A rare find, 19th Century student remembers his BFS days

Found tucked away in the archives several years ago is this item written by Henry Morris Haviland, recalling his student days at BFS from 1872 to 1876.  Such items are quite a find for our school, especially since Mr. Haviland explained the locations of the classrooms in the lower level of the Brooklyn Meeting House. Our school was smaller in those early days and the entire school was conducted in the Brooklyn Meeting House, of course. I love his nickname “Hash,” but I think I love even more the phrase once heard regularly in our school, “Go to the Social Union room.” 

Henry M. Haviland’s Reminiscences of Friends School

Mr. Haviland’s memories were referenced in Chapter 8 of 1942’s Seventy Five Years of Brooklyn Friends School, by Edgerton Grant North. Mr. Haviland’s schoolmate Edward Stabler’s reminiscences were more largely quoted in that chapter, yet Mr. Haviland’s reminiscences survived intact in the files of the book’s author, which he returned to BFS to assist with the school’s 1967 Centennial. Incidentally, Henry Morris Haviland may have been a distant relation to our first principal Mary Haviland. Mr. Haviland was born in January, 1863 and died in December, 1942, several months after writing this piece for our school’s history. The BFS archives actually contain what seems to be Mr. Haviland’s original handwritten version and two later typed versions. Thanks, Hash!

Hash only attended BFS in the Brooklyn Meeting House. The school building on the left was built in 1902.