Enoch Flower

52 BULLETIN OF FRIENDS' HISTORICAL ASSOCIATION of our heartfelt sympathy, and we appeal to the membership of Friends' Historical Association to emulate his noble example in devotion to worthy causes. The address of the evening was delivered by Horace Mather Lippincott, who read a very interesting paper entitled Some Old Quaker Houses in the Phifadelphia Neighborhood. The paper was made the more interesting by a set of beautiful photographs of the exteriors and interiors of many of the houses discussed , taken by Philip G. Wallace and mounted for the occasion by Walter F. Price. After the presentation of the literary program, the meeting adjourned to enjoy a refreshing collation, which was served in the tearoom on the second floor. ENOCH FLOWER By George Wheeler The first Frame of Government for Pennsylvania signed in England by William Penn on the "five and twentieth day of the second month, vulgarly called April, in the year of our Lord one thousand six hundred and eighty-two," provided in the Editor's Note.—The writer of this article was for many years (190929 ) Associate Superintendent of Schools in Philadelphia, and in that capacity often heard of the first schoolmaster in Penn's colony. It was largely through fais efforts that the Schoolmen's Club of Philadelphia and the Pennsylvania Historical Commission were stirred to interest in the 250th anniversary of the death of Enoch Flower, and erected a tablet, a picture of which accompanies this article, at 234 South Front Street, Philadelphia, the site of Enoch Flower's school. (See Pennsylvania School Journal, 82:194, for Jan., 1934; 82:290, for Feb., 1934.) By research among the original records of early colonial times he ascertained that Enoch Flower owned the twelfth lot south from Walnut Street, on Front ("which later, following various consolidations, became the ninth), and by adding the frontages of the eight lots between Flower's and the corner (which measured 102, 20, 20, 20, 42, 20, 30, and 20 feet respectively), and measuring off the sum along Front Street, he ascertained which modern building is erected on the ancient site of Flower's house, and hence where the tablet should be placed. Enoch Flower has been only very briefly referred to by those who have hitherto written of Pennsylvania or its school system. The general histories mention him, if at all, as the first schoolmaster, and say no more. Thus Isaac Sharpless, in R. M. Jones's Quakers in the American ENOCH FLOWER53 Twelfth Section "That the Governor and Provincial Council shall erect and order all publick schools." The same provision Colonies, says only (page 527) : "Within a year after Penn's landing, Enoch Flower was commissioned to open a ,school for elementary work" ; and the index to Isaac Sharpless's A Quaker Experiment in Government has only one reference to Enoch Flower, the passage referred to conveying approximately the same information as that quoted above. Thomas's History of the Friends in America does not mention Enoch Flower at all. M. D. Learned, in his Life of Francis Daniel Pastorius, prints in full the resolution of the Provincial Council of 1683 appointing Enoch Flower, and refers briefly to his "Pay School." (Pastorius was engaged in 1697 to teach in a monthly-meeting school, in which the instruction should be free, though the curriculum was approximately that of Flower's earlier school.) The writers on education are no better. Thomas Woody, in Early Quaker Education in Pennsylvania (pages 42, 43, 45), refers in a few words only to Enoch :Flower, adding a guess (which the present article shows to ¡have been erroneous) that he remained at his post as teacher for several years. J. Mulhern, in A History of Secondary Education in Pennsylvania (pages 28, 99, 128), gives only the familiar fact. J. P. Wickersham's History of Education in Pennsylvania contributes the information (page 41) that Enoch Flower "is said to have come from Corsham, Wiltshire, England," and that his school was in his dwelling, made of pine and cedar planks ; but he gives no reference to sources. This expression "pine and cedar planks" occurs in various of the secondary accounts of Flower. Biographical and encyclopedic works also fail us...