"Sarcastic" Dove

Shrewd Ben Franklin was rarely outsmarted. One of the few men who did fool him was a caustic, tyrannical schoolmaster named David James Dove, whom he brought to the colonies from England in 1750 to teach at his Philadelphia Academy (later the University of Pennsylvania). Schoolmaster Dove quietly laid plans to found a rival school of his own, was fired when Ben Franklin discovered his plan. Thereupon, in 1761, Schoolmaster Dove helped start the Germantown Academy, today one of the oldest U. S. schools.

A political satirist and pamphleteer, Schoolmaster Dove had original ideas about running a school. When a pupil played truant, Schoolmaster Dove sent a committee to his house. The committee went through the streets carrying lighted lanterns, loudly calling the boy's name -- "a sad exposure for the juvenile culprit," said a chronicler. Said one of Dove's former pupils, Judge Richard Peters: "He was a sarcastic and ill-tempered doggerelizer, who was but ironically Dove. . . ." One of his fellow tutors was Charles Thomson, later secretary of the First Continental Congress. Lodging with Schoolmaster Dove and his wife, Tutor Thomson heard them gossip so maliciously about their acquaintances that it scared him. When he moved away he got them to sign a statement that his conduct had been above reproach.

Schoolmaster Dove stayed at Germantown Academy two years, then had a falling out with its trustees over the same trick he had tried on Franklin: planning a rival school. He started one, failed, started another, which died with him in 1769.

Still standing is David Dove's Germantown house. In the belfry of Germantown School's main building still hangs the original school bell; above it still swings a weather vane with three bullet marks from Hessian muskets. But 177 years have softened the memory of old Schoolmaster Dove, and last week Germantown Academy proudly unveiled a newly acquired portrait of its scheming, irascible, sarcastic founder.

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