USA > Iowa > Buchanan County > History of Buchanan County, Iowa, and its people, Volume I > Part 49
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The citizens had planned to present the debaters a silver cup that night to show their sincere appreciation of the boys' success, but a cup good enough to satisfy the donors could not be procured this side of Chicago, which necessitated more time, so the public presentation was held in the high school anditorium. Messrs. A. N. Todd, H. W. Oliver and M. O. Fontz were the citizens' committee, and these gentlemen were largely responsible for the success of the undertaking. Reverend Loeke made the presentation speech; Reverend Morning also gave a fine talk, and II. C. Chappell, president of the board, Professor Cherny and the three debaters responded on behalf of the school and the debating team.
The following is a list of the presidents and secretaries of the Independent Distriet of Independence :
Presidents-Albert Clark, from 1859 to 1869; Dr. H. B. Bryant, from 1869 to 1870; O. H. P. Roszell, from 1870 to 1872. HI. P. IIenshaw was elected as president from 1872 to 1873. Judge O. H. P. Roszell was again elected in 1873
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and continued in office until December, 1875, when he resigned; W. G. Donnan was elected in his place but declined and G. M. Bemis was elected to fill the vacancy. G. M. Bemis resigned in December, 1876, and Jed Lake was elected to the office and served until March, 1880, when C. R. Millington was elected president. Hle served until March, 1882, and resigned, when E. W. Purdy was elected to serve. In 1883 Jed Lake was again elected as president. He eon- tinned in this capacity until J. E. Cook was elected president of the board in March, 1885. He held the office until 1888, when H. W. Holman was elected and continued as president until 1893, when J. E. Cook was again elected and continued in office until 1896, when Frank Jennings was made president. He died while in office. M. W. Harmon was elected in 1898 and served for eight years, when in March, 1906, R. F. Clarke was elected president and held the office until 1908, when I. E. Netcott was made president and served until March, 1910, when he resigned and H. C. Chappell was elected and has con- tinned in office since then.
The secretaries have been-HI. P. Henshaw was secretary from March, 1868, to March, 1870. James M. Weart was secretary from 1870 to the fall of 1874, when he was killed by the accidental discharge of a gun on Thanksgiving Day. D. S. Deering was elected secretary to fill this vacancy and held office until March, 1879, when Rufus Brewer was elected for the balance of the year and continued in office for fourteen years, until September, 1893, when George Woodruff was elected and he has continued as secretary ever since.
The present members of the school board are H. C. Chappell, president ; S. A. Wilson, M. A. Smith, P. I. Shiehan and M. O. Foster.
George S. Woodruff is secretary and JJ. T. Barnett, treasurer.
OAK WOOD SEMINARY
Among the early educational advantages of Independence, Oak Wood Semi- nary, a high school for girls, deserves especial notice. This school filled a deeply felt want during the time which elapsed between the establishment of the old district schools and the publie graded schools which have supplanted them. For ten years it performed a service to the commmity which can never be fully estimated. In those days. when higher educational opportunities were only obtainable in the eastern colleges and not considered of specially vital importance for young women anyway. this school brought those advantages and refinements within easy access of all, and many are the graduates of that school living today who can testify to the beneficent results of that early training and of the refin- ing and uplifting influence which those two noble women, Mrs. H. A. Woodruff and Miss S. E. Homans, exerted over their pupils. This school was started in the fall of 1857. That summer Miss S. E. Homans, who had been for some years a teacher in Washington, D. C., and other eastern cities, came to Independence to examine into the feasibility of establishing a girls' seminary here. Finding the prospect favorable, she wrote her friend, Mrs. H. A. Woodruff, to come and join her in the enterprise. Mrs. Woodruff accepted the proposal, and they rented a small frame building owned by T. W. Close, which stood on the east lot of where the stable is now, and there the new seminary was temporarily opened. Their success was so decided that they deemed it safe to purchase a lot and erect
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a more commodious building. They therefore bought a lot on Hudson Street upon which was built during the summer of 1858, a large two-story frame house, the upper part of which was arranged for the school, and the lower for their residence. This building is still occupied by Miss Homans and Mr. and Mrs. George Woodruff for a home (Mr. George S. Woodruff is a son of the former teacher and organizer of the school).
