From the INTRODUCTION.
The present school system of the city of New York is the result of growth and unification extending over a period of nearly a century, from the organization of the Free School Society in 1805 to the reorganization of the schools of the greater System city in 1902. During nearly half of that period public elementary education was administered by a corporation not responsible to the people. From the establishment of the Board of Education in 1842 to its absorption of the Public School Society in 1853, two distinct systems existed. The formation of the greater city of New York in 1898 involved great extension and new readjustment. To the school system of the former city of New York, now the Borough of Manhattan and the Borough of the Bronx, there were added two city school systems, those of Brooklyn and Long Island City, and thirty-five school districts in the Borough of Queens and twenty-nine in the Borough of Richmond. Complete unification of these diverse elements was not accomplished until the charter of 1901 went into effect.
In 1805, for a population of more than 75,000, the only facilities for elementary education were provided by private, church, and charity schools, with one hundred and forty-one teachers, of whom one hundred and six were men and thirty-five were women. A school for colored children, the African Free School, had been opened in 1787 by the Manumission Society; and a school for girls, in 1801, by the Association of Women Friends for the Relief of the Poor, generally known as the Female Association. The schools of these associations were later taken over by the Public School Society; those of the Manumission Society in 1834, and of the Female Association in 1845.
The purpose of the Free School Society, of which De Witt Clinton was the first president and the largest contributor, was, as stated in their first address to the public, to extend the means of education to such poor children as do not belong to, or are not provided for, by any religious society. The first school was opened in 1806. In 1826, owing to the desire to admit pay pupils, the name of the association was changed to the Public School Society. At this time the schools of the Society numbered twenty-one, with 6007 pupils, while the number of children between the ages of five and fifteen, who attended no school whatever, was estimated at 20,000....