History of Effingham county, Illinois, Part 6

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 650

USA > Illinois > Effingham County > History of Effingham county, Illinois > Part 6

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The different officials who performed the dif- ferent marriages in those days seem to have all dropped into the same style of writing their re- turns upon the back of the licenses. They each apparently thought it highly proper to say that they had " solemnized the rites of matri- mony," etc. They must have met with great difficulties in spelling the word " solemnized," as in the different returns it is spelled incor- rectly as many as fourteen or fifteen times. For instance: Sollemise, solemize, solemise, sol- oise, solemside, solemsided, solamis, solmnis, sollomondise, solimsis, solimize, sollumise, sol- imnize, sollemis, etc.

Among the first of preachers to marry a couple was one who made the following poet- ical and rather neat return:

"According to law and injunction of Heaven, On the 2 of June, 1837,

In wedlock I joined, during natural life,

The within Jessee Fuller and Rhoda, his wife. "GEO. M. HANSEN, L. D., M. E. C."

In searching among these "quaint an curious volumes of forgotten lore," the following docu- ment was dug up in the rubbish. It is a bill rendered by James B. Hamilton, and as near as the types can give it, it is in the following facts and figures:

" I dowe sertyfy to the Coms Cort of Etting- ham an State Ill That Mr Henry Boulls Fell Sick at my hous on 16 July 1840 and was beried the 25 of the same instant.

Funerl Ex Spences

" For nersin and nersment-maid out-

Mr. T. Levitt an H Lankfort. 15 00

for plank and nales from Brent Whit-

field. 2 00

to Davis for Meckin the Cofin 3 00

to T. H. Gillinwatrs Srawdin. 3 25

It is only by inference that the world will ever know whether Boulls died at all or not. We are informed that he "Fell Sick " on the 16th and was " Beried the 25 of the same instant," and that Gillinwaters furnished the "Srawdin " (shroud). Who was the damsel that the bill tells us, at the end of the line "Nersin an Nersment," was the " maid out" ? Why did she go out? What was she doing there, anyhow? The account says distinctly and unmistakably that " He fell " sick " at my house," not in my house. If the " maid " was helping with the "nersin an nersment" she could not have been in the house to have au- thorized the announcement that there was a " maid out."

Schools .- Mrs. John O. Scott reports the first school ever taught here was in 1831, by her brother, Elisha Parkhurst, who at that time was a mere lad, not over twelve years of age. Thomas I. Brockett, realizing the pressing necessities in this line, set about it and cleaned up and fixed a stable on his premises, and hired Elisha, whom he overlooked and superintended and assisted in all emergencies. The neigh- bors, John Allen, John McCoy, Lilly, Stephen Austin, Widow Dagner (two grandchildren),

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

sent their children and made a school of fifteen or twenty pupils. Elisha apparently was a suc- cessful teacher, although a boy, and for years he taught in various parts of the country. The next school was taught by Dr. John Gillenwa- ters (a cousin of the Judge), in Ewington, in 1833. A room was rented for this in some private residence. The next in order was Samuel White, who taught in the garret of Judge Gil- lenwater's house.

These were pioneer schools, and, considering all the circumstances, were very good indeed. The only Latin they ever taught was to make their pupils pronounce the letter z "izzard." The people of those days, compared with the present generation, had some very healthy ideas about schools. They believed a school was a place of training in the "three R's," and that its usefulness stopped at the " rule of three."

A picture of Elisha Parkhurst's school in Brockett's stable, more than half a century ago, would be an appropriate as well as sug- gestive scene to hang upon the walls of every school room in our county.

It was a long time before the rudest log schoolhouses were erected. The people were sparsely scattered in the sparse neighborhoods. They were poor in this world's goods as a rule. Teachers were scaree, and so were books. There were a large portion of the grown peo- ple that could neither read nor write, and some of these had lived where there was no use to be made of these accomplishments, and they had no realizing sense of the importance of teaching their children to read and write, in order to prepare them for what was soon com- ing, namely, mail facilities by the honr, cheap postage, and abundant and cheap literature ; a people transformed from trappers and hunters into an eager commercial and trading commn- nity, where a ceaseless activity is combined with that rapid, broad comprehension, that could every morning look over the movements

of the commercial world of the preceding twenty-four hours, and form his conclusions and put into instant execution his plans and purposes for the next twelve hours.

In 1838, John Funkhouser, the School Com- missioner for the county, made a report to the court of his official acts and doings for the years 1837-38. The report is addressed to the "Onorable Commrs. Cort, June, 1838."

He charges himself with $146.76 for the year 1838. Then follows :

" Dec 5, 1837. Amount paid on last return, Shoes not demanded, 38.21}."

Total, 184.673.

The inferenee is that there was $38.21 of the money of 1837 that had not been called for by orders, and this swelled the total fund to $184.67.

He then credits himself as follows :

Paid Thomas Loy for teaching school

in T. 8, R. 5, . 28.33}

Ruella Griffith, do., T. 8, R. 6, 9.88

This he says was all he paid out for the year 1837.

