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. The scarcity of books rendered it necessary that the teachers of these primitive schools should be well versed in all the English branches which they had to teach. But grammar and geography were at that time not commonly taught in the public schools. These ancient

school-houses, schools and teachers were the pioneers of the extensive and wonderful common-school sj'stem of the days in which we live. They were but the stepping-stones, so to sjieak, of those magnificent temples of science and learning which have since sprung up in almost every part of our favored land. As to those primitive structures in New Rochelle, they have vanished even from the recollection of most of the inhabitants.

Every vestige of the two bid Huguenot schoolhouses is swept away, and they live only in tradition. The only teacher who taught school in either house, within the recollection of the writer, was Andrew Dean, Esq., some of whose descendants are still living in New Rochelle.^ In the year 1857 three schoolhouses were built (under the act of 1795), dividing the town into as many districts. The first was on the corner of a lane leading to the old French buiyingground. It was on Huguenot Street, nearly in front of the present Episcopal Church. It was quite a stately school-house for those times, being about eighteen by thirty-tw-o feet on the ground and two stories high.