USA > Iowa > Poweshiek County > History of Poweshiek County, Iowa: a record of settlement, organization, progress and achievement, Volume 1 > Part 13
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44
GRADED SCHOOLS.
Iowa communities were growing. When a person began one of the higher branches he wished to continue it. Others wished to take the same studies, and students in the lower grades were increasing .. The schoolroom is too small. There must be an overflow. The more advanced are put into a second room. Now we have a graded school, two grades.
And there were a goodly number of such schools before 1858. They were recommended by State Superintendent Benton in 1848, permission was given for higher grades in 1849, and one was organized in Muscatine in 1851 by George B. Dennison. The state superintendent reported "a large number" in 1854, and in 1856 C. C. Nestlerode's at Tipton was said to be the largest in the state, with the largest number of grades. In the fall of 1856 the school in Grinnell opened with the schoolroom well filled. A few weeks later enough others came in to compel an overflow. A third room was added in 1857 and in 1859 Iowa College provided for the more advanced classes and saved the district from the added expense in that direction of provision for increasing numbers and higher studies. Every city now has, and has long had, its graded school.
HIGH SCHOOLS.
When a graded school consisted of two or more rooms, the higher was called the high school, without reference to its advancement but in 1870 the State Teachers' Association voted, Ist, to regard the work of an average class for one year a "grade ;" and 2d, to account the ninth grade as the first year in the high school.
This was convenient and careful as a definition of terms but the discussion concerning high schools and the propriety of maintaining them as a part of a public-school system was continued about a score of years longer. During that time President Grant delivered an address at Des Moines, in 1875, which was falsified as it reached the public. and represented him as advocating that "neither
116
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
state nor nation, nor both combined" should support other than "good common schools." This was denied by Grant and demonstrated by a Poweshiek teacher.
But demonstrate is a large word. It seems entirely proper, although it as- sumes the apparent falsification of Grant's speech by every reporter who listened to it. The public was amazed that Grant should be so reported, but who could deny that he did oppose all higher education by the state, or the nation, when the report that he did do so was sent to all parts of the country and printed in all leading papers, in careful magazines and in bound volumes? However, the evidence was overwhelming that he said nothing of the sort.
Ist. He did not intend to say any such thing. He so wrote to Governor Kirkwood.
2d. His manuscript on that occasion was examined and nothing of that sort was in it.
3d. A photograph of the manuscript was circulated. It was like the manu- script of course.
4th. The address as given in the secretary's report of that Des Moines meet- ing (See Secretary Cadle's Report of 1875.)
But how did those newspaper reports agree to send out such a perversion. One of them furnished the perverted speech to the local press. The others sent out clippings from his report. That was all, and that was enough.
Iowa had a local interest in another statement published by Justice Samuel Freeman Miller of the United States supreme court from Iowa in 1889 in Harper's Magazine. He said: "It was the purpose of this (Iowa) school sys- tem to educate the youth in the elements of an English education-reading, writing, orthography, geography, grammar, history." He said also that the higher branches had been "engrafted" upon the system, and, "it is becoming a question, and a grave one in the state, whether these high schools are not a violation of the spirit and purpose of the statutes to establish a common school system." There was no "engrafting" of higher branches. They grew up into our schools and into our laws as naturally as a peach sprout grows into a peach tree. Then, too, the question which he saw becoming "a grave one" was actually on the way to the cemetery, and his article was to be its requiem. Some thought : "Let not the cobbler go beyond his last."
Judge Miller was an able man, but that article on Iowa was probably the greatest mistake of his life, and yet the tongue of gossip says he was paid $1,000 for it!
OUR SCHOOLS IN 1910-II.
It is now seventy-eight years since the Black Hawk Purchase was thrown wide open to the occupancy of the whites, seventy-three since Iowa territory was organized, and sixty-four since the state of Iowa became the twenty-ninth in the Union. It is sixty-eight years since Henry Snook broke prairie along Bear Creek and R. B. Ogden in Union township thought he was the only man in the county. It is fifty-three years since tuitions were paid in the common schools for the children of the district, and only twenty-one years since the Iowa
117
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
member of our federal supreme court thought it was becoming "a grave ques- tion" whether the higher branches had any place in the public schools.
