Country Schoolmaster

The district schoolhouse teaches every child in the glen, and the master runs it single-handed. You own the schoolroom end to end: what is taught, how order is kept, and whether forty children of every age leave able to read, cipher, and sing.

The work

• Plan and deliver instruction in reading, ciphering, and psalm-singing across all ages, in one room, at once.
• Set and keep discipline — the standard is a firm hand, and the standard is yours to set.
• Manage the schoolroom fire, the hornbooks, and the stores through a valley winter.
• Board round week to week with the families of the glen, one table at a time.
• Report to the district trustees twice yearly on the progress of the school.

Context

• Reports to the district trustees, who visit twice a year and defer entirely in between.
• Staff of two: you and one usher. Forty urchins in season.
• Pay is £24–32 New York currency per annum (~$60–80 in silver dollars) plus board and lodging, rotated among the farm families.
• In-person, every day the weather allows and most days it does not — school does not close for weather.
• The walk home through the wood after dark is a nightly part of the post, not an occasional one.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.

• Has taught or drilled pupils before — a schoolroom, an apprentice bench, or a choir all count.
• Can keep order among forty children without losing the little ones.
• Content to board round: your home is the district, one table at a time.
• Untroubled by a long walk home through the wood after dark.

Not a fit if you need a fixed lodging of your own, a second master to share the room, or a school that shuts when it snows.

The district's one-room log schoolhouse by the brook, teaching the children of the glen since 1730.

Who we are

A staff of two — one master, one usher — and forty urchins in season, from the barely-breeched to the nearly-grown. We are funded by the farm families of the hollow, who also board the staff week by week, so pay is modest and the tea-tables are legendary.

How we work

We run on hornbooks, psalmody, and a firm hand. The trustees visit twice a year and defer entirely in between, which means the master sets the curriculum, the calendar, and the discipline without asking anyone. School does not close for weather.

Who thrives here

Someone who can hold a room of forty across every age at once, and who takes the boarding-round custom as a feature: your home is the district, one table at a time. The walk home through the wood is long, and dark, and part of the post.

Recorded in the parish register of Sleepy Hollow, autumn of 1799.