lish schools
for their children were made by the Swedes in Delaware. At Christina a
teacher was employed in 1699; in Wicaco Teacher Hernboom began a school
in 1713. The minutes of the Pennsylvania Synod of 1762 record: "In the
Swedish congregations the Swedish schools have for several generations
been regrettably neglected; Dr. Wrangel, however, has started an English
school in one of his congregations in which the Lutheran Catechism is
read in an English translation." Acrelius, who had been provost of the
Swedes in Delaware, wrote in 1759: "Forty years back our people scarcely
knew what a school was. The first Swedish and Holland settlers were a
poor, weak, and ignorant people, who brought up their children in the
same ignorance." The result was great ignorance among the Swedes.
_Jacobs:_ "There seems to have been an entire dearth of laymen capable
of intelligently participating in the administration of the affairs of
the congregation until we come to Peter Kock. Eneberg found at Christina
that 'of the vestrymen and elders of the parish there was scarcely any
one who could write his own name.'" (104.) The Salzburgers had a school
in Ebenezer, and later a second school in the country. At the beginning
Bolzius and Gronau gave daily instruction in religion, the one four, the
other three hours daily. In 1741 Ortmann and an English teacher
instructed the youth at Ebenezer. The Palatinates in New York began
with the building, not only of a church, but also of a school in 1710,
the very year in which they had settled at West Camp. In New York there
was a schoolhouse as well as a church, and a "schoolkeeper"
(_Schulhalter_) was employed. When the teacher disappeared, the
schoolhouse was rented out, but Berkenmeyer taught the children in his
home for five months in a year, three times a week. Also in North
Carolina, Virginia, Tennessee, etc., parish schools were established,
and the great need of them explained to and urged upon the people by the
conferences and ministers. In Pennsylvania there were several German
schools even before the arrival of Muhlenberg; as a rule, however, the
teachers were incompetent or immoral, or both. (247.) When, in 1734,
Daniel Weisiger, one of the representatives of the congregations at
Philadelphia, New Hanover, and Providence, made his appearance in Halle,
he asked for both an able and pious preacher and a schoolteacher. In the
beginning Muhlenberg himself took charge of the school. In January,