Schoolhouse Usher

The schoolhouse's second post, and the master's right hand. You take the youngest children so the master can take the rest, and you keep the room running while he does.

The work

• Hear the younger children's lessons and bring them on to where the master can take them.
• Mend the quills, bank the schoolroom fire, and sweep out at the end of the day.
• Walk the littlest ones part-way home.
• Stand in for the master when he is off boarding at the far end of the district.

Context

• Reports to the schoolmaster daily.
• Staff of two. You are the whole of the backfill.
• Pay is £10–14 New York currency per annum (~$25–35 in silver dollars) plus board.
• In-person daily; school does not close for weather, so a thick coat is genuinely part of the kit.

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

• Reads and ciphers soundly.
• Patience for small children in large numbers.
• A thick coat: school does not close for weather.

Not a fit if you want to set the curriculum — that is the master's, entirely.

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.