Manuscripts

$100

The Clements Library has strong holdings relating to education in early America. This cypher book kept by a young Samuel Burrier in 1821 and 1822 adds to our examples of student work, helping researchers better understand how children were taught in the nineteenth century… and how they were distracted. Burrier included quite a few calligraphic flourishes in his headings of the various mathematics principles he was studying, in the form of elaborate chickens. Feathers, beaks, and claws emerge from the ‘A’ in Addition, the ‘M’ in Multiplication, or the ‘R’ in Reduction, and also provide researchers with new ways to see young students sitting at their desks trying to focus and where their minds might wander to.