Article 12: Becoming Illuminated: New York City's Public School Society and Its Religious Discontents, 1805-1840

There are six oversized boxes in the New York Historical Society that contain the remains of the Public School Society (PSS), New York City’s first experiment with publicly-funded education. They are filled with the detritus of the Society’s nearly fifty years: recommendations for prospective teachers from their clergymen, student certificates of completion, a few letters, and hundreds of bundled receipts for salaries, books, writing tablets, and furniture. Many of these bundles are still sealed with delicate wax dollops or carefully tied with string. In the first box, on top of receipts and vouchers, lies a folder of a few loose items: a letter from a member of the Board of Trustees, a tabulation of school supplies purchased in 1828 (three dozen pen-knives, thirty-four-and-a-third dozen “juvenile books,” eight dozen “writing books,” etc.) and, on top, a note from “A. P. Flagler, Box Maker”. It reads: