Excerpt from School History of Berks County in Pennsylvania The author of this book compiled "The History of Berks County," and in 1885 caused it to be published in a royal octavo volume of 1200 pages. Immediately afterward, certain teachers of our public schools suggested to him the utility of compiling a history for the use of the schools, in order to enable the children of the county to acquire special knowledge of their own locality, in which they were mostly interested, as well as general knowledge of this entire country and of foreign countries. It was believed that in this way they would be led to read of and investigate matters and things in the surrounding country with which they were now, or would shortly become, more immediately connected, and also to exercise their perceptive faculties in their daily school life, rather than their imagination; from which they could then be led, as inclination or necessity might dictate, into larger divisions of territory and into more comprehensive knowledge, after their faculties had become sufficiently matured to be interested in them, and more especially to understand them; and it was further believed that knowledge of this kind, thus acquired, would develop a tendency to acquire general historical knowledge. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.