How one Buckingham farmer created a lasting legacy for decades of schoolchildren

My sisters and I attended public schools our entire childhood. For me in junior high, it was taking shop, learning to type and lettering in chorus. In high school it was high math, literature, physics, biology and Latin, plus setting a California state record in squat jumps. (That agility enabled me to outmaneuver angry protesters trying to grab my camera years ago in Falls.)

My sisters followed their own paths in public school. Academics and social skills set Joyce up as owner of a successful yachting company in Fort Lauderdale and Deb as a highly ranked employee of the Justice Department in Washington.

We three certainly are thankful for the advantages of our public school educations. But what if there were no public schools? It’s doubtful my parents could have afforded private school educations for each of us. Who knows how our lives might have changed.

For most parents in the early history of Bucks, the choice to be made was difficult. If you were struggling to pay the bills, there was no publicly financed school to attend. If you had the moolah however, fantastic private schools were available, either in Philadelphia or right at home.

Buckingham happened to be a gifted epicenter of private education. Take the Boarding School for Girls founded in 1830 in the village of Holicong. Two sisters supervised the school endowed by blue-blooded patrons from as far away as Baltimore. According to an ad in the Doylestown Democrat in 1832, the curriculum included orthography, reading, writing, grammar, composition, geography, history, arithmetic and “the elements of astronomy and natural philosophy.” Board and tuition cost $23 per quarter plus 75 cents for fuel and candles. (That would total about $785 per quarter today.)

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The nearby Buckingham Friends School House founded in 1794 in Lahaska also offered quality private education for predominately Quaker families of the township. The original building has been carefully preserved and enlarged for continuing classroom use. Also of note was a private school operating after 1790 within Tyro Hall, a former farmers’ cooperative on Route 413 at Route 202.

One township farmer from a difficult background in the early 1800s fretted over the lack of public schools. Amos Austin Hughes, crippled from a childhood illness, pondered the plight of kids unable to attend school for financial reasons. Two months before his death in his mid-40s, Hughes set out to make a difference.

On Oct. 21, 1811, he drew up a will, leaving $8,000 dollars and his 91-acre farm at the prime intersection of routes 413 (Durham Road) and 263 (York Road) to found the township’s first public school for poor children. The Hughesian Free School was to be built on the farm near Amos’ home and would provide board and clothing to students as needed. Buckingham residents were to serve as trustees and directors of the school.

The board met for the first time in May 1813. Unfortunately it took almost 30 years before trustees constructed a two-story school house mounted by a distinctive cupola — Buckingham’s first public school. There was one room and one teacher, Joseph Fell. As a state legislator from Bucks in 1837, he led the successful drive to create a public school system throughout the commonwealth. Since tax revenue paid Fell’s salary at Hughesian in 1841, the trust shifted its primary mission to funding college scholarships for disadvantaged Buckingham students. The school eventually added a second teacher and a grade system. As for Fell, he would become the first superintendent of schools in Bucks County in 1854.

In 1915, the school was reconstructed to the form it is today. Hughesian continued as a public elementary school into the 1950s when Buckingham became part of the Central Bucks School District. As noted by local historian Sara Maynard Clark in 1958, “A number of advanced subjects were taught in the Hughesian school that were not often found in public grade schools.”

The growth of Buckingham’s population soon required a larger elementary school to replace the Hughesian School. Buckingham Elementary School opened in 1955 on Route 413 on Amos’ farm. Rentals from the old school (now a child care facility) and other buildings on the farm property contribute annual revenue to the trust that continues to follow the dictates of its humble benefactor. A large portion of Amos’ former farm is preserved as a public wetlands park with several hiking trails accessed from a parking lot near the police station.

Last year, Hughesian trustees noted on their website the amazing impact of the man who started it all from his death bed: “Amos Hughes died Dec. 6, 1811. This man probably benefitted the lives of more Buckingham residents than any other single person. More than 18 decades after his death, the intent of his will perpetuates.”

Sources include “Crossroads Buckingham” by Sara Maynard Clark published in Bucks County Traveler magazine in March 1958; Place Names in Bucks County Pennsylvania by George MacReynolds published in 1942 by the Bucks County Historical Society, and “Hughesian Trust since 1841" found on the web at www.hughesiantrust.org.

Carl LaVO can be reached at carllavo0@gmail.com

This article originally appeared on Bucks County Courier Times: Buckingham farmer Amos Hughes created township's first public school