In continuing the story of the Old Eagle School as begun in this column several weeks ago, it is a noteworthy fact that from the time the first small crude building was erected in about the year 1767, it was not only school and church, but pre-eminently “a social center of bucolic life,” to quote from Henry Pleasants’ history of that historic landmark. It became indeed a public meeting place of the neighborhood where militia companies were organized and drilled and where political meetings were held. And on the lighter side of life it was where singing groups and debating clubs met. Still in existence is a quaint invitation of March 1, 1822, for a debate to be held there a few days later. This invitation reads:

“The Eagle Association’s compliments to Miss Eliza Siter and requests the favour of her company at a debate at the Eagle School house on Saturday evening, March 9th.”

This invitation is among the bits of early evidence that the Eagle School was among the pioneers in the “lyceum movement,” which was to become an integral part of the life of the early settlers in this section. Records show that as early as 1935 the Chester County Education Convention organized a County Lyceum with a full roster of officers. As already stated in this column, Radnor Lyceum was organized in 1838 with Hugh Jones Brooke as president. Among the names connected with this Lyceum that still live on in present-day families are those of John Pechin, John Mather, and Adelaide Cornog.

Among these lyceum meetings held in Eagle School is one of 1832 so graphically described by one of the audience that his account is well worth quoting in full. It was given to the Board of Trustees of the old School by the late Joseph Levis Worrall, of Radnor, and recorded in Mr. Pleasants’ history.

“In 1832 we had an exhibition of the telegraph in winter time. Two operators came up to Edward Siter, who kept the Eagle Hotel . . . and asked permission to give the people a free exhibition of the telegraph at the Eagle School. The real object of the exhibition was for the purpose of obtaining an appropriation from the Pennsylvania Legislature through representatives favorable thereto . . . Edward Siter sent word around on horseback to the different stores, blacksmith shops and taverns, and put a notice in the Delaware County paper “Upland Union” of Chester, and in the “Village Record” of Chester County.

“We had a crowd of persons present at the exhibition; the building was jammed, and many could not get in. Dr. Joseph Blackfan and my father, Fred Worrall, were chosen by the people to sit by each telegraph operator, who took their positions at opposite corners of the room. Edward Siter, John Pugh and others stood in the doorway of a board partition . . . as judges to see that no sign was given of what was written, and then a message was sent across, the machine writing by dots and dashes on paper: Dr. Blackfan writing down a message which the operator sent to the man at father’s end, who read it out aloud, and then a message was sent back. The judges were first given the message which Dr. Blackfan wrote down, to see that no fraud was practiced. The message was always read off correctly and the effect on the audience was astonishing. They closely questioned Dr. Blackfan and father to know if there was any collusion. Father and many others thought the exhibition one of supernatural powers. Edward Siter stated that he could not account for it. Others thought that it was the work of the Devil.

“The arrangement for the exhibition had been made with much care. The batteries were concealed in boxes. John Meredith sent men to do all necessary carpenter work without charge; and the school was dismissed at noon, so that they had the full afternoon for making their arrangements. The door was locked until the time of the exhibition.”

Thus did our forebears in this section first learn of the mysteries of telegraph, which was so soon to become one of the country’s greatest means of communication.

From its earliest establishment old Eagle School was placed under the control and management of men designated as “Trustees” or Committeemen, who held a position similar to that of our present-day School Directors. The last formal election of these trustees is said to have taken place in the old building about 1835, at a meeting held there “for the purpose of securing better educational facilities for the neighborhood.”

Many of the names of these trustees have been preserved, not in record form, but in the memories of those who have passed their names down from generation to generation. Among those from Radnor were William Siter (the elder), John Pugh (the elder), Nathaniel Jones, Samuel Cleaver, Robert Kennedy, landlord of “The Unicorn,” and Edward Siter, landlord of “The Eagle.”