During the years of pioneer settlements it indicated no indifference to the education of the children when a large proportion of them picked up the ability to read and to write in the chimney corner of their cabin home. It was no discredit to parents or to children in Sugar Creek when the older people took turns, two weeks at a time, in teaching the children, as they did. Some of the teachers were doubtless far from skillful, and some of the children far from adepts in learning, when the first term closed. They deserve credit, the credit of a grateful memory, for doing as well as they could until the population was dense enough to employ a professional teacher, in a comfortable house, and a good length of term, until schools were made free, and non-residents and rich old bachelors paid their share for popular education.
Schools grew in size, in skillful teaching, in length of terms, and in branches taught, in country districts and in towns, as children able to attend them multi- plied. This expansion was noticeable everywhere, but most of all in the vil- lages. When the village became large enough to have two schools in it, the two were soon placed under one management, and graded. The grades in- creased in number. Those in the upper grade who loved arithmetic began to want to add algebra, and those who admired the changing sky wanted to take the geography to the heavens, and when now and then one began to wonder why water would rise in a vacuum only about thirty-three feet and no more, they wanted to take philosophy. Thus the higher branches crept into some schools, the parents were proud of their children's "higher" scholarship and of the reputation of their schools. A few objected to the "ologies" and the "osophies" but the majority won the day and our larger villages without a high school lost their reputation.
The schools of the state generally adopted the recommendation of the State Teachers' Association and accounted the ninth year of study (or the ninth grade) as the first year of the high school, and a high school might be one of any number of years up to four.
Montezuma was laid out as the county seat in 1848 and opened a school the next year. Until 1858 it was supported by a small sum from public funds, yet mainly by tuitions. No schoolhouse was built until it could be done by taxa- tion and the courthouse was occasionally used for the school. Some of the strongest and most useful men and women began their public service in the schoolroom. It is remembered that John W. Cheshire occupied the courthouse as a schoolroom in 1852-3, and a bright Scotch girl taught the young Ameri- cans in the "wee sma'" days of the 50's and much later. We met her then as Belle Patterson, now as Mrs. Cooper. The independent district of Montezuma was organized in 1866. Such men as D. S. Dean went from the Montezuma teacher's chair into eminent service in the Civil war, such as W. R. Lewis to the judgeship and the general assembly, while C. R. Clark, after twelve years as a teacher, hecame a leader in church, and fraternities, and in the courts.
The high-school building of today is practically the third in the order of succession. The first structure for schools was a small one, but large enough
118
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
for 1860. The next main building cost $12,500 and has been materially enlarged since then.
One building served the Grinnellites for their first schoolhouse, first church and first town hall, 16 feet by 24. It was built by J. B. Grinnell as contractor in 1855, for less than $200, of green oak, without plane or paint. The second schoolhouse was built in 1856 at a cost of $5,000 and was as variedly useful as the first one. It was 40x40 feet, two stories high, two rooms below and one above. It was burned in 1870. The third was erected promptly and located on the same spot as the former. The South school building followed shortly after and the Parker school in West Grinnell, and the Cooper school in East Grinnel, both of brick have since been erected. " .
Miss Lucy Bixby taught in 1855, S. F. Cooper in the summer of 1856 and L. F. Parker in the fall of 1856, when, at first, all the students in the town met in one of the lower rooms of the second school building. After a few weeks the second room was opened in care of Mrs. S. F. Cooper and the grading was begun. The upper room was occupied in 1857 and in 1859 the first building of Iowa College on the campus was used for the most advanced classes, and while Professor Parker retained charge of the public school through 1859-60 he taught half of the time in the college building with Rev. S. L. Herrick. William Bea- ton had charge of the schools in 1860-61.
Since then such superintendents as John Valentine, R. M. Haines, Richard Snell, M. Austin, A. C. Hart,, W. G. Ray, G. W. Cowden, D. A. Thomburg, and Eugene Henely had charge of the schools, while the high school building is occupying the place of the first one and cost $
During the year 1910-1i . the public schools of the city enrolled 1,236, of whom 317 were in the high school. The district is satisfied with no shorter course than it had in 1889, shrink's from no "higher branches" than it sustained then, and thus Grinnell, Poweshiek county; and the state has been answering Judge Miller's question whether such "high schools are not a violation of the spirit and purpose of the statutes to establish a common school system." They are now "common, thoroughly common."
The district paid last year for the actual running expenses of the schools, $30,000, and for paving around the schoolhouses, etc., $10,000 more.
