Page "Amos Bronson Alcott" Paragraph 8

Attendance at Alcott's school was falling.

A wealthy Quaker named Reuben Haines proposed he and educator William Russell start a new school in Pennsylvania.

Alcott accepted and he and his newly pregnant wife set forth on December 14.

The school was established in Germantown and the Alcotts were offered a rent-free home by Haines.

Alcott and Russell were initially concerned that the area would not be conducive to their progressive approach to education and considered establishing the school in nearby Philadelphia instead.

Unsuccessful, they went back to Germantown, though the rent-free home was no longer available and the Alcotts instead had to rent rooms in a boarding-house.

It was there that their first child, a daughter they named Anna Bronson Alcott, was born on March 16, 1831, after 36 hours of labor.

By the fall of that year, their benefactor Haines died suddenly and the Alcotts again suffered financial difficulty.

" We hardly earn the bread ", wrote Abby May to her brother, " the butter we have to think about.