OLD-TIME SCHOOLS AND SCHOOL-BOOKS - online book

An Illustrated history & description Of Schools in the 18th & 19th Centurys.

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	The New England Primer                 71 below is the earliest mention that has been dis­covered of a primer with that name. It is from a Boston "Almanack for the year of the Chriftian Empire, 1691." The Earliest Mention known of The New England Primer. From Newman's News from the Stars- Boston, 1690. This Harris had formerly been a printer in Lon­don where he brought out many tracts and broad­sides of a religious or political character. He was a man of considerable enterprise and ingenuity and wrote both in verse and prose much of what he printed. In 1681 a " Protestant Petition " he put forth got him into trouble with the government, which at that time was inclined toward Catholicism, and he was fined five hundred pounds and con­demned to stand in the pillory. This apparently ruined his business, and we hear no more of him till 1686, when he arrived in Boston and became the proprietor of a book and coffee shop. Soon he was publishing pamphlets and circulars, and among