and did the Rock Presbyterian church have a school?' William's son, my great grandfather, appears to have attended the common schools in his northern Delaware community, then attended a private academy for his secondary education. Later he taught in the common schools in Delaware, and that's certainly where his future wife taught as well. Delaware, poorly organized though it was, seems to have cared enough to educate its children. Honest, I used to have a very good opinion of Pennsylvania. No wonder my father valued ignorance so highly, and suspected books, though his walls were lined with them. I thought it was the Scotch Irish in him! Yours, Dora

Folks, we all need to try to edit the posts we send to the list. It is especially necessary when answering the post of another . The tendency is to simply add your comments and send it off , but after this happens several times, the post just grows and grows like Topsy. So, while it is essential to include enough if an old post to let us know what you're responding to, there is generally a great deal we can remove. So. before sending off a post please scroll down through it and delete what is not necessary. S. Sent from Sandra's iPod ????

Can't find anything on common schools in general in this book. Only genealogical and biographical notes, in both volumes. Many people in the book attended "common schools" but except in larger or earlier communities, Philadelphia being a notable example, they were mostly born a generation or two after William Smith who was born in 1797. I did once read all the standard histories of Chester County repeatedly in great detail. Dora -----Original Message----- From: George Sent: Sunday, October 28, 2012 9:37 AM To: Dora Smith ; Eliz Hanebury Cc: pa-old-chester-l@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Need to check on whether London Britain township hadpublic schools 1800 - 1810 If there is an answer to this question it will be found in- Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealocial and Personal by Gilbert Cope and Henry Grahm Ashmead Volume 2 Look for Common Schools which is what Public Schools were firt called

Dora, I live in Rising Sun, MD, which is not far from London Britain township. There was a Quaker church in Rising Sun and it would not surprise me if a teacher would travel there to teach. My 6th great grandfather was a Presbyterian minister who had gone to West Nottingham Academy where his first cousin had started the school before going on to become president of the College of New Jersey (Princeton Seminary). He traveled all around the area of New London, London Britain, Newark, DE, Rising Sun, Fair Hill, preaching at different churches. Because many did not live close together, it was quite common to travel a distance (for them by horse). On 10/27/12 3:00 AM, "pa-old-chester-request@rootsweb.com" <pa-old-chester-request@rootsweb.com> wrote: > Today's Topics: > > 1. Re: Indenture (Dora Smith) > 2. Ancestry. com et al (Sandra Ferguson) > 3. Re: Ancestry. com et al (Eliz Hanebury) > 4. Need to check on whether London Britain township had public > schools 1800 - 1810 (Dora Smith) > 5. Fw: Need to check on whether London Britain township had > public schools 1800 - 1810 (Dora Smith) > To contact the PA-OLD-CHESTER list administrator, send an email to > PA-OLD-CHESTER-admin@rootsweb.com. > > To post a message to the PA-OLD-CHESTER mailing list, send an email to > PA-OLD-CHESTER@rootsweb.com. > > __________________________________________________________ > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com > with the word "unsubscribe" without the quotes in the subject and the body of > the > email with no additional text.

