USA > California > San Francisco County > San Francisco > The annals of San Francisco; containing a summary of the history of California, and a complete history of its great city: to which are added, biographical memoirs of some prominent citizens > Part 56
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There is pleasure in the streets and on the hills ; there is hap- piness within the dwelling. Hearts swell more joyously-blood flows through artery and vein with a wilder delight. Friendship goes on foot, aristocracy on wheels, love on wings. Friendship smiles, love sighs, snob swells. 'Tis a good time, a grand time, a happy time. Old friendships grow nearer, love grows stronger, snob becomes a little less stately-all harmonizing by humaniz- ing. There's nothing like association. It is the sand-paper
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which rubs down nature's asperities, the burnisher which polishes the rough surface of society, the brush which applies the last varnish.
Therefore, long live the poetic and delightful custom of New Year's calls. There is not a spot on earth where it could be of greater service, not a region where the climate would so accord with the custom. Business eats up intercourse like a cancer, and isolation is to the character like salt water to the old iron of the wrecked ship, corroding and rusting it. A custom which causes pleasant associations and sympathies is like oil on the surface of steel, keeping it bright. 'Tis the stamp on the guinea of society, giving new beauty to its gold. Let New Year's Day, then, be our mint to coin anew pleasant feelings, and turn into double-eagles the rough bullion of life.
MICI
AN
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The old School-house on Portsmouth Square.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
THE surest guarantee of the continuance of any liberal govern- ment is the early and proper education of its youth. Mankind are prone to lose sight of the mutability of the human race, and to forget that adult life is but one of the seven stages in their brief career, for all of which the world exists alike ; and that, after a short cycle, each, like the pieces on the chess-board, will have reached his highest post, whether he be pawn, bishop, knight or queen. Popular governments, unless sustained by an educated community, will change : hereditary monarchies require no firmer basis than the ignorant dependence on traditionary right, and the determination to endure and transmit that which had been endured and transmitted. The wisdom of our own successful system has recognized the necessity of a general dif- fusion of education, and our youth enter manhood not to be the blind followers of parvenu demagogues, but boldly and justly
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to determine questions of right and polity within their senate- houses, and to practise those principles of politics and ethics that have been inculcated at their public schools. It is an essen- tial element in the happiness of every man, of whatever station, to secure the welfare of his offspring, and to furnish them with better implements for the task they have before them, than he himself had ; and this duty the Anglo-Saxon observes beyond any other. Living less for the present, than the indolent dreamer of the tropics, or the ignorant northern barbarian ; with passions subservient to mind, and inclinations subordinate to will, he is energetic, every where looking to the social elevation of his race, and its continuance throughout the future. Even amid the wild, brigandic confusion reigning on the Pacific coast, where dazzling scenes and gorgeous changes embodied Aladdin's imagined splen- dors ; where excitement fevered every pulse, and made of men the genii doing the biddings of the mighty master ; where passion, avarice and cupidity were dominant, one of the earliest measures proposed, was the establishment of appropriate educational facili- ties. These attempts were at first imperfect, and possessed more of a private than a public character. Legislative action is always slow. However anxious and ardent men may be for reform, here as elsewhere, they seize the golden opportunity of power, and sacrifice mutual interests to individual aggrandizement. There were few children in the new State, but few wives or women, yet the community was composed of men, with more of greatness of mind and goodness of heart beneath the rugged coats of the miner or the shaggy-haired trader in ounces, than those whom the monkey-god of fashion had beautified in other lands. Hence, the progress of the school system towards perfection, in this city, has been unexampled, and its present successful practical work- ings are subjects of the highest pride and gratulation to its in- habitants. San Francisco has skipped through or over its colo- nial stage, and grown from hamlet to village, from village to town, and from town to city-from the little school-house in the forest to the brick village building with a bell, to the orderly, well arranged grammar-school, and the dignified and stately university. It has burst upon the world-a new star in the fir- mament of glories-the Adam of a new creation. Its history
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has no centuries of toil : its stages were ephemeral. There was a fierce struggle of intellect with passion-three days of battle and pillage-and a glorious victory of man's high estate. Here, improvements, begun elsewhere, are perfected, and that done rapidly, which has been gained slowly. The schools here are not inferior to the world-renowned and years-old systems of Pennsyl- vania and the Eastern States. The minor details yet want much of completion ; but the unanimous wish of the people has already been so decidedly spoken, and men of such acknowledged talents have devoted their energies to the task, that we need not fear that existing defects will continue to interfere with its success.
