Contributions to American Educational History (Volume 5-7) (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER H. SCHOOLS AFTER THE REVOLUTIONARY WAR. THE DE OP RICHMOND COUNTY. Some months had elapsed after the signing of the Declaration of Independence when Georgia took her next step in educational progress. This was effected under the Constitution of 1777, the fifty-fourth section of which provided that schools should be erected in each county, and supported at the general expense of the State.i During the Revolutionary War, such were the distractions of tho period and of the community, that all efforts for education, either public or private, were wholly omitted. Upon the return of peace and tho adjustment of affairs, both private and political, attention was once more directed to this important subject. The earliest legislation in regard to public education occurring after the war will be found in an act for laying out the reserve land in the town of Augusta into acre lots, the erecting of an academy or seminary of learning, and for other purposes therein mentioned, assented to July 31,17S3.2 By the fourteenth section of this act, the Governor was empowered to grant one thousand acres of land for a free school in each county. Under the same act provision was made for the establishment of a free school in tho t own of Washington, Wilkes County, and of two academies, one at Waynesborough, Burke County, and the other at Augusta, In the county of Eichmond.. Of the academies the latter only deserves special consideration, partly from the fact of its longevity, it having from the beginning almost uninterruptedly maintained an active existence, but particularly on account of the historic memories which are connected with it. After reciting, "And whereas a seminary of learning is greatly necessary for the instruction of our youth, and ought to be one of the first o...