During 1910-11 there were seventy-eight in the high school, twenty-eight in the ninth grade, twenty in the tenth, twenty in the eleventh, and ten in the twelfth.
In Deep River high school, during the past year, there have been twelve in the ninth grade, sixteen in the tenth, ten in the eleventh, and eight in the twelfth, -forty-six in all. Charles A. Vale is the superintendent.
SUPERINTENDENTS OF SCHOOLS OF POWESHIEK COUNTY.
1858-61, L. F. Parker; 1861-3. William R. Lewis; 1863-9, John M. Mc- Connell; 1869-71, L. F. Parker; 1871-3, G. W. Cutting; 1873-5, J. R. Duffield ; 1875-81, W. R. Akers ; 1881-3, A. L. Shattuck; 1883-5, Rose E. Southard; 1885- 93, S. W. Heath; 1893-7, W. C. Rayburn; 1897-1903, Viola H. Schell; 1903- 06, P. A. McMillan; 1906-10, Estelle Coon; 1910-11, Sarah A. Carpenter.
BUILDING AND CAMPUS OF IOWA COLLEGE
CHAPTER IX.
IOWA COLLEGE.
AN INSTITUTION OF LEARNING THE PRIDE OF GRINNELL-FOUNDED AT DAVENPORT IN 1848 AND MOVED TO GRINNELL TEN YEARS LATER-MAGNIFICENT BUILDINGS AND A GENEROUS ENDOWMENT FUND THAT IS GROWING-MEN WHO HELD CHAIRS OF LEARNING IN ITS HALLS.
When there were about 50,000 whites in Iowa territory, theological students in Andover and Yale, and Congregational ministers in Iowa were thinking of building a college in that new region. These parties were not aware of the thoughts of the others until the "Iowa Band" (as those college builders from Andover were called) arrived at Denmark in the autumn of 1843. A little sur- prised were they and not a little gratified on being asked to tarry a few moments after one of their meetings with the Iowa ministers to listen to plans for found- ing a college. It was a report of a committee that had been maturing them for a year. Both parties were surprised and gratified. It was an object dear to both.
It was an hour of beginnings. Such enterprises moved slowly. The year 1846 showed progress. Davenport was chosen as the location of the college, and the donation of the first dollar to Iowa College was made by Rev. James Jeremiah Hill, who asked the privilege of making it. Mr. Hill thought it was time to begin to give, but whatever might be true of "the time" it left the family a dollar painfully short when a home missionary on the frontier had to scramble around through all his pockets to find one.
The college was incorporated with fifteen trustees in 1847, and instruction was begun in 1848 with one professor and two pupils. Erastus Ripley, a member of the Iowa Band, was made head professor at Davenport. He was a scholarly gentleman and is remembered gratefully and affectionately by pupils, trustees and patrons, and well deserved all he received. Large as his other receipts were, the cash payment was $500 a year.
People anxious to patronize the only incorporated college in the state a few years before were not very numerous in Davenport in 1858, and Iowa's 600,000 people would not send many pupils across the entire state to college, without sending them further. Besides that, the Grinnell University was eagerly backed by its town growing rapidly, and it was near the center of the state, and the
119
120
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
school was drawing students from a widening circle, with a building ready for college use, and likely to be a successful competitor if the college should be re- moved elsewhere, but if it should be taken to Grinnell the town would give it property worth $40,000. In view of these facts the college was closed at Daven- port in 1858, and, after a year of volunteer teaching, it was re-opened in Grinnell in 1859, without teachers or pupils from Davenport.
A freshman class of twelve was admitted to college in 1861, just after the Civil war broke out, and five of them enlisted in the Fourth Cavalry, and the head professor asked the consent of the trustees for him to join them. All declined. Four of the five freshmen referred to, returned at the end of the war. Russell Eugene Jones was made captain and shot as his company was driving the Confederates out of their fort in the last enagement in which his company was employed and by the last of the enemy as he fired his Parthian shot. John M. Carney served as commissary sergeant in the army and was made mayor of his town afterwards. Hiram H. Cardell was a lieutenant, and later a lawyer. C. J. Kelsey became a lieutenant, lost his health but remained in the field till the war closed, and was never a well man during his life at home. The fourth who returned was Joseph Lyman, adjutant and major of the Twenty-ninth Infantry, and at home he was made district judge and sent to congress by the Council Bluffs district.