The school was transferred to this building in the fall of 1858. The insti- tntion was regularly incorporated under the name of Oak Wood Seminary and some of the leading men of the city constituted its board of trustees.
Mrs. Woodruff was teacher of music, French and English literature, and Miss Homans of mathematics. The school was very successful, especially during the last five years of its continuance, the average annual attendance of pupils being fifty. Its patrons were confined mostly to Buchanan County and largely from Independence. Although this school was primarily for young girls, a few boys were admitted for a short time.
When the public graded schools were established in Independence in 1867, the need for the seminary ceased and it was discontinued, and Miss Homans took a prominent position as principal of the Grammar School, which position she held, with some slight intermissions, for nine years (until 1876). It would be most interesting to know the names of those early graduates, but unfortunately no records of the school have been kept. The proprietors deeming them of no consequence, destroyed their books and only in the newspaper accounts of their public performances can we judge of the scope and influence of their work in the community at that time.
THE BUCHANAN COUNTY SCHOOLS
The records of our connty schools, previous to 1858, are exceedingly meager, and nothing really authentic in these, most of the data and facts being fur- nished by the oldest inhabitants who must trust solely upon fading recollections which ofttimes plays us false. The school system of lowa, if system it may be called, previous to 1859, was by no means favorable to complete and accurate records, and even less to a careful preservation and arrangement of such records as were made. The only county school officer previous to 1858 was the school fund commissioner, and his duties, as the title indicates, pertained rather to the care of the school land and funds than to any supervision of the schools themselves. There was no inducement or precedent to urge him to keep records.
The first school ever tanght in the county was at Quasqueton in 1844 by Alvira Hadden. The first one taught in Independence was in 1848 and 1849 by Edward Brewer. In 1850 there were but three schoolhouses in the county, all log buildings. One was at Quasqueton, where the largest settlement was, one on Pine Creek, in Liberty Township (then called Spring), and one near the John Boon place and was the only school in Washington Township (which included the whole north half of the county and a little more). There were only three eivil township divisions in Buchanan at that time (Washington, Superior, and Spring). This school was taught by a Miss Ginter in the winter of 1848-49. Although few in number, these four schools were plentiful enough for the few and seattered scholars who might attend.
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In Independence there were but three families and only two children old enough to attend. There were three families on Otter Creek (at what was after- wards known as Greeley's Grove in Ilazleton Township), but only one child of school age, while in what is now Buffalo Township there were but two families.
In Newton there were a few families but no schoolhouses, and the same is true of Jefferson Township and Cono. The townships now called Madison, Fairbank, Perry, Byron, Fremont, Middlefield, and Homer were as trackless and houseless as the ocean, as was also Sumner, with the exception of one build- ing occupied by Isaae Ginther. In Liberty Township, then Spring, there were probably about a dozen families and they boasted a schoolhouse ; at Quasqueton, about twelve or fifteen families, and a schoolhouse. The first schoolhouse in Independence was erected in 1851 by William Brazelton at his own expense. It was hewn logs and about 14 by 18 feet square. O. H. P. Roszell taught the first school in it and had twelve pupils enrolled. The building stood on the lot now occupied by J. W. Lamb's implement house, south of the Commercial Bank.