Public schools didn't happen in what sense of the word, where? Massachusetts was committed to public education from its beginning. Dora -----Original Message----- From: Eliz Hanebury Sent: Saturday, October 27, 2012 2:55 PM To: Dora Smith Cc: pa-old-chester-l@rootsweb.com Subject: Re: [PaOldC] Need to check on whether London Britain township had public schools 1800 - 1810 What we consider "Public Schools" didn't happen until the middle 19th Century. It doesn't mean education didn't happen. There could have been someone in the area who gave classes for a small stipend. It is possible weavers would pay with woven goods and farmers with food - someone with drive could learn in so many other ways. You didn't need fancy schooling to run a good business - it might be easier but not impossible without. Quakers did have schools, Westtown is the only one I know, just because it is "here" but I am sure there were many small schools in Meetings. from the school website Establishing the School <<Westtown School first opened it doors to students in May, 1799. Twenty boys and twenty girls, most in their teens but some as young as eight years old, entered the school from Quaker families living primarily in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area. The opening of Westtown School was the result of many years of decision-making, planning, and fundraising by members of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The Philadelphia Quakers established a boarding school so that their children might be in a setting where their moral development could be attended to along with their schooling>> wikipedia Wilmington Friends School, the oldest existing school in Delaware,[1] is a preschool through 12th grade Quaker school in Wilmington, Delaware. The school was founded in 1748 by members of the Wilmington Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers).[2] Eliz On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Dora Smith <tiggernut24@yahoo.com> wrote: > I need to verify something. I ‘ve repeatedly been told that my 2x great > grandfather could not have attended school, because his parents were > impoverished village weavers barely able to support their family. His > own children attended local private academies. Yet his son married a > local Quaker school teacher, and there wasn’t no local Quaker school,, so > where did she teach. It was London Britain township, I don’t know, > Coatesville or Mercersville or something like that; there was a village of > succesful small town businessmen. The small Smith farm was not far from > the village center, across from where a tavern that was used as the town > hall was eventually built by the parents of William Smith’s future wife. > Today the town hall is on another corner of the same intersection. The > town was not in the back woods, but on the southeastern edge of Chester > County, on the border of Delaware, which leaves one wondering how they > could possibly not have had a public school. My 2x great grandfather > was extremely successful in business, bought and ran a thousand acre farm, > then served in the Delaware state legislature, though at the time his land > was in Maryland and Pennsylvania (sometimes it was in Delaware, and today > the three state marker is on what was his land). His son my great > grandfather was extremely literate. I have a sample of his writing, and > it was equal to the standards of published authors of that time. My 2x > great grandfather must have been highly literate and excellent at both > arithmetic and geometry. He also helped build a local church, and has a > window with his name on it. Of course he could read the Bible, well > enough to read it to the congregation in church. > > He would have attended school between 1803 and 1815, and would have seemed > well educated if he’d had half that amount of schooling as it was done at > that time. I have ancestors as bright in 18th and 19th century New > England who half educated themselves after a few winters of school, and > the schoolmaster emphasized giving advanced writing lessons to one of > them. I know how well educated they were from reading their > autobiographies. One of them taught school. > > Are y’all sure there was no public school in London Britain township? > Because if there wasn’t, atleast one of William’s parents must have been > able to teach the children, and teach them a lot, quite well. It gets to > what their background was. Little is known about them before they came to > Pennsylvania. > > I’m about to write to a historian in a town in Scotland where I have a Y > DNA match, that his cottage weaver parents must truly have been something, > because their children were quite well educated in a home with no money > and a town with no school, even though the boys weren’t even kept at home > but apprenticed out to become stone masons. So if London Britain > township managed to have a school, now would be a good time to tell me the > truth. > > Yours, > Dora > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to > PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without > the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