A marble tablet in the college chapel in memory of the college boys who fell in the army carries eleven names, namely: Benjamin F. Cassiday, Thomas H. Craver, James W. Dowd, James E. Ellis, Francis E. Ford, Albert W. Hobbs, Benjamin F. Holland, Eugene R. Jones, James T. Lorine, Joseph A. Shanklin, Samuel C. Thompson.
In 1864, the year of supreme need, (if we except the first one of the war), every male student of military age left the college for the Forty-sixth Regiment of the army, and the company was commanded much of the time by the profes- sor who proposed to go in 1861. An invalid soldier who did much to raise the company insisted that the professor should be the captain, but the professor could not consent to take the office from such a soldier, and served as first lieu- tenant.
When the college was at Davenport, 1848 to 1858, ten students graduated, and five of the ten were connected with the Union army, i. e., Lucien Eaton ( LL. B. of Harvard, 1855) was captain in the Twenty-third Missouri Infantry, and judge advocate with the rank of major; Milton Mnest Price was chosen colonel of the Thirteenth Infantry, but declined in favor of Colonel M. M. Crocker, and accepted the lieutenant colonelcy; Henry Holmes Belfield, ad- jutant of the Eighth Iowa Cavalry was later in charge of the Chicago Manual Training school and later was Dean of the University High School of Chicago; Cornelius Cadle, a student there who did not graduate; and William Spencer, another, became a prominent Methodist bishop; Charles Theodore Steck was chaplain of the Seventy-ninth Pennsylvania Volunteers, and later a pastor and Shakespearean lecturer; and Ewing Ogden Tade was in the service of the Christian commission in the war, and afterwards his life was fruitful in pastoral service and church building.
121
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
The young students fresh from college in Grinnell had their share of well earned positions and honors in the army and have been distinguished in peace. Norman F. Bates received the honor of a medal for capturing a flag and its bearer in battle at Columbus, Kentucky.
During the first year after the college took control of the institution in Grinnell it could pay only $1,100 in salaries, $600 of which was given to the teacher in charge, L. F. Parker, and $250 each to two associates (Rev. S. L. Herrick and Rev. Julius A. Reed) for half time. As salaries from the trustees it was a pittance. As a gift of teaching to an impecunious college it is worth recalling, as at least, liberal. Every year the progress of the classes required at least three more to be provided for, and more money to pay the teachers. Tutors were employed and the college was fortunate in having "natural teachers" among its students. At the graduation of the first class in 1865 George F. Magoun was president, Carl Von Coelln, S. J. Buck, C. W. Clapp and H. W. Parker were new professors and Mrs. Sarah C. Parker was lady principal. On that occasion President Magoun, ("a superb leader, a man of the largest mold with the culture of Bowdoin and Andover broadened by contact with the world"-Professor J. Irving Manatt, of Brown University, in the New England Magazine, June, 1898), said: "The institution has now about $100,000 of property, of which half is productive."
Well might he speak so gladly of college finances. During the war, when students were in the army and the country was impoverished by its expenses, an arrangement was made for Rev. John C. Holbrook to go east to raise $2,000 for current expenses then sorely needed. He had permission to add $20,000 also to the endowment fund if possible. Moneyed men responded so promptly that he was allowed to raise $50,000 for endowment. He returned in due time with nearly the entire amount secured.
At that commencement in 1865 there were hours of triumph, the nation was no longer divided, the "boys" were coming home from the army, no more need to enlist, some exchanged the camp for the college, the faculty was more com- plete than ever before, four college classes were in the college proper, and the nation was turning with joy to the arts of peace.
The change in population from 1860 to 1870, inclusive, is very suggestive and instructive. We give the numbers as they appear for several years, by authority.
Year
No. in College
Township
County
State
1860
99
522
5,568
674,913
1863
93
604
6,360
701,093
1865
174
994
7.796
756,427
1867
238
1,427
9,888
902,317
1869
303
1,893
12,936
1,045,025
1870
265
2,389
15,581
1,194,020
CO-EDUCATION.
Grinnell plans were at first, for a building for girls after the Mt. Holyoke order, some half mile from the important buildings for the boys. Necessity
122
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
compelled the erection of a single building for recitation rooms and for dormi- tories for the boys at once, while they depended on homes in families for girls. This was found to be satisfactory.