The first American school in San Francisco, and we believe in California, was a merely private enterprise. It was opened by a Mr. Marston from one of the Atlantic States, in April, 1847, in a small shanty which stood on the block between Broadway and Pacific street, west of Dupont street. There he collected some twenty or thirty pupils, whom he continued to teach for almost a whole year, his patrons paying for tuition. He was not remarkable for his education, and, indeed, possessed none of the qualifications requisite in one of his calling.
The people of the town at length saw the necessity of some public movement to secure to their children a fit education, and late in 1847, they built a school-house, a representation of which heads this article, on the south-west corner of Portsmouth Square, fronting on Clay street where it is now joined by Brenham Place. Insignificant as the building appears, it was destined to subserve more useful purposes than any other that has been erected in the city, and should have been preserved as one of its most valued relics. Its history was almost an epitome of that of the curious people who built it. Every new enterprise found here a heating oven to warm the egg into successful hatching. Here churches held their first meetings ; and here the first public amusements were given. It was the assembly room of the early gatherings of Odd-Fellows and other benevolent associations ; and a univer- sal public hall for political, military, and almost every other de- scription of meeting. It was dignified as a court-house under Judge Almond, designated as an institute at another period, and at length degraded to a police-office and a station-house.
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Not a vestige, however, of the old relic now remains, and its site is only recognized by the thousand cherished associations that hover like spirits around its unmarked grave.
On the 21st February, 1848, a town meeting was called for the election of a board of school trustees, and Dr. F. Fourgeaud, Dr. J. Townsend, C. L. Ross, J. Serrine and Wm. H. Davis, Esqs. were chosen. On the 3d of April following, these trustees opened a school in the building just erected, under the charge of Mr. Thomas Douglas, A. M., a graduate of Yale College, and an experienced teacher, of high reputation. The board pledged him a salary of one thousand dollars per annum, and fixed a tariff of tuition to aid towards its payment ; and the town council, afterwards, to make up any deficiency, "appropriated to the payment of the teacher of the public school in this place, two hundred dollars at the expiration of twelve months from the commencement of the school." Soon after this, Mr. Marston discontinued his private school, and Mr. Douglas collected some forty pupils. Prior to opening the school, the trustees had taken a census of the town, and ascertained that the population was something over eight hundred (including Indians), of which four hundred and seventy-three were males, one hundred and seventy-seven females, and sixty children of suitable ages for school ; the remainder being youths over sixteen and infants under five years. Eight months previously the population num- bered three hundred and seventy-five.
The public school prospered and increased for eight or ten weeks, when it received a sudden and unforeseen check. The accounts from the interior had lately been of the most favorable character. Rumors of immense and rapidly acquired fortunes, but above all, the exhibition of specimens of the precious oro, drove the whole population to such an intensity of excitement, that it resulted in a general stampede of men, women, and chil- dren for the "mines," leaving the teacher minus pupils, minus trustees and town council, and minus tuition and salary. He, therefore, locked the school-house, and shouldering his pick and pan, himself started for the " diggins." In the general scramble for gold, the school enterprise was for a time forgotten, and the education of the children, who were increasing in number by
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immigration, was wholly neglected until April 23d, 1849, when Rev. Albert Williams, pastor of the First Presbyterian Church, obtained the use of the public school-house, and opened a pri- vate school, charging tuition. He gathered some twenty-five pupils, and continued teaching until September 20th, when, on account of the increased demand upon his ministerial services, the school was suspended.