The architecture of these school buildings was of course the crudest and most primitive, all built of unhewn logs with board seats against the wall on three sides, with a continnous desk of rough basswood, this being soft, and easily worn smooth by friction (and also easier for whittling purposes). These baek seats were For the larger scholars. while the smaller ones were accommo- dated by rows of plain, backless benches made of oak slabs. The fourth side was devoted to the large fireplace, flanked on either side by the entrance door and the woodpile. The paraphernalia consisted of a few books furnished and selected by the school master from his own usually meager library and devoted to the benefit and advancement of all the scholars, regardless of age or mental capacity. The Bible was largely used for a text book for spelling and reading lessons. and sometimes a dietionary was added to the equipment, and always either the birch, the hickory, or the strap or the cat-o'-nine-tails was a necessary and essential adjunet. No blackboards, maps, globes and all the other necessities of today. This type of building was typical of all newly settled counties, and remained in use for many years. These first schools, however crude and inadequate, certainly prodneed some wonderful scholars, and the average intelligence of teachers in the early days was far superior to the average of more recent times, this due in all probability to the fact that these pioneer teachers were educated in Eastern schools where school advantages were good and education considered paramount.
The names of these early teachers honor the pages of history, and among them there is many an illustrious name. The record of their achievements and result of their unremunerated labor is compensated and perpetuated in the ful- fillment of their dreams and prophecies, the grand publie school system of today-of which these early beginnings were the acorn from which sprung this mighty oak-the very heart and center and pivot of our national supremacy.
In the winter of 1850-51 a school was taught in the schoolhouse near Boone's for three months with an attendance of between twenty and twenty-five pupils, coming from a radius of two miles and more, and as an illustration of the inter- est manifested in education by these early settlers was the evening spelling school which brought together both old and young, not only from Otter and
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Pine creeks, but as far as Hazleton and Quasqueton. And a few attempts by the teachers to lecture upon interesting subjeets filled the house to overflowing, and this at a time when there were only seventeen families in the whole north half of the county. During that same winter schools were taught at Quasqueton and on Pine Creek. The next winter schools were conducted at these places and one at Independence, two or three families having moved here during the year 1851. This was taught in a log building formerly occupied by Rufus Clark, the first settler in Independence, and originally proprietor of the town site. The building stood in the street, but streets and lots were then in their wild and natural state, so thick with underbrush that only a surveyor could dis- tinguish the difference between lots and streets. This school was taught by Mrs. William Bunce, a resident of Hazleton Township for many years, and a splendid, intelligent teaeher she was.
During the year 1851 more families immigrated into the county and settled in and near Independence, and so a schoolhouse was deemed a necessity. And to William Brazelton belongs the honor of ereeting the first schoolhouse and at his own expense-truly, a philanthropie and public-spirited man and more deserving of credit and gratitude than a John D. for the gift of whole universi- ties and institutes of science.
This building, like the rest, was erude and small, being only 14 by 18 feet, built of basswood logs, hewn on two sides, and stripped of bark, which was unusual, but the donor was determined that this schoolhouse should be a credit to the community and worthy the name of school. And Providence seemed to favor the venture, for the state superintendent, Hon. Thomas H. Benton, Jr., visited Independenee just as it was nearly completed and lectured in the new building. Every citizen turned out to hear him, which gave him an audience of fine quality, if not of such great quantity. This was indeed a proud day for Independence. Judge O. HI. P. Roszell taught the first school and had twelve pupils enrolled. The building stood on the lot now occupied by J. W. Lamb's implement house.
In 1852 a schoolhouse was erected in Hazleton Township, at a place after- wards known as "Coytown,"where the first white men in that township, Samuel Sufficool and Daniel C. Greeley, had located in 1847.
From this on immigration increased, and many of these newcomers hailing from old rock-ribbed New England, where schools and churches left their marks of advanced civilization behind them. As soon as there was a settlement of a few families in a neighborhood a schoolhouse was built. These early pioneers naturally followed the streams and timber lines and there built the first schools, as at Fairbank, Littleton, down the Wapsie between here and Quasqueton, and below Quasqueton, on the Buffalo, on the branch of the Maquoketa, in the north- eastern part of the county, and on Otter and Lime and Spring ereeks. As early as 1855-56 there were eleven and twelve schoolhouses in the county, one in Madison, one on Spring Creek in the south part of Newton Township, one near Brandon on Lime Creek, another in the western part of Jefferson, one near Fairbank and another a few miles below that; still another in the north part of Hazleton Township, and one at Buffalo Grove, a brick one at Independence, and an additional one at Qnasqueton. Probably the best one in the county was built at Quasqueton in 1857, a very commodious building, a portion of it two
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stories in height and an additional room in a wing-three rooms in all-and here was held the second teachers' institute in 1859. In the next succeeding years the immigration greatly increased and the schoolhouses correspondingly, and frame buildings began to be put up, not alone because the increase of population and wealth demanded better buildings, but because logs were inac- ressible to the prairie communities and often proved more expensive than sawed lumber.