What we consider "Public Schools" didn't happen until the middle 19th Century. It doesn't mean education didn't happen. There could have been someone in the area who gave classes for a small stipend. It is possible weavers would pay with woven goods and farmers with food - someone with drive could learn in so many other ways. You didn't need fancy schooling to run a good business - it might be easier but not impossible without. Quakers did have schools, Westtown is the only one I know, just because it is "here" but I am sure there were many small schools in Meetings. from the school website Establishing the School <<Westtown School first opened it doors to students in May, 1799. Twenty boys and twenty girls, most in their teens but some as young as eight years old, entered the school from Quaker families living primarily in the Pennsylvania and New Jersey area. The opening of Westtown School was the result of many years of decision-making, planning, and fundraising by members of the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers). The Philadelphia Quakers established a boarding school so that their children might be in a setting where their moral development could be attended to along with their schooling>> wikipedia Wilmington Friends School, the oldest existing school in Delaware,[1] is a preschool through 12th grade Quaker school in Wilmington, Delaware. The school was founded in 1748 by members of the Wilmington Monthly Meeting of Friends (Quakers).[2] Eliz On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 11:31 PM, Dora Smith <tiggernut24@yahoo.com> wrote: > I need to verify something. I ‘ve repeatedly been told that my 2x great grandfather could not have attended school, because his parents were impoverished village weavers barely able to support their family. His own children attended local private academies. Yet his son married a local Quaker school teacher, and there wasn’t no local Quaker school,, so where did she teach. It was London Britain township, I don’t know, Coatesville or Mercersville or something like that; there was a village of succesful small town businessmen. The small Smith farm was not far from the village center, across from where a tavern that was used as the town hall was eventually built by the parents of William Smith’s future wife. Today the town hall is on another corner of the same intersection. The town was not in the back woods, but on the southeastern edge of Chester County, on the border of Delaware, which leaves one wondering how they could possibly not have had a public school. ! My 2x great grandfather was extremely successful in business, bought and ran a thousand acre farm, then served in the Delaware state legislature, though at the time his land was in Maryland and Pennsylvania (sometimes it was in Delaware, and today the three state marker is on what was his land). His son my great grandfather was extremely literate. I have a sample of his writing, and it was equal to the standards of published authors of that time. My 2x great grandfather must have been highly literate and excellent at both arithmetic and geometry. He also helped build a local church, and has a window with his name on it. Of course he could read the Bible, well enough to read it to the congregation in church. > > He would have attended school between 1803 and 1815, and would have seemed well educated if he’d had half that amount of schooling as it was done at that time. I have ancestors as bright in 18th and 19th century New England who half educated themselves after a few winters of school, and the schoolmaster emphasized giving advanced writing lessons to one of them. I know how well educated they were from reading their autobiographies. One of them taught school. > > Are y’all sure there was no public school in London Britain township? Because if there wasn’t, atleast one of William’s parents must have been able to teach the children, and teach them a lot, quite well. It gets to what their background was. Little is known about them before they came to Pennsylvania. > > I’m about to write to a historian in a town in Scotland where I have a Y DNA match, that his cottage weaver parents must truly have been something, because their children were quite well educated in a home with no money and a town with no school, even though the boys weren’t even kept at home but apprenticed out to become stone masons. So if London Britain township managed to have a school, now would be a good time to tell me the truth. > > Yours, > Dora > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Resend; it said my e-mail couldn’t be sent. I need to verify something. I ‘ve repeatedly been told that my 2x great grandfather could not have attended school, because his parents were impoverished village weavers barely able to support their family. His own children attended local private academies. Yet his son married a local Quaker school teacher, and there wasn’t no local Quaker school,, so where did she teach. It was London Britain township, I don’t know, Coatesville or Mercersville or something like that; there was a village of succesful small town businessmen. The small Smith farm was not far from the village center, across from where a tavern that was used as the town hall was eventually built by the parents of William Smith’s future wife. Today the town hall is on another corner of the same intersection. The town was not in the back woods, but on the southeastern edge of Chester County, on the border of Delaware, which leaves one wondering how they could possibly not have had a public school. My 2x great grandfather was extremely successful in business, bought and ran a thousand acre farm, then served in the Delaware state legislature, though at the time his land was in Maryland and Pennsylvania (sometimes it was in Delaware, and today the three state marker is on what was his land). His son my great grandfather was extremely literate. I have a sample of his writing, and it was equal to the standards of published authors of that time. My 2x great grandfather must have been highly literate and excellent at both arithmetic and geometry. He also helped build a local church, and has a window with his name on it. Of course he could read the Bible, well enough to read it to the congregation in church. He would have attended school between 1803 and 1815, and would have seemed well educated if he’d had half that amount of schooling as it was done at that time. I have ancestors as bright in 18th and 19th century New England who half educated themselves after a few winters of school, and the schoolmaster emphasized giving advanced writing lessons to one of them. I know how well educated they were from reading their autobiographies. One of them taught school. Are y’all sure there was no public school in London Britain township? Because if there wasn’t, atleast one of William’s parents must have been able to teach the children, and teach them a lot, quite well. It gets to what their background was. Little is known about them before they came to Pennsylvania. I’m about to write to a historian in a town in Scotland where I have a Y DNA match, that his cottage weaver parents must truly have been something, because their children were quite well educated in a home with no money and a town with no school, even though the boys weren’t even kept at home but apprenticed out to become stone masons. So if London Britain township managed to have a school, now would be a good time to tell me the truth. Yours, Dora

I need to verify something. I ‘ve repeatedly been told that my 2x great grandfather could not have attended school, because his parents were impoverished village weavers barely able to support their family. His own children attended local private academies. Yet his son married a local Quaker school teacher, and there wasn’t no local Quaker school,, so where did she teach. It was London Britain township, I don’t know, Coatesville or Mercersville or something like that; there was a village of succesful small town businessmen. The small Smith farm was not far from the village center, across from where a tavern that was used as the town hall was eventually built by the parents of William Smith’s future wife. Today the town hall is on another corner of the same intersection. The town was not in the back woods, but on the southeastern edge of Chester County, on the border of Delaware, which leaves one wondering how they could possibly not have had a public school. My 2x great grandfather was extremely successful in business, bought and ran a thousand acre farm, then served in the Delaware state legislature, though at the time his land was in Maryland and Pennsylvania (sometimes it was in Delaware, and today the three state marker is on what was his land). His son my great grandfather was extremely literate. I have a sample of his writing, and it was equal to the standards of published authors of that time. My 2x great grandfather must have been highly literate and excellent at both arithmetic and geometry. He also helped build a local church, and has a window with his name on it. Of course he could read the Bible, well enough to read it to the congregation in church. He would have attended school between 1803 and 1815, and would have seemed well educated if he’d had half that amount of schooling as it was done at that time. I have ancestors as bright in 18th and 19th century New England who half educated themselves after a few winters of school, and the schoolmaster emphasized giving advanced writing lessons to one of them. I know how well educated they were from reading their autobiographies. One of them taught school. Are y’all sure there was no public school in London Britain township? Because if there wasn’t, atleast one of William’s parents must have been able to teach the children, and teach them a lot, quite well. It gets to what their background was. Little is known about them before they came to Pennsylvania. I’m about to write to a historian in a town in Scotland where I have a Y DNA match, that his cottage weaver parents must truly have been something, because their children were quite well educated in a home with no money and a town with no school, even though the boys weren’t even kept at home but apprenticed out to become stone masons. So if London Britain township managed to have a school, now would be a good time to tell me the truth. Yours, Dora

