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