Interesting Memories

OLD SCHOOL DAYS IN WILMINGTON.

Mr. Stephen Jewett, a most amiable and estimable gentle-
man, cabinet-maker by trade, settled in Smithville about the
year 1839, where he was employed in the United States Gov-
ernment service and also as postmaster of that village. While
residing there he married Miss Mary Gracie, a Scotch lady of
great accomplishments, intimately related to the president of
the Bank of Cape Fear, Dr. John Hill. Mr. and Mrs. Jewett
subsequently opened a school at Smithville which they con-
ducted jointly, she having been previously engaged in the pro-
fession of teaching in Wilmington. Mrs. Jewett died while on
her way to Moore County with her husband.

Some years later Mr. Jewett was married to Miss Lucy Brad-
ley, sister of the late Mr. Richard Bradley. He then made his
home here, and became cashier of the Bank of Wilmington, in
which capacity he served, honored and respected by the com-

munity, until his death during the yellow fever epidemic in
1862.

Mr. George W. Jewett, a professional school-teacher of supe-
rior attainments, came to Wilmington from Kent Hill, Maine,
at the suggestion of his brother Stephen, about the year 1852,
and opened the Wilmington Male and Female Seminary in a
small frame house on the west side of Third Street, near Ann
Street, and later in the old Society Hall in the rear of St.
James’s Church. He was assisted in the female department by
his accomplished wife and two other Northern ladies, Miss Stet-
son and Miss Whipple. A large majority of Mr. Jewett’s boys
at that time were sons of the best people of our community, with
a reasonable knowledge of the rules of propriety, notwithstand-
ing which his school discipline was marked, under the influence
of passion, by frequent acts of unnecessary severity, and, at
times, by positive cruelty; which, instead of breaking down his
institution, increased the patronage, our fathers in those days
evidently regarding such physical treatment as both wholesome
and necessary. ‘There were a few very disorderly boys, how-

ever, who deserved a whipping as regularly as they got it. Who,

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Interesting Memories 239

among the survivors of the incorrigibles, can forget the stern
command: “Walk into the recitation room, sir,” over which
apartment might have been written, “He who enters here leaves
hope behind” ; because the unhappy culprit to whom this com-
mand was addressed at once gave himself up for lost, reminding
us of Marryat’s boy, Walter Puddock, who, having been hauled
up by his preceptor, O’Gallagher, without remonstrance imme-
diately began to prepare for punishment by the reduction of
wearing apparel.

Oft repeated flagellations, according to the testimony of the
old-time Eton boys, render the subject callous, and some of these
hopeless cases of Mr. Jewett’s became so hardened by this proc-
ess that they ceased to make an outcry, and, in the language of
the prize ring, came up smiling after the first round, while the
preceptor had evidently the worst of it.

Two habitual offenders, Henry McKoy and William Fergus,
however, found it necessary to protect themselves from the neck
downwards with padding, which sometimes shifted during the
inevitable struggle, causing yells of entreaty which could be
heard at a great distance.

Perhaps the most laughable scene in our four years’ prepara-
tion for college was the startling appearance one morning of one
of these boys changed from his attenuated habit of a lean and
hungry Cassius to a wonderful state of exaggerated obesity,
which Mr. Jewett promptly discovered and proceeded to unroll
and reduce before punishment, with the anxious inquiry,
“Where on earth did you get all this flannel ?”

Many who were Mr. Jewett’s pupils will recall the compul-
sory singing lessons and the noisy demonstrations when the ex-
hilarating and senseless fugues of “Three Blind Mice” and
“Scotland’s Burning” were rendered in conclusion.

__ Two or three years later the school was removed to the prem-
1ses on the east corner of Third and Ann Streets and continued
until the commencement of the war, when Mr. Jewett went to
Statesville, where he taught for a while. He returned to Wil-
mington about the close of the war and resumed teaching in the
house occupied by the late Captain Divine, and subsequently
on the corner of Second and Chestnut Streets, but left about the
year 1881 for his former home in Maine, where he died of heart
disease. The summons came suddenly, while he was sitting

dressed in his chair. He simply straightened out his arms and
ceased to breathe.