Late in the autumn of 1849, Mr. J. C. Pelton arrived from Massachusetts, and on December 26th opened a school with three pupils in the Baptist Church, on Washington street, which was generously furnished to him by that society, free of rent. He fitted up the church with the necessary writing tables at his own expense, made no charge, but, for several months depended upon voluntary subscriptions and donations, and the profits on the sale of school books (a lot of which he had brought with him and which he furnished to the pupils), for his compensation, and that of Mrs. Pelton, who assisted him. In the spring of 1850, he applied to the city council for relief, and from that time until he elosed his school late in the summer of 1851, his services and those of his wife were recompensed from the city treasury by a salary of $500 per month. This was at one time the only school in the city, and numbered one hundred and fifty pupils in regular attendance, and as it was chiefly supported from the publie funds, was called a public school, although the city coun- eil had nothing to do with its organization or management. In 1850, the original public school-house on Portsmouth Square was Vandalised. The only monument of the early educational taste and enterprise of the town was demolished by order of the city, on the ground that the old building marred the beauty of the plaza, which, by the by, has to this day been used as a public corral for the accommodation and sale of cattle and horses.
In the mean time several other schools were started, among them Mr. Osborn's Select School, which was particularly patron- ized by the Presbyterian Church ; Rev. Mr. Preveaux's San Francisco Academy, under the management of persons belong- ing to the Baptist Church ; Dr. Ver Mehr's Episcopal Parish School ; and several small primary schools in different portions of the city.
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In June, 1850, Col. T. J. Nevins, then the agent of the American Tract Society for this coast, applied to Messrs. Mellus & Howard, and obtained the free use of a building in Happy Valley near where Mission and Second streets now intersect, for
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Col. T. J. Nevins, first Superintendent of Public-Schools.
school purposes, employing Mr. Samuel Newton, from Connec- ticut, as teacher, who opened, July 13th, and conducted a school a few months, until he left for the east, when his place was, for a short time, supplied first by Mr. Lewellyn Rogers, a young gen- tleman, and subsequently by Mr. Cooley and Mr. Hyde, who took charge of it, until the spring or summer of 1851, at which time it was suspended. This school was originally supported chiefly by voluntary contributions, but near its close the common council voted an appropriation for the relief of the teachers. It was therefore called the "Happy Valley Public School." From a
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small beginning it had increased to nearly two hundred pupils, and was the foundation of the school afterwards established in the same building, under the Free School Ordinance. In Jan- uary, 1851, Col. Nevins procured a fifty-vara lot, at Spring Valley, on the Presidio Road, and erected, principally at private expense, a large and convenient building, employed a teacher, and opened a free school, which during the first quarter was sus- tained wholly by voluntary contribution. A small tuition fee was afterwards paid by the patrons of the school until the pas- sage of the ordinance above referred to, when the house and lot was leased to the city for free school purposes, for ninety-nine years, for a rent of less than seven hundred dollars for the whole time, being about fifty-seven cents per month. The situation is delightful, being shaded by a grove of evergreens, on a magnifi- cent road, and sufficiently removed from the noise and bustle of the living mass, to prevent their interference with useful study. Until the spring of 1854, it was the only school-house owned by the city. All the other buildings occupied for public educational purposes were subject to a ruinous monthly rent.
So soon as the city government had been fully organized and put in harmonious operation, measures were adopted for the establishment of a better system of popular instruction. In the summer of 1851, the boards of aldermen appointed a committee on education, at whose request Col. Nevins prepared a bill for . "the establishment, regulation, and support of free common schools in the city," which without alteration, was passed by the common council, and became a law on the 25th of September following. This ordinance divides the city into seven school dis- tricts, and provides for the erection and establishment of a free school in each district, making these schools public and free to all children and youths between the ages of four and eighteen years, within the respective districts, and forbids in their control all sectarian influence or interference. It makes provision for raising a " Common School Fund," and for the proper employ- ment of the same ; for the annual election by the common coun- cil, of a board of education, to consist of one alderman, one assistant alderman, two citizens, and the mayor, who is ex officio a member and the president of the board ; and for the regula-
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tion of salaries and other expenditures. It gives to the board of education the whole charge of the public schools, and em- powers them to elect a superintendent of the schools, and erect or purchase necessary buildings for school purposes ; details the duties of the superintendent, who is the general executive officer and clerk of the board of education ; constitutes the superin- tendent and any two members of the board, a committee for the examination of teachers, who cannot be employed until examined by such a committee ; exacts a quarterly report from the super- intendent to the board, and an annual report from the board to the common council, of the condition of the schools ; and requires a quarterly meeting of the superintendent and teachers, to examine and discuss the best methods of imparting instruc- tion and of conducting the schools to the greatest advantage.
