Enoch Flower is said to have come from Corsharn, Wiltshire, England. He opened his school, the first English school in the Province, in Oct., 1683, in a dwelling built of pine and cedar planks. It is understood that the three lower counties (which was Delaware) was included in the Province. A “public Grammar school” was established in 1689, the design of which was set forth in the following preamble to the charter:

“Whereas the prosperity and welfare of any people depend, in great measure, upon the good education of youth, and their early introduction in the principles of true religion and virtue, and qualilying them to serve their country and themselves by educating them in reading, writing and learning of languages, and useful at and sciences suitable to their sex, age and degree, which cannot be effected in any manner so well as by erecting public schools far the purposes aforesaid, etc.”

In 1702 Delaware was separated from Pennsylvania.

Rev. Geo. Ross, an Episcopalian missionary to Delaware, thus described the condition of education in 1727 in Sussex Co.:

“There are some private schools in my reputed district which are put, very often, into the hands of those who are brought into the country and sold for servants. Some School Masters are hired by the year, by a knot of families who, in their turns entertain him monthly & the poor man lives in their houses like one that begged an alms, more than like a person in credit and authority. When a ship arrives in the River it is a common expression with those who stand in need of an instructor for their children, ‘Let us go and buy a school Master.’

“The truth is, the office and character of such a person is generally very mean and contemptible here, & it cannot be other ways ‘til the public takes the Education, of Children into their mature consideration.”

Of the record of Thomas Crawford, another missionary, in 1704, we note:

“He entered upon his Ministry with good success, and gained from Persons of Repute, the Character of an ingenious and acceptable Man. The People at his first coming among them were very ignorant; insomuch that he informs, not one man in the country understood how the common Prayer Book was to be read; and he was forced to instruct them privately at home, in the method of

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