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| Sister and baby play with a horn book in their nursery. Horn books were some of the earliest educational artifacts in the American colonies. The article below is from 1897 and it shares with our readers just how 'rare' it was for horn books to survive Colonial childhood use. |
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| English made horn books. |
Funk and Wagnalls's Standard Dictionary (London and Toronto: Funk and Wagnalls Co.) gives "Horn-Book, a child's primer, as formerly made, consisting of a thin board of oak and a slip of paper with the nine digits, the alphabet and Lord's Prayer printed on it, covered with a thin layer of transparent horn and framed; hence any primer or handbook; also rudimentary knowledge." In Mackellar's American Printer is a cut of a horn-book borrowed from Chambers's Book of Days. Underneath is printed, "Horn-Book of the Seventeenth Century," but not another word in all his three hundred and eighty odd pages has Mr. Mackellar to say about it. We find in Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, vol. V., fifth series (Boston : published by the Society, 1878), on p. 344 an entry (under date 27th April 1691) from the Diary of Samuel Sewall (1674-1729, vol. i. 1674-1700): "This afternoon had Joseph to school to Capt. Townsend's Mother's, his cousin Jane accompanying him, carried his Horn-book." Joseph was Sewall's eighth child (out of fourteen which his wife bore him), and was born 15th August 1688. His cousin Jane Tappan or Toppan was born 28th September 1674.
One would think that Benjamin Franklin must certainly have printed horn-books, but in the ten-volume edition of his works by Sparks they are not even mentioned. In J. R. Lowell's Biglow Papers (Works, 1879, p. 179) we find, "Thrift was the first lesson in their horn-book and in an article on "Poetry in America," in Scribner's Monthly for August 1881, is: "The poor books of one generation are often the horn-books for the people, the promise and cause of better work in the next."
In American literature mention of the horn-book is not uncommon, and instances need hardly be multiplied. But I will add a passage from Mrs. Alice Morse Earle's Customs and Fashions of Old New England (David Nutt, I 893): -
"Their horn-books, those framed and behandled sheets of semi-transparent horn, which were worn hanging at the side and were studied as late certainly as the year 1715 by children of the Pilgrims, also managed to instill with the alphabet some religious words or principles. Usually the Lord's Prayer formed part of the printed text. Though horn-books are referred to in the letters of Wait Still Winthrop, and appear on stationers' and booksellers' lists at the beginning of the eighteenth century, I do not know of the preservation of a single specimen to our own day. I often fancy I should have enjoyed living in the good old times, but I am glad I never was a child in colonial New England -- to have been baptized in ice water, fed on brown bread and warm beer, to have had to learn the Assembly's Catechism and 'explain all the Questions with conferring Texts,' to have been constantly threatened with fear of death and terror of God, to have been forced to commit Wigglesworth's 'Day of Doom' to memory, and after all to have been whipped with a tattling stick."
As to what a tattling stick is, Mrs. Earle confesses ignorance, but children, then as now, were given to tattling, or idle talk, and the meaning seems sufficiently evident.
A special inquiry addressed to Mrs. Earle, in which I pointed out that a careful search would probably lead to the discovery of horn-books in America, bore fruit. But Mrs. Earle's letter is so full of interest that it may well be printed in full.
242 Henry St., Brooklyn, N.Y.,
17th June 1894.