In accordance with the school ordinance, of which the fore- going are a few of its many excellent provisions, the common council, early in October 1851, elected by joint ballot, a board of education, consisting of Hon. Charles J. Brenham, Alderman Charles L. Ross, Assistant Alderman Joseph F. Atwill, General John Wilson, and Henry E. Lincoln, Esq., who, on the 21st of October, appointed Colonel T. J. Nevins superintendent of the schools and clerk of the board.
At this time the city had no school-house accommodations on rent or otherwise. The first duty of the superintendent, therefore, was to procure and fit up buildings in suitable loca- tions, an undertaking of great labor and difficulty. Every build- ing was occupied, and no funds were provided for any expense beyond the rents, temporary accommodations and salaries. After considerable necessary delay, these obstacles were overcome, and schools opened to the public. The situations and number of schools, teachers, etc., at the close of the tenth quarter, May 1st, 1854, were as follows :-
DISTRICT No. 1, Rincon Point .- Established January 8th, 1852. Located corner of First and Folsom streets. Comprising a Primary and Grammar School. Teachers :- Mr. J. Sweet and Miss Rebecca W. Foster.
DISTRICT NO. 2. Happy Valley .- November 17th, 1851. Corner of Bush and Stockton streets. Primary and Grammar. Teachers :- Mr. Jas. Denman, Miss Anna E. Sandford, Mrs. E. Wright, Mrs. J. A. Hazleton, and Miss Kennedy.
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DISTRICT No. 3, Central .- December 22d, 1852. Washington street, between Stockton and Dupont streets. Primary and Grammar. Teachers :- Mr. E. H. Holmes, Miss A. C. Park, Miss Harriet A. Hancke, and Miss Mary S. Haynes.
DISTRICT No. 4, Clark's Point .- June 7th, 1852. Corner of Broadway and Montgomery street. Primary and Grammar. Teachers :- Mr. Ahira Holmes, Miss Sophronia Allyne, and Miss E. A. Pomeroy.
DISTRICT No. 5, North Beach .- November 19th, 1851. Washington Square. Primary and Grammar. Teachers :- Mr. II. P. Carlton and Mrs. Olive P. Cudworth.
DISTRICT No. 6, Spring Valley .- February 9th, 1852. Mixed School. Teacher :- Mr. Joseph C. Morrill.
DISTRICT No. 7, Mission Dolores .- May 10th, 1852. Mixed. Teacher :- Miss Clara B. Walbridge.
The following teachers have been from time to time employed in the schools and left by resignation :- Miss Mary S. Libby, Miss I. HI. Hudson. Mrs. S. A. Hazleton, Mrs. E. Hyde, Mr. Joel II. Tracey, Mr. F. E. Jones, Mrs. E. W. Baldwin, Miss Gertrude Brown. Mr. Silas Weston, Mr. W. H. O'Grady. Mr. Asa W. Cole, Mr. Alfred Rix, Miss Marietta Chadsey, Miss IIelen M. Allyne, Miss E. Durgin, Dr. Stillman Holmes, Miss Marion Bam, Miss Clara M. Silsbee, Miss A. W. Milbury, and Señor José Parra, teacher of Spanish.
These schools have hitherto been supported solely by city taxation, and the whole expense incurred to the date (May 1854), independent of the cost of building new school-houses, has been about $75,000, which has been expended in rents, the fitting up of proper houses, salaries and incidental expenses. Male teachers receive $150 per month ; females, $100. During the first year, the superintendent was paid $1200 per year, but since then his salary has been $2400.
