How Was This Book Used?
This book gives a great insight into the lives and expectations of the Fontaine Family. Peter Parley’s Tales about Ancient Rome, With Some Account of Modern Italy by Samuel G, Goodrich gives a bit of insight into the schooling of the Fontaine Children. This is due to the similarities this book has to a textbook found in classrooms today. The author organized the chapters of the book into numbered paragraphs, and each number corresponds to a number in the footnotes. The footnotes have questions about their corresponding paragraphs. The numbering and questions are similar to a textbook of today. This book also does not have any writing in the margins like other books in this collection, and you can tell this book was used quite often due to the spine needing rebound. The Fontaine family lived in the establishment and rise of public schools, but the city of Columbus, GA did not have many, if any, public schools until the late 1800s. [1] The Fontaine family had many options to educate their children, from educating them at home to sending them to an academy. Wherever they were educated, this book was likely used as a part of the education of many generations of the family due to the content and organization of the book, as well as the wear on the book.
[1] “Expansion and Growth in the Columbus Public School System (1880 - 1920).”