First School: Charles Griffin's Classroom

In Pasquotank County, a Church of England lay reader named Charles Griffin opened the first documented school in North Carolina in seventeen oh five. Griffin had come by way of the West Indies to this part of the Albemarle colony, where there were settlers but few clergy and no formal schools. He set up a classroom that quickly gained a reputation extending across all the usual boundaries of colonial society.

The Quaker community, normally reluctant to send children to Anglican-run institutions, made an exception for Griffin, whose teaching was held in such high regard that they enrolled their own children alongside their Anglican neighbors. Griffin served this Pasquotank County community for three years, until about seventeen oh eight. Griffin then moved to Chowan County and opened another school.

His three-year classroom here is the earliest known formal school in the colony.