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

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