On the 1st of February, 1852, the superintendent made his first quarterly report, from which it appeared that 485 pupils had attended the five schools then organized. Nine months after- wards, at the end of the first school year (Nov. 1st 1852), there were 791 at school, while the census stated the number residing in the city, between the ages of four and eighteen, to be 2050 By August 1st, 1853, the end of the seventh quarter, the pupils had increased to 1364, and at the end of the second year (Nov. 1st, 1853), there were 1399 at school, the whole number of children in the city being 2730. In the beginning of the ensu- ing year, the whole attendance at all the schools amounted only +n 11.78. This decrease was owino partly to its being the rainy
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season, and partly to the want of rooms sufficiently large to accom- modate the children. This latter difficulty is now being rapidly removed. Mr. William H. O'Grady, who succeeded Col. Nevins as superintendent in Oct. 1853, in his report of the ninth quarter, ending February 1st, 1854, gave the number of scholars to be 1453, while the number of children in the city of suitable ages for the schools had increased to more than 3000. At the close of the tenth quarter, May 1st, 1854, there were in actual attend- ance, 1574 scholars, of whom 901 were boys, and 673 girls, an increase of 120 over the last quarter.
In September, 1852, the superintendent selected and pro- cured to be reserved by the commissioners of the funded debt, from auction sale of city property, the following school sites, which, November 4th following, were set apart by an ordinance of the common council for school purposes ; viz., 100-vara lots, Nos. 128, corner of Market and Fifth streets ; 174, corner of Harrison and Fourth streets ; 258, corner of Harris and Folsom streets ; and 50-vara lots Nos. 301, corner of Bush and Stockton streets ; 345, corner of California and Mason streets ; 462, corner of Kearny and Filbert streets ; 663, corner of Taylor and Vallejo streets ; 695, corner of Francisco and Stockton streets ; and 732, corner of Harrison and Fremont streets.
On school lot No. 301 a fine two-story brick building, capable of seating three hundred and thirty pupils, has been erected at a cost of $21,000, and was formally dedicated, June 12th, 1854. This school was heretofore held in the house on Bush street be- tween Montgomery and Sansome streets, and is, in fact, the continu- ance of the old Happy Valley School, which was made a part of the public school system in 1851, and of which Mr. Denman was the first and is yet the teacher. The foundation of a new and large school-house, capable of accommodating six hundred children, has been laid on Telegraph Hill, in the 4th district. Another has been commenced at the corner of Stockton and Francisco streets, on lot No. 695, in the 5th district ; and it is intended to erect one on Rincon Point in the 1st district, one in the 3d district, and probably a second one in the 2d district midway be- tween the Rincon and the school just completed. Ere long there will be no lack of well constructed and well situated buildings
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for the children to meet in, and then a much larger attendance may be expected. Squatters on lots Nos. 663 and 301 have occasioned much trouble and perplexity, and it is probable that school sites for the other buildings will have to be purchased, owing to these incumbrances on the property originally granted by the city.
Besides the seven public schools, there are in San Francisco, twenty-seven private schools, with an attendance of 947 pupils, of whom 404 are boys, and 543 girls, and who are under the direction of 44 teachers. The aggregate number of schools in . the city is now 34 ; the whole number of teachers 62, 20 being male, and 42 female ; and the total number of scholars, 1305 boys and 1216 girls, or in all 2521, about seventy per cent. of all the children over four years of age in the place. In five of these schools, the ancient and modern languages, higher mathe- matics, philosophy, etc., are taught. One of these was started three years ago by Mr. Prevaux, as the San Francisco Academy, with but two pupils, and now numbers sixty, and is called the English and Classical High School. In May, 1854, the friends of the school dedicated a new building, erected on the site of the old one, in Powell street, south of Jackson, which was the first substantial structure built in this city expressly for educational purposes. Mr. F. E. Prevaux, A. M., Prof. A. J. Segueria, Mrs. I. H. Purkitt, Miss H. R. Barlow, Miss S. L. Larkin, and Miss W. E. Stowe are its teachers.
In February, 1853, the board of education, at the superin- tendent's suggestion, adopted a resolution requesting the common council to provide for raising the sum of $100,000, by loan, to purchase additional school lots and crect and furnish the requi- site number of convenient and substantial school-houses. Both boards passed the resolution in September following, and issued proposals for effecting the loan. The superintendent and board of education have at various times within the last two years, suggested to the common council the necessity of establishing a Central High School, with a Female Seminary department, for advanced pupils of either sex, and an asylum or House of Refuge for the vagrant boys that prowl about the streets. No legisla- tive action has yet been taken ; but it is probable that the grow-
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ing importance of the measure will soon secure the necessar movements of the council.
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