Their ' fixtures ' were extremely rude and simple, consisting for the most ])art of pine boards nailed up to the sides and ends of the room for desks, with sometimes a shelf underneath, on which to keep books and slates. They were furnished with seats of long oaken slabs, with legs driven into auger holes at each end, and all of the fixtures and furniture were curiously notched and carved into many fantastic forms and grotesque images by the busy jackknives of the mischievous tyros. The school-room was sometimes warmed by a fire in an open fire-place; but mostly by a small cast-iron stove, set upon a pile of bricks in the middle of the room."

The teachers were stern and severe in their methods of teaching, using the ferrule and birchen rod with great frequency and freedom. In those days flagellation was thought to be a fundamental part of education. Most of these teachers were imported from England and Ireland. They had left their own country in search of a wider field for the exercise of their great powers for stimulating the minds of their pupils by external applications. They found it here in America, and in carrying out their peculiar methods they only followed the customs of their native land. But their path was not always a flowery one. The application of force to the inculcation of learning was sometimes attended with disastrous results to themselves. From this severity of discipline very unjjleasant affrays took place between the teacher and his scholars, ending occasionally in the expulsion of the teacher from the school-room. As to qualifications, "If the teacher could make a good quill pen, and write with facility a neat and fair hand, and solve the sums and repeat the tables in Daboll's arithmetic, he was considered a competent teacher, and received a certificate entitling the school taught by him to receive its proportion of the public money." The reading-books were "The New Testament," " The Sequel," "The American Preceptor," and ' The Child's Instructor" for larger and more advanced scholars, and a few primers for small children.