Other rural schoolhouses of an early date that have been preserved to the present generation, and are well known to many of us are the Camp School at Valley Forge, restored by the Valley Forge Commission; Diamond Rock School near Howellville and the Octagon Schoolhouse near Newtown Square. Until the Common School System of Pennsylvania came into full operation about 1836 such schools as these afforded the only facilities for the education of children in the rural districts. Many of them were established soon after the arrival of William Penn. Compared to what the schools of today have to offer they were primitive and crude, indeed, yet in their way they served their purpose at a time when nothing else offered itself.

Standard books of these early schools, according to Mr. Pleasants, included “Cornleys Spelling,” “Pike’s Arithmetic,” “The American Tutor” and “Murray’s Introduction to English Reader and Sequel.” Occasionally used by particularly apt scholars were “Gummere’s Surveying,” “Bonnycastles’ Algebra and Measuration” and “Kirkman’s Grammar.” Records show that at the Eagle School the usual tuition was two dollars per quarter, “exclusive of books, slates, ink and goose-quills.”

Old-time school masters usually acquired their positions by “circulating a subscription list around the neighborhood and inducing the various residents to send their children to school at certain rates.” There is some question as to who was the first master, that honor lying between a Brinton Evans and Jacob Sharraden Werkiser, son of that Christian Werkiser who gave the original acre of land on which the first school building was erected. Another of the old masters was James Boyle, descended from Irish gentry, who also taught at Old Glassley School, in what is now part of Devon, and at the Union School, near Great Valley Baptist Church. Still another was Adam Siter, a lame man, whom the pupils “endearingly called ‘Old Step-and-go-fetch-it.” He also taught in the School house at Old St. David’s Church. These old-time school-masters had no supervision from anyone except possibly from “the committeemen,” though there is not much evidence even of this. Among the relics of the Old Eagle School are some of the primitive instruments by which a rudimentary education was literally “driven into its early pupils.

(To be continued)

In continuing the story of Old Eagle School in Strafford as begun in last week’s column, it is interesting to read what Sidney George Fisher has to say about the early settlement of Pennsylvania in his book, “The Making of Pennsylvania”. “Most of the English Colonies in America”, he writes, “were founded by people of pure Anlgo-Saxon stock, and each colony had usually a religion of its own, with comparatively little inter-mixture of other faiths . . . But Pennsylvania was altogether different, and no other colony had such a mixture of languages, nationalities and religions. Dutch, Swedes, English, Germans, Scotch-Irish, Welsh, Quakers, Presbyterians, Episcopalians, Lutherans, Reformed, Mennonites, Dunkers, and Moravians, all had a share in creating it”.

Of these settlers, the Germans were decidedly the most numerous. Two divisions among them stand out prominently, the Sects or Pietists, and the Church people. The first included the Amish, the Mennonites, Shakers, Mileese, Schwenkfelders and many others. The Church people were divided between the Reformed and the Lutheran, the latter of especial local interest, since it is of them that the settlement in Tredyffrin seems to have been mainly composed. It was Lutherans who founded the first small church on the site of the present Old Eagle School, and, according to Fisher, all these Lutherans had many affiliations with the Episcopalians who at that time “looked upon them as likely to become a church in communion with themselves if not their actual converts.”

The original German pioneers were immigrant peasants, the first of that class to land in America, and very different from the English Yeomanry that settled Virginia, New England and most of the other Colonies. Many of them were very rough in manner and dress, speaking “an unintelligible dialect”. Nevertheless they took up their work of settlement in a new land in a way deserving of admiration. They became farmers, taking good care of their cattle and of their property. According to the historian, Fisher, they were “good judges of land, always selecting the best and were very fond of the limestone district”. And this was evidently one of the attractions in Tredyffrin Township.

These German settlers were not only a hard-working lot, but they were thrifty and frugal as well. When land had to be cleared, they cut down each individual tree and preserved each stick of it. When other colonists built houses with huge fireplaces at each end they used stoves for heating, stoves being of distinctly German origin, as explained in last week’s column. Fisher writes that this use of stoves “is said to have given their houses an even temperature, which enabled the women to work at various useful occupations in the long winter evenings which were passed by the wives and daughters of the other settlers in idleness, with benumbed fingers, shifting places around their romantic and wasteful fires.”

