The Colored School in the City of Paterson, NJ. 1855-1873
Today’s blog has been culled from my Africana scrap album. It is a short history of a school for Black children in the City of Paterson, New Jersey, which operated from 1855 to 1873.
In January 1855, a colored school was established, Miss Eliza M. Hasted being the first Principal- a position she retained for nearly twenty years, or until the school was disbanded. The sessions were held for a few months in the Godwin Street ( colored) M.E. Church; then in the Goetschius schoolhouse in Division street, when the East Ward school vacated those premises. In September, 1857, it was removed to Clinton street schoolhouse. The location was so remote as to create much complaint from the parents of the children, and with good reason.
At length, in 1873, the Board of Education bought for $4,000, four lots in Godwin street, south side, between Washington and Bridge, for a new edifice. But December 27, 1872, the Board had voted that the colored children would attend the schools in their respective districts, and all but five or six availed themselves of the privilege, and as the plan seemed to work well a separate school for them was no longer necessary, and on May 30, 1873, the colored school was ordered disbanded and the Godwin street property sold.
Miss Halsted had eighty or ninety pupils on the roll most of the time, the average attendance being fifty. The school did a good work in its way, and none of the less so that it was gone with a patient obstructiveness and self- denial that commended its teacher to the favor of every friend of education.
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