Littleton Dennis Teackle to Thomas Jefferson, 4 February 1823
From Littleton Dennis Teackle
Chamber of the House of Delegates
Annapolis
4 Feby 1823
Sir,
As chairman of the Committee of Publick Instruction, I take the liberty of transmitting a bill reported for that purpose, and beg the favour of Your Views upon the System proposed, and that you will be pleased to note its defects, & to suggest Amendments.
Presuming upon a knowledge of your liberal &1 Philanthropick disposition, I venture to Essay this claim upon your time and Attention—
I have the Honor to be With the Highest respct & Consideration
Littleton Dennis Teackle
RC (MHi); at foot of text: “To Thomas Jefferson Eqr”; endorsed by TJ as received 10 Feb. 1823 and so recorded in SJL. Enclosure: An Act To provide for the Public Instruction of Youth throughout this State, and to promote the important interests of Husbandry and Agriculture ([Annapolis, 1823]), consisting of thirty-five sections presented by Teackle to the Maryland House of Delegates on 30 Jan. 1823 as Bill no. 51 and “ordered to lie on the table”; proposing the appointment and duties of a state superintendent of public instruction, along with nine commissioners and not more than eighteen inspectors in each county; specifying the roles of a clerk, three trustees, and a collector in each school district; describing the implementation of taxes to benefit the schools and the methods of apportioning this revenue; establishing reporting protocols at the district and state levels; requiring the creation of a classical school in each county and providing for the appointment of a professor of agricultural chemistry at each of the schools; calling for a “pattern farm, for the improvement of husbandry established convenient to each of the said academic institutions in the several counties of this state,” with its own trustees, which was to be “cultivated by free citizens, and the children of such as may be admitted at the discretion of the said trustees, and be bound to serve in the various employments of the said farm, until they shall arrive at the lawful age of twenty-one years” (p. 19); noting that the children serving such an “apprenticeship” are to receive education in addition to subsistence and clothing; and establishing a system for the distribution of public funds, including provisions for the education of poor children.
Littleton Dennis Teackle (1777–1848), merchant, public official, and banker, was born in Accomack County. He relocated by 1800 to Somerset County, Maryland, where he owned two slaves in 1800 and twenty-five a decade later. Teackle represented the county for twelve terms in the Maryland House of Delegates, 1822–23, 1824–33, and 1834–36. When he unsuccessfully sought a federal appointment to a foreign consulate or domestic office in 1825, he described himself as having been “a Commissioner, Director, Trustee, or President of nearly all the banks, insurance Companies, manufacturing, or literary institutions, incorporated since my settlement in Maryland.” Teackle supported internal improvements and a national bank, and he was appointed superintendent of public instruction for Maryland in 1827. He died in Baltimore (John Andrews Upshur, Upshur Family in Virginia [1955], 46; George Norbury Mackenzie and Nelson Osgood Rhoades, Colonial Families of the United States of America [1907–20; repr. 1966], 4:128; ViU: Quinby Family Papers; DNA: RG 29, CS, Md., Somerset Co., 1800, 1810; Edward C. Papenfuse and others, eds., An Historical List of Public Officials of Maryland [1990– ], 1:255; DNA: RG 59, LAR, 1825–29; , Pres. Ser., 7:191–4, 258–60; , 4:40–1, 587–8, 626; Washington Daily National Journal, 20 Mar. 1827; Washington Globe, 16, 24 Dec. 1834; Baltimore Sun, 18 Nov. 1848).
On this day Teackle sent similar letters with the same enclosure to John Adams and James Madison (MHi: Adams Papers; , Retirement Ser., 2:642–3).
1. Preceding two words interlined.
Index Entries
- Adams, John; works sent to search
- agriculture; education in search
- An Act To provide for the Public Instruction of Youth throughout this State, and to promote the important interests of Husbandry and Agriculture (1823) search
- classics; education in search
- education; agricultural search
- education; and taxation search
- education; classical search
- education; in Md. search
- education; of the poor search
- Jefferson, Thomas; Books & Library; works sent to search
- Madison, James (1751–1836); works sent to search
- Maryland; and education search
- taxes; and education search
- Teackle, Littleton Dennis; and education search
- Teackle, Littleton Dennis; identified search
- Teackle, Littleton Dennis; letter from search