Mt Pleasant and the early Quakers – Mount Pleasant Friends Boarding School operated from 1837 to 1875. The Quaker Seminary was opened to students on January 23, 1837. Daniel Williams and his wife Elizabeth were the first superintendent and matron. Robert S. Holloway and his wife Abby, George K. Jenkins, and Abigail Flanner were the first teachers. The men were paid a maximum of $400 and the woman $250. A governor for the boys department, who was to provide for the good order of the school, was added in 1838. During the first six months of operation the school averaged about eighty-five pupils who paid a tuition rate of $65 for the six-month term.
The proposed school calendar was two sessions of twenty-four weeks with two week vacations. During the winter term, which normally opened the week following the Ohio Yearly Meeting, morning classes began at 8:30 and ended at 11:30 o’clock. Afternoon classes lasted from 2 until 5. There was an evening class from 6 to 7:30. Religious meetings were held the first and fifth days of each week.
The education received was guarded and liberal, one of literacy and scientific instruction as well as the imparting of the doctrines of the Gospel and the Quaker testimonies. The primary pupils had instruction in spelling and definitions, reading, geography, arithmetic, English grammar, and writing. Advanced pupils studied natural philosophy, chemistry, rhetoric, logic, mineralogy, botany, bookkeeping, astronomy, political economy, moral philosophy, political grammar, menstruation, trigonometry, algebra, use of globes, theory of astronomy and calculations, French, Latin, and Greek. Also, students had Scripture recitations and exercises during the afternoon of the first day of the week and passages of scripture were read every evening just before bedtime.
Mount Pleasant Boarding School