Dear Sir,
I have received from you a letter dated February 13, with enclosures and newspaper, all relating to horn-books. I wrote in answer a short note saying I would make every effort to discover a horn-book in America for you. This note you cannot have received, for in a letter to Messrs. Scribner's you so state. I think in my haste I must have misdirected it. I now enclose to you a print of a horn-book which I have unearthed. And I have had my account of it type-written, as there are stupid or perverse editors who persist that they cannot decipher my handwriting. This of course I indignantly resent, believing that my writing is as clear as print. But I have just had a hard blow to my pride in a letter from the editor of the Journal of American Folk Lore. He wrote to me requesting a paper. I answered him that I had none suitable for his magazine except one on Lord's Day Tokens. He wrote back that he could not imagine how a paper on Long Stockings could relate to Folk Lore, but was willing to believe that I would make it all right, and to please send it. Thus did he interpret my writing. And by the way, these same Communion tokens would form a very interesting subject for your pen and press. I had already planned a magazine article on Horn-books and Primers. I hope the delay in answering you will not make my information too late to be of service to you. -- I am, very sincerely yours,
I have received from you a letter dated February 13, with enclosures and newspaper, all relating to horn-books. I wrote in answer a short note saying I would make every effort to discover a horn-book in America for you. This note you cannot have received, for in a letter to Messrs. Scribner's you so state. I think in my haste I must have misdirected it. I now enclose to you a print of a horn-book which I have unearthed. And I have had my account of it type-written, as there are stupid or perverse editors who persist that they cannot decipher my handwriting. This of course I indignantly resent, believing that my writing is as clear as print. But I have just had a hard blow to my pride in a letter from the editor of the Journal of American Folk Lore. He wrote to me requesting a paper. I answered him that I had none suitable for his magazine except one on Lord's Day Tokens. He wrote back that he could not imagine how a paper on Long Stockings could relate to Folk Lore, but was willing to believe that I would make it all right, and to please send it. Thus did he interpret my writing. And by the way, these same Communion tokens would form a very interesting subject for your pen and press. I had already planned a magazine article on Horn-books and Primers. I hope the delay in answering you will not make my information too late to be of service to you. -- I am, very sincerely yours,
Alice Morse Earle.
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| Horn book salvaged from a New England Farm House. |
"In my book entitled Customs and Fashions in Old New England I state that I do not know of the preservation in America of a horn-book until our own day. The publication of that statement has brought to me a large amount of correspondence on the subject of horn-books, which I have supplemented by careful inquiries of my own in many directions. There certainly is not a single horn-book in any of our large public libraries or historical collections in America, nor in any of our large private libraries or collections of antiques and curios; but I have found one horn-book‚-- salvage from a New England farmhouse‚-- and I take pleasure in sending to you its counterfeit presentment. It is rather dilapidated, both horn and paper being torn. On the back is a picture of Charles II., which might reasonably be said to afford a probable date of manufacture. The absolute annihilation of horn-books in America is most surprising. They were certainly in constant use in early colonial days. I find in the Winthrop letters, as late as 1716, the Winthrops of Boston town sending gifts of horn-books to their country nephews and nieces in outlying settlements. In 1708, in the account book of the Old South Church of Boston, one item of expense was £1: l0s. for 'Hornes for Catechizing.' In old stationers' lists I see gilt horn-books and plain horn-books frequently advertised. As late as December 4, 1760, in the Pennsylvania Gazette with Bibles and primers appear 'gilt horns and plain horns - which were certainly horn-books. This sole and lonely little horn-book survivor is now owned by Mrs. Elizabeth Robinson Minturn.
She was a Robinson of old Narragansett stock, and her ancestors owned, and used this horn-book. The Narragansett planters were among our most opulent colonists, and were the only Church of England settlers in New England. Many curious and interesting relics are now owned by
their descendants. Each summer I go to Homogansett Farm, the country home of my husband's ancestors, and still owned in the family. It has about a mile and a half of water-front on Narragansett Bay, and is a most romantic and historic spot. I shall make careful search throughout the
summer, and may find some stranded wreck to add to your list."
The American horn-book (cut 52) discovered by Mrs. Earle accords with others pictured in these pages and was probably imported from the mother country. Whether horn-books were made in America there is at present no evidence to determine. Now that one has turned up, which wherever made, has lived its life in America, others will probably be found. The quest is worth pursuing, and the collector whom luck favors will be envied by his fellows. by Andrew White Tuer - from History of the horn-book, 1897
This free article with illustrations may be printed and used in a
classroom environment. It is reproduced here for extended reading and
research into the life stories of American Girls, Felicity Merriman and Elizabeth Cole. Students
may also use the material above in the development of lapbooks/notebooks
for home school, private school or public school assignments.
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