No record of the number of schools or school children was made until 1858, when the law provided for the election of a county superintendent. Judge Roszell was the first incumbent, being elected in April of that year, and only from that year on can we refer to records for school statistics. On November 14, 1858, the Board of School Directors voted to make the county superintend- ent's salary $500 per annum. This salary seems to have been considered a gen- erous one, as the following comment in the Civilian in regard to it would indi- rate: "Although we do not advocate excessive pay to publie officers, we believe this action by the board was entirely right. To do justice to the office, as Mr. Roszell has done, makes it as arduous as any in the county, and we can see no reason why the compensation should not be as much." An item in the paper of that date states that the public schools on both sides of the river in Inde- pendence are free to all scholars, and they would advise our citizens to send in their children, as it will cost you no more money and not half so much washing as it will to have them play in the dirt (this before the days of compulsory education and better and more inducements). At that time the county was divided into civil townships much as it is now. The superintendent's record for 1858 shows the total number of school children in the county to have been 2,445 ; the total number attending. 1,015; twenty-nine schools and twenty-seven school- houses, and in only two distriets was there more than one term taught during the year. Of the twenty-seven schoolhouses fifteen were frame, three brick, one stone and eight Jog. Less than half the school children attended school, but this was largely owing to lack of schoolhouses within their reach. Up to this year, 1858, the old system of schools prevailed. There was no particular pro- vision for the examination of teachers; it was only provided that the individual school beards were to be satisfied of their abilities and morals. Their pay was derived from a rate bill, except as far as the interest of the public funds distributed sufficed. The term ended and then the real labors of the teachers began. The interest on the public school fund was apportioned as now, and divided among the several districts in proportion to the school children therein, and this money was used to pay the teachers in part, the remaining wages to be collected from those parents who had children in school on a rate bill appor- tioned according to the number of days' attendance. This rate it was the duty of the distriet clerk or secretary to collect, but the collection of this was a matter that involved not only time and trouble, but often expense and a vast amount of taet and patience, and many times was utterly impossible. Some families had, perhaps, moved into another district or out of the county entirely : others sent their children but had no money to pay tuition, and this fact could not very well be ascertained until after the benefits had been both bestowed and derived. The clerk (entirely an honorary position) had no great interest in the collection and no disposition to hurry business; he usually felt no concern
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in a just compensation for labor received, which did not enter into his official obligations, or his "political scheme of life." "To the laborer belongs his hire," provided he ean get it, was universally conceded perfectly proper, as far as the poor teachers were concerned, and more frequently than not did his services go unrewarded and unappreciated. Invariably would he have to do the clerk's work of making out the rate bill and then spend the entire summer fruitlessly trying to inveigle or pry loose that munificent salary of possibly $12 per month. for the previous three months' winter term, and not the worst part of the collecting of salaries was the custom of boarding it out, which was never very satisfactory and oftentimes very disagreeable. Many of the old teachers who taught previous to 1859 had nothing to show for their labors except those outlawed and uncollectable school orders for souvenirs or mementoes. The Constitution of this state, adopted in 1857, provided for a State Board of Edu- cation, consisting of one member for each judicial district, together with the governor and the lieutenant governor. The first election for this board was held in October, 1858, and the first session was held in December of that year. It was a distinet legislative body with power to legislate on school matters only, and its first legislation was the adoption of our present system of free public schools modified to comply with advanced needs. The new law went into operation in 1859, and was hailed in this county with almost universal satis- faction. This legislative enaetment of the General Assembly seems to be a very full and comprehensive one, embracing fifty-one sections and covering every phase of public or common schools (as they were then called).