According to an article published in 1888 by Julius Sachse, to whose book, “The Wayside Inns on the Lancaster Roadside”, this column was indebted for the material for the series on the Old Spread Eagle Inn, the settlement of Germans in the present Strafford section dates back to about the middle of the eighteenth century. They were part of the group who, “with a few Swiss families, established themselves between the ‘Blue Bale’ (now ‘King of Prussia’) Inn, of Upper Merion, and ‘The Unicorn’ tavern of Radnor along the road, skirting the southern slope of the Valley Hills.

The first authentic evidence of the existence of the German colony in Tredyffrin Township is found in the deed books of Chester County, which, according to Henry Pleasants’ “History of the Old Eagle School”, indicate the purchase by Jacob Sharraden . . . from Sampson Davis and wife on March 16, 1765, of 150 acres of land in Tredyffrin, lying immediately north of the present Strafford station, Pennsylvania Railroad. This tract is part of an original purchase by Richard Hunt of Brome Yard, Hereford County, Wales, Chirugeon, from William Penn, dated March 1 and 2, 34th Charles II (1683) of five hundred acres described as in the Great Valley in said County of Chester, being bounded on the S. S. E. side with the late lands of Hugh Samuel, which would seem to indicate its extension from the Valley Hills into Radnor Township.

“The deed to Jacob Sharraden for this purchase marks the transition from the Welsh to the German settlement of the neighborhood, it is followed in March 1767, by a deed from Jacob Sharraden to his son-in-law, Christian Werkister . . . of the same premise. As these two men are undoubtedly the most prominent of the German pioneers connected with the establishment of the Old Eagle School, it is desirable here briefly to record what is known of them.”

Mr. Pleasants then goes on to say that neither of these names has been found in any of the immigrant lists. Jacob Sharraden having located in Tredyffrin in 1765, moved in about 1771 to Vincent Township where he died in about 1774. His will indicates that the testator was a religious German of some education and property. Tax lists of Tredyffrin show him to have been the proprietor of a grist mill and owner of 190 acres of land.

Christian Werkiser seems to have married Jacob Sharraden’s daughter, Margaretta. From 1776 to 1785 when he died, he apparently owned a considerable amount of real estate in Tredyffrin. It seems highly probably that he was buried in Eagle School graveyard, although no record of his burial exists on its records. However, his wife’s name is on these records.

Within a few years of the time of his purchase of a large tract of land, Christian Werkiser seems to have been disposed of it in smaller lots to Michael Walts, Peter Stidler and Jacob Huzzard. Meanwhile, from Pennsylvania Archives came an important bit of information to the effect that “when Christian Werkiser passed on the tax lists of Tredyffrin, in 1768, from a humble ‘Freeman’ . . . to the dignity of ‘Owner’ he is taxed not with 150 acres, but with only 149 acres. This discrepancy is the warrant for the belief that between 1765 and 1767 there was established by Jacob Sharraden (then the owner of the land) what seems a distinctive feature of German Protestant Settlements–a place for church and school purposes; and that he was the donor, at least of the ground, on which it was located”.

This is not the sole evidence that this early German settler gave the plot of ground on which the present historical Old Eagle School stands. Statements to that effect were given by early residents of both Tredyffrin and Willistown Townships. This rather definitely affirms the date of 1767 as the year when the first small building for church and school purposes was erected on this plot of ground just north of the present Strafford Station.

(To be continued)

“Still sits the school house by the road, a ragged beggar sunning. Not ‘ragged’ any longer. The trustees see to that. They keep the grass cut, remove a tree if one falls. But – no prayer of faith wafts upward to the blue, no childish feet scamper or scuffle through the deep doorway, even as once from Sunday School. Houses have sprung up thickly around the old building, and children there are in plenty. ‘For educational and religious purposes and for the repose of the dead.’ So runs the ancient devise, as interpreted and re-established by the court.”

