1790 Denison Limner probably Joseph Steward (American artist, 1753-1822) Elizabeth Denison holding a small book.
Thomas Jefferson drafted a Virginia Assembly bill in the 1770s, titled “A Bill for the More General Diffusion of Knowledge." Jefferson believed, "Those entrusted with power have, in time, and by slow operations, perverted it into tyranny; and it is believed that the most effectual means of preventing this would be, to illuminate, as far as practicable, the minds of the people of large." He proposed a series of public schools at which “reading, writing, and common arithmetick” would be taught to “all the free children, male and female.”