The college was opened in Davenport for boys only, but after a time parents in that town wished to send their daughters with their sons to the college. No objection could lie against that more than against their co-education in the public or private school. They slipped into college classes as naturally as they sang in a choir, or recited in a bible class with their brothers. No change was made in these respects after the college was removed to Grinnell, and those who at first deemed co-education an undesirable novelty and savoring of radicalism, deemed it wise and economical.
To be sure some still thought the boys and girls in such intimate relations might make arrangements for marriage, but they began to notice that the boys in Yale and the girls from Mt. Holyoke did the same thing, and that they might do it less wisely, if less acquainted.
MUSIC IN COLLEGE.
The first families in town brought marked musical ability. Dr. Holyoke led the choir, Mrs. Hamlin played on the Estey's organ, Mr. Grinnell and his brother Ezra always sung, and Ezra was unusually good. The Phelps family, the Clarkes, Bartletts, the Herricks and Wyatts, filled the town with music. Mr. Beaton taught singing classes in college when that was well under way, and Rev. D. E. Jones served the college as treasurer and leader in music.
THE CONSERVATORY OF MUSIC.
The number of teachers of music increased until the conservatory was opened in 1875, and the number in the conservatory enlarged until now about 150 are on the roll.
Eminent men and women have rendered attractive service as professors and instructors here. At the head of the conservatory, for many years, was Willard Kimball, who has built up a strong musical department at Nebraska State Uni- versity, as he was doing here when he withdrew.
Rossiter G. Cole was the second director of the School of Music in 1894-1902; H. W. Matlack, 1901-1903; W. B. Olds, 1903-1904; Dudley L. Smith, 1904-1907; and George L. Pierce took the directorship in 1907, which he still retains.
The College Glee Club has been in the habit of making one or more concert tours annually, and with special success, and sometimes they have visited the Atlantic or the Pacific coast and been well received and invited to come again. It was the winner at the first state Glee Clubs' Contest held this year ( 1910-11) at Des Moines. Other organizations are the Oratorio Society, the College Or- chestra, the Vesper Choir, and the Girls Glee Club, each of which is doing work of notable excellence.
A recital course is maintained, which brings such artists as Nordica, Schu- mann-Heink, Gadski and Zeisler. The standard oratorios and choral works are
CHICAGO ILALL
GOODNOW ILALL
BLAIR HALL
GRINNELL COLLEGE BUILDINGS
L
123
HISTORY OF POWESHIEK COUNTY
heard at the vesper service, and the spring Musical Festival brings one of the great orchestras, like that of Theodore Thomas, to the college annually.
The organ department is equipped with the Lillian Louise Terril memorial organ in Herrick chapel, and the Asa Turner organ and a two manual practice organ in Alumni Hall. The pianoforte department is furnished with Steinway Grands. A circulating music library of about 6,000 titles is at the service of the students.
Some of the musical compositions of Professor Scheve, the instructor in the organ department, have been received with special favor by critics in America and in Berlin.
The number of students is about 150.
COLLEGE MISFORTUNES.
Alumni Hall burned in 1871. A student's room was without fire. He would need a fire immediately after supper. He started a fire with dry wood and put green wood on the top that would probably take fire by the time he got back. He went to supper. "Fire, Fire," aroused him. "Where?" he asked. "Alumni Hall" was the answer. His green wood had set his room on fire. It was too late to save the building, too late for him and for others to save much of their private property there. A fire always appeals for sympathy to those who are thoroughtly human, and money to replace it began to come in before the embers were cold, and without asking.
THE COLLEGE CAMPUS SWEPT CLEAN IN 1882.
At sunset, June 17, 1882, all was-moving on the campus as merrily as a mar- riage bell. At bed time the town was in an agony of despair, amid the tears of the bereaved and the groans of the dying, the streets were full of broken trees and men were creeping out of their wrecked homes or crawling over their un- occupied foundations to find whether wives and children were dead or dying among the ruins of the town made visible only by the lightning's flash.
Bricks and timbers alone are on the college campus. Buildings are no longer there. One seems to have been attacked on all sides, at the same moment, and all seems to have been dashed into one central pile by the mighty trip-hammers of the demons of the air. They have caught the roof in another of their destroy- ing hands and dashed it down with a crash that left only splintered remains over many an acre sticking in the ground at precisely the same angle. Two trees are a rod apart. One has been dashed to the ground in one direction, and another in the opposite one.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.