The Nathan Hale Schoolhouse, a jewel in New London's tiara of Revolutionary relevance, has now been moved to a fitting and substantial foundation put in place by New London's downtown Parade reconstruction. Honored to be employed as a part-time guide at the schoolhouse, I am inspired to call attention to parts of the Nathan Hale story that seem lacking in emphasis, and a conjecture that might give you goose bumps.
On the second floor of the schoolhouse are deep impressions reasonably presumed to have been left by the hard-heeled shoes of a teacher.
Although it would seem insupportable to claim these indentations are, in fact, Hale's, standing in them gives a sense of how seriously stationed a teacher he probably was. I call it our "goose-bump experience."
He pioneered educational instruction for females here, convincing New London's elite that, as he had argued as a Yale graduate during his commencement debate the previous year, their daughters were as "deserving" of education as their sons.
The young ladies gathered at the schoolhouse from 5-7 a.m. to learn, before the daily bell for the boys rang, thereby establishing with their teacher and their parents a revolutionary innovation that New London can rightly claim to have pioneered.
Hale was paid six shillings each for the girls in his class, demonstrating that New London's then-most powerful and prestigious were not unmindful of the American experience as a new vision for a New World, and were willing to invest in it.
When the rider from Lexington, Mass., arrived at Miner's Tavern on Bank Street to spread the call to arms for "the shot heard 'round the world," Hale and the men of New London were there to raise their voices and pledge allegiance to a daring and dangerous uprising.
Months later, as a captain of the Continental Army in Boston, Hale would give his officer's salary to the men under his command, to resist desertion with his support for their financial ability to remain at their posts for the Siege of Boston.
A friend to the end
New London's Sgt. Stephen Hempstead, of the Hempstead House at Hempstead and Jay streets, a subordinate as well as a close friend of Hale's, was there when Hale boarded a sloop in Norwalk to steal into Long Island as a Continental Army spy disguised as a teacher looking for work. A short time later, Hale was hanged, on orders from the British Gen. William Howe, after being discovered by the ruthless Provost William Cunningham.
As a farm boy in Coventry, documentation contemporary to his lifetime informs us, he exhibited extraordinary athleticism by standing in a 63-gallon colonial "hogshead" barrel and jumping into an adjacent hogshead, a feat that would mimic today's free-jump marvels in the National Basketball Association.
The statue of Hale in the park at Broad and Williams streets is based on written documentation regarding his above-average stature and natural good looks. It is a copy of the original statue mounted at our Wall Street bastion of commerce and success. A drawing or painting of Hale made during his lifetime for which he posed or was remembered has never been found.
Hale's relatives founded The Wall Street Journal. He never actually set foot in the Coventry farmhouse today known as his "homestead." It was constructed after he left home for Yale and the Revolutionary War.
The 1773 schoolhouse, originally built where the Crocker House now stands, is open free of charge from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m., Wednesdays through Sundays. It offers the experience of standing under the very roof joists that sheltered Hale and his students as they disdained sexual discrimination in education and possibly discussed the impending uprising that would soon be "electrifying" their lives, as kiting scientist Benjamin Franklin might have said.
A New London guy
As well as remembering his hanging in New York as a Continental Army spy, we might also remember him hanging around New London, strutting up and down State, Bank, Union and Green streets as an admired out-of-towner who, as his diary entries and letters reveal, was excited, moved and inspired by New London's connection with the epicenters of cosmopolitan urbanity and revolutionary fervor.
My fellow schoolhouse guides Phillip Hubbard and Steve Shaw tip our hats to those who are not deterred by the seeming obstacle course of under way construction near the schoolhouse.
Scheduled to close for the winter at the end of October, the schoolhouse is worth your time and whatever donation its experience might inspire.
Please stop by. This schoolhouse speaks for itself and offers an opportunity to teach with a lesson plan that is laid out for consideration, with its interpretation being yours, and yours alone.
George "Bud" Bray has been a reporter for several Connecticut newspapers, including The Day. He lives in New London.
http://www.theday.com/re.aspx?re=5be06753-d826-48b8-985b-d7bb1852b8de