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Nazareth Hall School for Boys account books
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Held at: Historical Society of Pennsylvania [Contact Us]1300 Locust Street, Philadelphia, PA, 19107
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Nazareth Hall School for Boys was founded by the Moravian Church in Nazareth, Pennsylvania in 1759. Moravians had been a presence in colonial Pennsylvania since the 1740s, establishing missions in frontier communities in an attempt to evangelize the native Lenape. In 1741, the Church bought a 5,000 acre tract of land in Nazareth from Anglican minister George Whitefield. The Manor House, which eventually became the center of the school campus, was built in 1755 and was originally intended as a home for Count Nicolaus Zinzendorf, a bishop of the Moravian Church. Business matters in Europe prevented the bishop from moving permanently to Nazareth so another use was sought for the building. In 1759, a pre-existing Moravian boy's school from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania was moved to Nazareth and took up residence at the house which was renamed Nazareth Hall. At first, the school only accepted the sons of Moravian clergy who were aged seven to twelve years, but they opened their enrollment to other boys in the community by 1762. The school was forced to close temoporarily due to financial difficulty in 1779.
In 1785, Nazareth Hall re-opened as a boarding school with a revised curriculum under the leadership of the Reverend Charles G. Reichel, who served as pricipal of the school for seventeen years. The school emphasized classical education as well as vocational training and religious instruction. In 1862, principal of the school Reverend Edward H. Reichel organized his pupils into a uniformed cadet company and introduced military drill as part of a routine of physical culture. Shortly thereafter, Nazareth Hall gained a reputation as a military academy which it mainted until its closure in 1929.
The Nazareth Hall School for Boys account books date from 1785 to 1870, with bulk dates of 1785 to 1840, and consists of assorted financial ledgers from the Nazareth Hall School for Boys in Nazareth, Pennnsylvania. The school was founded by the Moravian Church in 1759 and originally operated as a day school for the sons of Moravian clergy, becoming a boarding school in 1785. Eventually, enrollment expanded to include other boys from the surrounding community. Curriculm focused on a classical educatuion but also included vocational training and religious insctruction.
This collection documents certain aspects of the school's finances, especially the personal billing accounts for certain students and accounts with local craftsmen and laborers who provided services to the school. Also included are general account books for the school and two volumes of history lesson recitations. The collection is divided into two series: Series I. General accounts and Series II. Goods and services accounts. These series are arranged chronologically.
Purchased, 1948.
Subject
- Boarding schools--Pennsylvania--Finance
- Boarding schools--Pennsylvania--History
- Military academies
- Moravian Church--History--19th century
- Moravian Church--Pennsylvania--Education
- Moravian Church--Pennsylvania--History--18th century
Place
- Publisher
- Historical Society of Pennsylvania
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Megan Sheffer Evans.
- Finding Aid Date
- ; 2016
- Access Restrictions
-
The collection is open for research.
Collection Inventory
Series I. General accounts dates from 1785 to 1870, with bulk dates of 1785 to 1850, and consists of assorted financial ledgers for the Nazareth Hall School for Boys. These ledgers include cashbooks, daybooks, journals, and other ledgers. Entries in these account books are not very detailed or itemized. Also included in this series are two volumes containing a history lesson recitation and two volumes listing the names of students. The series is arranged chronologically.
Series II. Goods and services accounts dates from 1786 to 1853 and consists of personal account books, detailed student and teacher expense account books, and accounts with local craftsmen and laborers who provided serivces to Nazareth Hall. As a boarding school, parents and guardians of the students had the option to provide clothes, supplies, and pocketmoney themselves or to have the school provide these necessaries and send a quarterly bill. Many of the account books in this series record these quarterly accounts, organized by student and itemized by each expense. Students were supervised in their living quarters by female employees of the school, known as "inspectresses," who also kept accounts of student expenses and managed the school's house stores. Also strongly represented in this series are account books relating to goods and services provided to the school and students by local craftsmen and laborers. These accounts incude shoe repair, linen mending, laundry, and tutoring. There are also a number of account books in this series that seem to record the expenses of teachers who lived at the school. The series is arranged chronologically.