A-B-C-darians, ABC-darians, or abecedarians were the youngest students (then called scholars) in the typical one-room school of 19th-century America.
[1] In his autobiographical reminiscences on his school days, Warren Burton recounted that he "was three years and a half old when I first entered the Old School-house as an abecedarian".
[4] In the district schools of the early 19th century, the youngest scholars were seated on the front benches in a room that typically had floors that sloped up from the center on three sides like a small amphitheater.
"Peter Parley") attended a district school around 1810 in which "The larger scholars were ranged on the outer sides, at the desks; the smaller fry of a-b-c-darians were seated in the center".
"The habit of requiring the children of the alphabet class to give formal definitions to words which are far more simple than those used to define them, is a practice which I have endeavored to discourage.
For instance, such words as father, mother, brother, sister, boy, girl, etc., it is not uncommon to hear defined by these little A-B-C-darians, in this manner:—"Mother—a female parent; brother—a male child born of the same parents; girl—a female child; cat— a domestic animal; cow—a domestic animal", &c."[10] By the end of the 19th century, the mere use of the term represented a bygone era of the one-room schoolhouse.