The Boston Gentlemen's Mob: Maria Chapman and the Abolition Riot of 1835 by Josh S. Cutler

Author:Josh S. Cutler
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing Inc.
Published: 2021-01-15T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

LESSONS AND REUNIONS

What a collection of raving fanatics and dangerous incendiaries.

With mob activity subsiding, Susan Paul settled back into her duties as a seamstress, homemaker, and schoolteacher. Until recently, she likely taught classes on the ground floor of the African Meeting House, almost directly underneath the pulpit where her late father once preached. She was following in the footsteps of her mother, who began teaching primary school from the Paul family home on George Street a decade earlier.240

In March, the city opened its first stand-alone public school for Black children a few dozen steps from the church. The new African schoolhouse was formally dedicated in honor of Abiel Smith, a white businessman who bequeathed funds to the city for Black education. The Smith School House, as it was known, spanned three floors and could accommodate as many as two hundred students. An upper-floor grammar school taught subjects like spelling, writing, geography, arithmetic and bookkeeping, while the lower level served as a primary school for younger children and was where Paul probably taught, in addition to her ongoing Sunday school classes.241

With its handsome façade, gabled roof and brownstone windowsills, the new school was a marked improvement over the decrepit, confined and poorly ventilated space under the church. The unhealthy conditions there had contributed to poor student attendance, according to a Boston school committee report two years earlier, which labeled the situation “insidious and unjust.”

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