Page "Amos Bronson Alcott" Paragraph 7

By the summer of 1823, Alcott returned to Connecticut in debt to his father, who bailed him out after his last two unsuccessful sales trips.

He took a job as a schoolteacher in Cheshire with the help of his Uncle Tillotson.

He quickly set about reforming the school.

He added backs to the benches on which students sat, improved lighting and heating, de-emphasized rote learning, and provided individual slates to each student — paid for by himself.

Alcott had been influenced by educational philosophy of the Swiss pedagogue Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi and even renamed his school " The Cheshire Pestalozzi School ". His style attracted the attention of Samuel Joseph May, who introduced Alcott to his sister Abby May.

She called him, " an intelligent, philosophic, modest man " and found his views on education " very attractive ". Locals in Cheshire were less supportive and became suspicious of his methods.

Many students left and were enrolled in the local common school or a recently re-opened private school for boys.

On November 6, 1827, Alcott started teaching in Bristol, Connecticut, still using the same methods he used in Cheshire, but opposition from the community surfaced quickly ; he was unemployed by March 1828.

He moved to Boston on April 24, 1828, and was immediately impressed, referring to the city as a place " where the light of the sun of righteousness has risen.

" He opened the Salem Street Infant School two months later on June 23.

Abby May applied as his teaching assistant ; instead, the couple were engaged, without consent of the family.

They were married at King's Chapel on May 22, 1830 ; he was 30 years old and she was 29.

Her brother conducted the ceremony and a modest reception followed at her father's house.

After their marriage the Alcotts moved to 12 Franklin Street in Boston, a boarding house run by a Mrs. Newall.

Around this time, Alcott also first expressed his public disdain for slavery.

In November 1830, he and William Lloyd Garrison founded what he later called a " preliminary Anti-Slavery Society ", though he differed from Garrison as a nonresistant.