So Martha Wentworth Suffren, born in Strafford in 1858, and still a resident of that historic community, concluded an article written some years ago for the “Evening Bulletin” concerning the Old Eagle School. One of the most interesting historical landmarks of rural Pennsylvania, this building stands up the hill north of Strafford Station on Old Eagle School road, which runs from Lancaster Pike crossing the tracks of the Pennsylvania Station by an underpass. The school is, according to Mrs. Suffren’s delightful account, “a quaint, almost forgotten relic of early Colonial days, with tightly shuttered windows and tightly bolted door. With the adjacent graveyard, that is a part of the demesne, where the great trees spring as often from the graves themselves as from the ground between, it makes a distinct – and pathetic – appeal to the passerby.”

Among these graves are those of many Revolutionary soldiers. Another link with that period of American history was proximity of the old school to the last of the “sentinel trees” from which during the encampment at Valley Forge direct communication was maintained with the American Army. This tree, a great chestnut over six feet in diameter, and about seventy-five feet high, was taken down when Sigmund’s Drug Store was built at the intersection of Lancaster Pike and Old Eagle School road.

The original Old Eagle School was probably built in the year 1788, as indicated by a stone set in the south gable. It was undoubtedly intended not only for a school, but for a German Protestant Church, erected by some of the early settlers of Tredyffrin and Radnor Townships who followed the original settlers who were Welshmen. The second group of settlers consisted mainly of Germans with some Swiss and even a few of the unfortunate Acadians driven from Nova Scotia. Following a custom of the home land, these Germans probably built a church before they had even completed their homes.

According to Mrs. Suffren, the original structure was only half the size of the present 33’x19′ now standing. The door, now at the south end, was then in the middle of the west side and the line of the added masonry can be plainly seen. The house as enlarged “took the place of an even older log building, used as church and school, which stood a few feet to the northward. Local tradition has it that the two structures stood side by side until 1805, when the first one was pulled down and the huge logs were used in another building now standing.”

A quaint picture in Henry Pleasants’ “History of the Old Eagle School” shows the small building as it looked in 1788. This picture, the author explains, “has been carefully prepared to conform as far as possible to the most authentic traditions of its appearance.”

Built of stone and one story in height, it had the door of which Mrs. Suffren speaks set between two westward facing windows. The window to the right was a large one, while that to the left was a narrow one. These, with two windows on the northeast side and two on the southeast side, lighted the interior. The door was a double one. Inside there were benches arranged in double rows around the side of the building, making a hollow square pen by the fireplace. Here stood the school master’s desk. At evening meetings held for community purposes, no provision was made for lighting the building except by candle or perhaps an occasional lamp. These, in accordance with the custom of the times, were brought to the building by the attendants and placed in rude wooden racks hung on the sides of the room.

Heating of the building was accomplished at first by an open wood fire, later by a ten plate stove. In this connection it is interesting to note that stoves of this type were distinctly of German origin. There were five, six and ten plate stoves according to the number of cast-iron plates composing the stoves. Five plate stoves were cast at all the furnaces in Pennsylvania from 1741 to 1760. Later these were superseded by the six-plate stove, and about 1765 ten plate stoves were put into use. But even with one of the latter. Mr. Pleasants comments that “the most zealous advocate of fresh air could hardly have complained of the ventilation of the building.”

Inside walls were entirely without plaster; window sashes “slid sidewise on the inside, as is yet often done in old barns, leaving the window ledge outside of the building. There were no shutters to these windows. The front door was secured by a long wooden bolt, slipped into place by a crooked piece of iron, passed through a hole.”

This description of the original school house of 1788 was based, not on hearsay, but on the actual description of it as given by several persons who were daily attendants there not many years later. It cannot fail to be of interest and value, Mr. Pleasants feels, “to the present favored recipients of the glorious school privileges of Chester, Delaware and Montgomery counties in this twentieth century.”

(To be continued)