Private School in Rhode Island

School Days

My maternal great grandfather, Charles Edward Stewart (1859-1937) was fairly easy to trace since my mother talked about him as he and his wife, Adah were her favorite grandparents. The reason for this popularity? He slipped her money from time to time. 

Charlie's obituary from my family Bible states he went to Suffield Academy in Suffield, CT. Since it exists today, that was pretty easy to find and "accept" but not to prove. One day, while looking for a different person in my chart, I discovered a biography for my Stewart family in  a volume known as Hurd's History [Hurd, D. Hamilton.  "History of New London Connecticut with Biographical Sketches of many of  its Pioneers and Prominent Men." J. W Lewis & Co. 1882. p. 948 (Archive.org)] Since my great grandfather is the topic of the biography sketch and he was 23 at publication, I feel comfortable that he gave the information, I was very excited.

It lists his education as "attended a private school in East Greenwich, R.I. and Suffield, Conn.", I knew to keep looking for books in which these two schools were located.

This week, while researching John Douglass Gallup, I discovered a JD Gallup in a catalogue of the "Connecticut literary institution at Suffield" for 1850, I finally have the correct name of that school and a history of the school at the time.  Noting that I moved on to finish my goal for the day. 

With that finished, I decided to look for something about the private schools in Rhode Island in the East Greenwich area and I found the same type of catalogue for Greenwich Academy that you can see in the screenshot dated 1877-1878. His name is in it! I can't be positive but he probably went to Rhode Island first, then back to Connecticut.

Further reading tells me, that at the time period, both schools were considered high schools. Knowing this for sure now, then my mother was the first in our family to have a college education.

The kicker is that East Greenwich is very close to where I grew up and is one place that the Quaker ancestors of Charles wife, Adah, lived. 

With that in progress I can resume what I was doing....