Back To School

Back to school is a busy and exciting time for parents and teachers alike. Students grieve the end of summer, but look forward to a new challenge for the coming school year. When thinking about the excitement, it is often forgotten how going to school looked for our ancestors. Was there a summer reading list? Did students have the same fears and qualities that students have today? This collection gives an insight on how it felt to be a student or a teacher as early as the nineteenth century going into the twentieth century.

The New Bern Academy was the first school in North Carolina to be established in 1766. There are no known records to show any educational establishments before as well as very little account of what New Bern Academy offered in the eighteenth century. By the nineteenth century, the New Bern Academy wasn't the only school running in North Carolina creating a need to expand their faculty and branch out their instruction by December 1823. This put forth the idea of "public education" to become more of a reality. There were no more placement tests or collections of tuition. This idea created an avenue for growth in the number of students, but a decline in the advancement of education. Teachers held the task of transforming teaching to reach a broader dynamic of students of all ages, both boys and girls. (1)

As for an outside point of view apart from New Bern Academy in the nineteenth century, New Bern and the surrounding towns in Craven County began to accelerate and expand their education even further, creating yearly budgets and forming lists of books and documents for the upcoming school year. Within the collection are accounts of expenditures and faculty rules set in place to create a smoother transition into expansion. (3) The economic recession and competition for schooling in the early to mid-nineteenth century and the economic decline after the Civil War show the importance of learning and the pertinence of continuing education throughout every societal change. Even with all of the change, students still showed up to school to learn, even if that meant leaving school early on to work. These photographs and documents are organized and displayed to show their importance not only for today, but for the years before. (2) This collection is "living" proof of the advancement of education in New Bern and Craven County, as well as how students perhaps are the same even during an earlier period.

1) Gadski, Mary Ellen. 1986. The History of the New Bern Academy. New Bern Tryon Palace Commission. 

2) Waston, Allan D. 1987. A History of New Bern and Craven County. New Bern Tryon Palace Commission. 

3) Lane, John T. and Craven County. Board of Education, “Common Schools in Craven County (1847),” Craven County Digital History, accessed July 24, 2025, https://kellenberger.mycprl.org/digital/items/show/746.