On This Day, 1739: Enfield hires a schoolmaster and pays for its gallery pews

ENFIELD - On Oct. 29, 1739, Enfield voters met in a legal town meeting and hired a teacher for the winter, according to town meeting records reprinted in volume one of The History of Enfield, Connecticut (1900), edited by Francis Olcott Allen.

With Ensign Ephraim Terry as moderator, the meeting chose John Collins as schoolmaster for three months, to begin two or three weeks later. The town granted him ten pounds "in Case he keeps said School in Enfield three months," the record says.

The same meeting settled a bill for the meetinghouse. The young men who had built a pew in the front gallery on the men's side were granted four pounds ten shillings, and the young women who built the matching pew on the women's side were granted the same sum, both paid in town pay. A committee of Obadiah Hulberd, Ephraim Terry and Nathaniel Pease was named to settle with the young men who built the pews over the stairs.

The meeting left it to the selectmen to decide whether Collins, or someone else, would keep the school after his term.

Enfield was still part of Massachusetts at the time. It joined Connecticut in 1749.

Source: Town meeting records, The History of Enfield, Connecticut, vol. 1 (1900), pp. 388-389, via the Internet Archive; Connecticut Secretary of the State, Connecticut Towns in the Order of their Establishment.

How this story was made: AI tools helped research and draft this story, working from the sources cited and linked above. It was fact-checked against those sources, and our editor, Joshua Allen, reviewed and approved it before publication. See an error? Email upriverdaily@gmail.com.