This act caused some trouble and complications, and the Supreme Court of the state decided that said act was unconstitutional and void in many of its provisions, but elections had been held, contracts made, taxes levied, schools taught and teachers employed, so it was necessary to pass an act to legalize and confirm this act and this was done fully and effectually. In consequence of this first act being pronounced illegal by the Supreme Court, the school officers of Buchanan County met to discuss the propriety of continuing the schools which were then in operation, and they wisely concluded to do so. And then the Board of Education legalized the act of the Legislature. We do not see how they could have legalized an illegal act, but stranger things than this have hap- pened in legislative matters, things which would puzzle a Chinese mandarin, but this was a matter of expediency, and we quite approve their presumption. Mr. Roszell, county superintendent at that time, was elected a member of this State Board of Education, and during its sessions had aided in the adoption of the new system, anticipating, however, much opposition to the radical change it made. The unanimity with which the people of this county approved its provisions was therefore especially gratifying to him and did honor to the intelli gence of the people here. In November. 1858, the school board voted to increase the county superintendent's salary from - to $500 per annum. O. H. P. Roszell was the incumbent at this time and was a most efficient, capable man in the office.
The report of the superintendent in 1859 shows a total of 2,532 school chil- dren in the county and 1,745 attending school, a decided increase in the per- centage of attendance over the previous year, which is explained by the fact that during that year there were taught in the county sixty-six schools, though
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the number of schoolhouses had only increased to thirty-one, being an addition of four during the year, so schools must have been taught in other places than schoolhouses, many of them in private dwelling houses, vacant or occupied; one, in Newton, was held in an attie, one in a wagon shop, vacated for that purpose and fitted up by Mr. Albert Riseley : one, in Byron, in a granary of .John Trillock's: one, in Buffalo, in a spare bedroom of a house: and one, in Hazleton, in a cellar kitchen at Isaac Sufficool's.
In those days the standard of qualifications were not high. but as far as they went we should say that they were excellent, judging alone from the evi- dent intelligence of their scholars (manifested in the public affairs of that day in the correspondence, etc.). Their education was not so advanced or so varied, being confined principally to the three R's-but certainly a splendid foundation for the requirements of those times. The diversified education of today does not necessarily mean a well-balanced, practical one, and it is a very noticeable and a lamentable fact that the earlier generations of scholars used a far more extensive vocabulary and had a better command of the English language. This may be disputed. but we judge largely from their correspondence. O. H. P. Roszell, as county superintendent, advertised in the papers of 1858 that he would give examinations to teachers on certain days. This was the first notice of that kind.
The first certificate to teach was granted by the county superintendent in 1858 to Miss Mary Preble; the fourth and fifth to Misses Emma and Eliza Buttertiekl, who taught in this county and elsewhere for many, many years, and were well known by the older generation, both residing here until their death. Miss Emma died but three or four years ago. Eighty-three examinations were made that year and the same number the year following. Some were refused certificates and some who procured them did not teach. Among the names in the list of teachers examined that first year are many men and women who afterwards became prominent in this county's affairs, and many were tine teachers.
The first teachers' institute was held at the courthouse in Independence in 1858. There were about forty teachers in attendance, and at that institute was formed the Teachers' Association, which held meetings annually for many years, and in 1870 numbered over two hundred members. The second county super- intendent was Mr. Bennet Roberts, who was elected in October. 1859, but shortly resigned, and C. E. Lathrop was appointed to fill the vaeaney and con- tinned in office till October, 1860. His successor, Mr. S. G. Pierce, who so long and ably filled the office and to whose ability and zeal the advanced condition of the Independence schools were largely indebted, was elected in 1860. reelected in 1861. In 1863 George Gemmell was elected and held the office two years when Pierer was again elected and held the office continuously up to 1871. when he was succeeded by E. Il. Ely in 1871, who held the office three years. In 1873 Amos Rowe succeeded Ely for two years, and in 1875 W. E. Parker was elected and served for twenty-three years.
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