I took up a subscription to Graboid to get "Time Team" and while I was there I downloaded a whole lot of WDYTYA UK <G> I need my fix! Eliz On Fri, Oct 26, 2012 at 7:29 PM, Sandra Ferguson <ferg@ntelos.net> wrote: > Ancestry has recently been sold to a European buyer for a whopping $1.6 BILLION, but no major changes are anticipated. The good part for those among us that enjoyed the TV show So Who Do You Think You Are..(and that including me).....is that they plan to > bring it back again! No mention of when or where other than it'll be on a cable channel. > S. > > > > Sent from Sandra's iPod ???? > > ------------------------------- > To unsubscribe from the list, please send an email to PA-OLD-CHESTER-request@rootsweb.com with the word 'unsubscribe' without the quotes in the subject and the body of the message

Ancestry has recently been sold to a European buyer for a whopping $1.6 BILLION, but no major changes are anticipated. The good part for those among us that enjoyed the TV show So Who Do You Think You Are..(and that including me).....is that they plan to bring it back again! No mention of when or where other than it'll be on a cable channel. S. Sent from Sandra's iPod ????

What's The Buzz at ncestry.com This database is an index to land warrants in Pennsylvania. While it includes no images, it does list the name of the person associated with the warrant, the date, acreage, and location of the land. A land warrant authorized an official survey of a particular tract of land that an individual or other entity wanted to claim or purchase. While it initiated the title process, the warrant did not confer title to the land. The Land Office of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania traces its beginnings back to 1682. This index was created from records at the Pennsylvania State Archives and indexes the warrants from all 67 counties in Pennsylvania, beginning in 1733, when warrant registers were first kept. Remember that county boundaries can change over time, and a warrant will be associated with the county as it was on the date of the warrant. Names: The names on the warrants were handwritten based on what had been written on the warrant application-usually just a small scrap of paper. The person filling out the warrant sometimes couldn't read the writing, resulting in frequent errors in spelling. Many of the warrant applicants were illiterate, so the application was prepared by someone else, often a local justice of the peace. In these cases, the spelling is strictly phonetic. Sometimes when the clerk preparing the warrant couldn't be sure about the spelling, they would record more than one possible spelling, referring to the alternate spelling as an "alias." An example of this is Hugh "Morthland, alias Northland," who warranted 200 acres in Lancaster County on 14 NOV 1743. Some of the records only give the surnames. These warrants are either recorded as, for example, "Smith & James" In some cases, when the first name of the person is not given, it is replaced with "---" to distinguish the first name from the surname, as in "Smith, --- & --- James." This is to reduce confusion when a name could be either a surname or a given name, as with the surname "James." If only one of the given names is known, it is recorded as "Smith, John & --- James." Two persons with the same surname would be recorded as "Smith, John & James." Some company names are indexed under the letter "T" for names that start "The..." The company "The Uniontown Water Company" is indexed under "T" and not "U" in the warrant registers. Some indexing is strange in the warrant registers. For instance, "Devisees of William Wharton (deceased)" of Bedford County is indexed under the letter "D." The indexing is important because to find the record it is necessary to look under the correct letter as each was only indexed once. This example is only under "D" and not "W." There is more information to be found about this database. If you want to read it, go to Ancestry, bring up the database and read the rest. 8

Penn states explicitly in this pamphlet the conditions of immigration into his province. He looks to see three sorts of people come,— those who will buy, those who will rent, and servants. "To the first, the shares I sell shall be certain as to number of acres; that is to say, every one shall contain five thousand acres, free from any incumbrance, the price a hundred pounds, and for the quit-rent but one English shilling, or the value of it, yearly, for a hundred acres; and the said quit-rent not to begin to be paid till 1684. To the second sort, that take up land upon rent, they shall have liberty so to do, paying yearly one penny per acre, not exceeding two hundred acres. To the third sort, to wit, servants that are carried over,(5*) fifty acres shall be allowed to the master for every head, and fifty acres to every servant when their time is expired. And because some engage with me that may not be disposed to go, it were very advisable for every three adventurers to send over an overseer with their servants, which would well pay the cost."(6*) HISTORY OF PHILADELPHIA. 1609-1884. BY J. Thomas Scharf and Thompson Westcott. IN THREE VOLUMES PHILADELPHIA: L.H. EVERTS & CO. 1884.