Harris, Benjamin; Watts, Isaac; Rogers, John; Humphrey, Heman; et al. The New England Primer : containing the Assembly's Catechism; The Account of the Burning of John Rogers; A Dialogue between Christ, a Youth, and the Devil; and various other useful and instructive matter. Adorned with Cuts; with A Historical Introduction, by Rev. H. Humphrey, D. D., President of Amherst College. Worcester: S. A. Howland, ca. 1845. [11982]
Printed paper wrapper, small nick top corner of the wrapper, 4 1/2 x 3 inches, frontis engraving of Isaac Watts, many text illustrations including the burning of John Rogers, 64 pages. Dark foxing. Illustration of a church on the front cover. Good. Pamphlet.
Date taken from a faint pencil inscription on the ffep (1849) of a duplicate copy to this one.
"The books from which the colonial children in America learned to spell were very different from spellers of today. In fact, when the earliest American schools were opened in Massachusetts and Connecticut, there were no regular spelling books. Apparently, whatever words the children learned to spell in school were from the New England Primer...Benjamin Harris, an English printer, who had experience dealing with primers in England, came early to America...Being an ardent non-conformist in religion he had printed a number of tracts which were offensive to the English government; consequently, he was arrested, tried, and put in a pillory, and required to serve to years in jail. Later he came to Boston [in 1686]...Soon thereafter he prepared The New England Primer, modelled after some of the British primers...The New England Primer certainly was the most widely used textbook in the colonial period, and even had a considerable usage after 1800...[After the alphabet] the content was nearly all religious in nature, such as questions on Bible facts, Bible verses alphabetically arranged, several prayers, The Creed, Bible name, and the Shorter Catechism of 107 questions and answers. Some of the older editions also contained 'Spiritual Milk for American Babes,' by John Cotton. Many also included a wood cut of the burning of 'John Roger, minister of the gospel in London, (who) was the firty martyr in Queen Mary's reign." - Nietz, Old Textbooks (1961), pp. 10, 47, 50, 51.
"The Bible, the New England Primer, and an almanac constituted the library of many colonial homes." - ibid, p. 248.
Heman Humphrey, D.D. (1779-1861), born at West Simbury, CT; died at Pittsfield, MA. He graduated from Yale College, in 1805; was pastor of the Congregational Church in Fairfield from 1807 to 1817; and in Pittsfield, MA, from 1817 to 1823. In 1823 Humphrey became the second president of Amherst College, serving the college for 22 years in that capacity. He was a major influence for temperance reform, and a supporter of revivals; he was the author of the influential Revival Sketches and Manual.
