little was attempted. After a few years the church expunged its votes of excommunication and nearly twenty years after the affair the legislature granted nearly six hundred pounds to the families of some of the victims.

While it seems as if the Rev. Mr. Parris, Deacon Thomas Putnam, and one or two others must have played the part of conspirators along with the accusing girls, it is certain that others were deluded, going down to their graves fully persuaded of the truth of the charges. Still others, like Judge Sewall, made public confession of their error and humbly craved the pardon of both God and man. Still they must have been willing victims, for it was shown time and time again in the trials that the girls but played the part they pretended was so real. They were seen to bite their arms and then to show the marks as evidence of spectral teeth; to hold pins in the hand and claim that the blood which flowed was from wizard wounds. One of the girls was told that she lied when she accused a certain person. She admitted the charge and said, "you know we must have some fun.” The clergy as a rule were more lukewarm in the prosecution than were the members of the legal profession. To be sure they were largely responsible for its start, but later only Parris, Noyes, and Cotton Mather were active while many were among the first to bring proceedings to a close.

One can hardly help feeling that here, if ever, retributive justice followed those guilty of a crime. We have already mentioned the end of Mr. Noyes. The Rev. Deodat Lawson was an active agent in arousing the people. His death is shrouded in mystery, but in a book of 1727 he is referred to as "the unhappy Mr. Deodat Lawson.” The sheriff and the marshal both died while still young men; Thomas Putnam and his wife lived only to the ages of 47 and 38; while “Ann Putnam jr." was for many years an invalid. In 1706 she made a confession which while it tacitly admitted the fraudulent nature of the whole proceeding threw the whole responsibility on the devil. Of the others of the accusing circle but little is known. In an act of the legis lature of 1710 is this reference: "Some of the principal accusers and witnesses in those dark and severe prosecutions have since discovered themselves to be persons of profligate and vicious conversation.” One can imagine them descending to any crime in the attempt to forget that dark blot of 1692.

There was no peace for Mr. Parris. As soon as there was the slightest calm in the witchcraft trials the old church quarrel was renewed with far more bitterness than before. His enemies fought at great odds for then church and state were united, but in 1697 he was driven out. He succeeded in getting other churches but always in the smallest and weakest parishes. The remembrance of the part he played followed him everywhere and in his last years he was reduced to absolute want.

Cotton Mather must be mentioned here, for he played a very important though not a conspicuous part in the whole affair. He tells us that he was in Salem but once during the trials, but in one of his letters he explicitly says that he was one of the chief instigators and prosecutors of the delusion, though he endeavored to keep out of sight. A year later he tried to get up another witchcraft craze in Boston, and published a history and defense of the Salem troubles.

Mather was a very ambitious man and in 1692 he was at the zenith of his life, standing an easy first among all the clergy of New England. From that time his life was filled with disappointments. His pre-eminence was gone. The offices he wanted so badly and worked for so assiduously eluded him, while his later years were embittered by rebuffs and open enmity from those around him. His diary of 1724 has been preserved. In it he pours out his inmost soul, and we can see in its pages how keenly he felt the many slights and indignities that had been heaped upon him. He tells us in the most pathetic language the many things he had tried to do for his fellow man, and with what ingratitude he had been rewarded. People "call their negroes by the name of COTTON MATHER, so that they may, with some shadow of truth, assert crimes as committed by one of that name, which the hearers take to be me. * * * Where is the man at whom the female sex have spit more of their vemon at? I have cause to question whether there are twice ten in the town but what have, at some time or other, spoken basely of me. There is no man whom the country so loads with disrespect and calumnies and manifold expressions of aversion

66

find some cordial friends, but how few.

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Indeed I My company is as

little sought for, and there is as little resort to it, as any minister that I am acquainted with.

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*

This was January 1. His cup was not yet full.

Above all things

he desired the presidency of Harvard College. In May of that year the president, his father, died, and Cotton's diary tells us he as much as begged for the position. In November the corporation elected another man. Even this was not enough; their first choice declined the honor, and six months later the trustees called the Rev. Benjamin Wadsworth to the position. As both of these gentlemen were pastors in Boston where Mather himself preached, he must have felt keenly the double slight thus heaped upon him. To-day Cotton Mather is but little more than a name, and people know no more of the author of over three hundred books than they do of that sad affair for which he was so largely responsible.

HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN OMAHA.

BY MRS. M. B. NEWTON.

[Read before a meeting of the Society, January 14, 1890.]

There is very little doubt that the first school in the city of Omaha was held in the basement of the old brick church erected by the Congregational Society, in the winter of 1855 and 1856. The church stood on the lot which is now in the rear of the Y. M. C. A. building. A Mrs. Smith came from New York state, rented the northeast basement room, and there taught a little private school. Very soon after a Mrs. Purple, then a young lady, had a private school in the state house building, on Ninth and Farnam. Almost from the first there were more children in the city than could be accommodated in the schools. Many of the early settlers were people of education and culture and they organized classes among themselves for mutual improvement in different studies. One person after another would instruct. People who were able sent their children to St. Louis and other cities, but this involved an expensive and tedious trip. Facilities. for travel in those days were limited and therefore this was not a popular method.

Others employed teachers in their homes. The children of those days however speak well in their later development for the character of the instruction received. There still remained a large class of children who demanded the American right of education. Omaha was incorporated in 1857, was then divided into three wards, and a school director from each ward was elected, A. D. Jones, G. C. Monell, and Mr. Kellom, being first to fill the office.

Mr. Monell had known Howard E. Kennedy in the East and his services as superintendent of education were engaged by these three directors. Mr. Kennedy arrived in 1858 and at once began his work. He found plenty to do. Not a building or a book could the city claim. Mr. Kennedy rented rooms in the state house and Nov. 1, 1859, after attending personally to every arrangement, opened three

schools.

He, himself, taught in the state house assisted by Mrs. Nye. A little one story, one room frame building on Thirteenth street near Douglas, was in charge of Mrs. Rust, and a similar school on Cuming street near the old Military Bridge was taught by Mrs. Torry. For a year these teachers did most excellent work. The schools were crowded with pupils of all ages and attainments. Efforts to follow a system of grading, which Mr. Kennedy planned, were made, but in schools like these, this is almost impossible. The year of 1860 was an unlucky one for Omaha schools.

The financial troubles of the approaching war affected Omaha greatly. Public school funds were exhausted. Classes formed at intervals by people, whose occupations afforded sufficient leisure, were again resorted to. Mr. Kennedy left for the east, expecting to return soon and resume his work, but changed his plans later, and did not return for several years.

In 1860, Samuel D. Beals, a gentleman whose reputation was not unknown in Omaha, organized a private school, which he conducted for nine years. It was extensively advertised as the Omaha High School, and is mentioned by that name in the report of W. E. Harvey, Territorial Commissioner, in 1860. This report gives the number of pupils in all the schools as 267, or a fraction over 50 per cent. of the school population.

From 1860 to 1863, there were no public schools, although a few efforts were made to establish them. In 1862, a Mr. McCarthy, school director from the 1st ward, made application to the city council for permission to erect a school building on Jefferson Square, and the permission was granted. Raising the funds for that building, however, was not easy, and sufficient money could not be obtained till 1863. Then the first school building ever owned by the city was erected on the southwest corner of Jefferson Square. It was a frame building of medium size containing at first only one school was erected under the personal supervision of B. E. B. Kennedy, and was opened in September, 1863. It was crowded to excess from the first day. The unhappy teacher first engaged was utterly unable to control the crowd, and was dismissed at the end of the month. Another gentleman, whose methods of discipline appear to have been original at least, was employed. He fashioned a

This