For the next year, he paid Sam Huston, teacher, $24.79. Thomas M. Loy, do., 41.67. Charles Gilkie, do., 16.58. Ruella Griffith, 20.12.

This shows that for the year 1838 there was paid to the four teachers that taught the schools of the county, $103.10. The number of school children in the county, from the best obtainable estimates of that time, was fonr hundred. Four schools were taught, and one hundred and twenty-five pupils would be a fair estimate of the number that were in attendance upon the schools in the county, and 82} cents per capita was the total expense.

The assessment for the present year in the city of Effingham school district is $6,000. The school attendance is about five hundred. The difference in then and now is as 82} cents is to $12 per pupil. Those were in part pay schools - these are free' schools

John Loony

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

Those were managed by the people-these by the State. There are no statistics, unfortu- nately, by which the comparative illiteracy of then and now of the rising generation can be shown. This is much to be regretted.

The fundamental idea of all schools is to take care of the mind and morals of children and train them up in the way they should go, assisted in the moral work by religion and the church. This being admitted, we have this light thrown upon the subject of progress made in intelligence and morals in the fifty years just past. There has been as marked improvement in the number and quality of our present splendid and expensive church build- ings as there has been in the schoolhouses in that time. So has the improvement in num- bers and superiority of ministers of the Gospel kept equal pace with the raee of school teach- ers of then and now. It has cost many thou . sands of dollars to erect the numerous school buildings in the county. From Elisha Park- hurst's pioneer school room in Brockett's sta- ble to the elegant and elaborately furnished high school room of to-day is a long stride in educating mankind. This was only paralleled by the places of worship then and now, and to comple e the picture in a ministerial line let Boleyjack and Beecher stand forth. The ad- vance all round has been marked and great, especially in the matter of expense and show.

Are these finger boards lining the highways baek fifty years, that point out an equally great improvement in public manners, morals, or in- telligence ? Illiteracy is a crime, but so is pinching poverty. Illiteracy and ignorance are not synonymous terms. But neither are education and expense synonymous terms. Is outward change in teacher or preacher, or great extravagance in the schoolhouses, any proof that morals or education is improved ?

The people pour their money into the school treasury unsparingly. Not only without grudg- ing, but freely and gladly. Why ? Because

they are told and believe that the system is about perfect, and the only possible cause of its failure to perfect mankind is the absence of a sufficient quantity of it, and its universal ap- plieation to all children. Does this fifty years experience and practice in this county prove this or the contrary ? We have plenty of men near the age of fifty years who were reared here, and some of them learned to read and write after they were thirty years old. They had not the benefit of those primitive schools, as there are many here now and such there always will be, who reap none of the benefits of the modern school. Compare the average man and woman, natives of this State, who were reared under the poor, meager pay schools of the olden time, with the average man and woman from different States, reared under the benign influenees of the most liberal free schools. Is illiteracy banished? Do crimes cease and immorality flee to the mountains before the mighty tread of this grand army of free schools ? Is there a proportionate disappear- ance of the one with the appearance of the other ? The multitudinous mass of mankind will say yes ! The figures of statistics will alone tell the true story.

This is no place to discuss the question of how to make better the common school, even if it is one of supreme importance. We pass to other parts of the subject, content with this statement. The schools are based upon the idea that all can and should become philos- ophers, with no difference among men, except in degree of advancement. Whereas the truth is that the best and most difficult thing for so- ciety to do is to produce gentlemen. True, it is that the home influence and training is where this precious commodity to society is mostly to come from, yet if the schools ever arrive at the point where they can, even in the smallest degree, supply this to the children of homes that have it not, then will there be the com- mencement of the real school. Then may the c

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

school teacher, surrounded by his school family, like the proud mother of the Gracchi exclaim : " Behold, these are my jewels!"

Men have interested themselves in education since recorded, and even before recorded time. The earliest traditions present only grown men, seeking to educate themselves. Children then were left to grow, with only the restraints or training that society and home forced upon them, their education being left to their own exertions after they became men and women. Remember that such schooling advanced all mankind-made civilization out of barbarism.

A little book entitled " Ten Days in Athens," gives us some account of a school, taught in the porches and the gardens by Epicurus. This little book tells the secret of the intellectual greatness and glory of Athens, that immortal city-the mistress and nourishing mother of civilization-whose grand work has for 3,000 years stood as a beacon light upon the troubled waters. The school of Epicurus had no aid from the State, it had little, if any more, ele- gance or paraphernalia than did the boy teacher -Elisha Parkhurst's school in Brockett's stable. It was without books. Yet it was a fountain of profound philosophy, from which his fol- lowers might drink, and drink long and deeply. The routine of his school-room were his con- versations in which he gave them the ripened wisdom of his mind. He gave them true knowl- edge -- that knowledge that lifts truth from error; the great doctrine that the highest and most en- during pleasure in life is the acquisition of new truths that come of the better understanding and comprehension of the mental and physical laws; that this alone destroyed ignorance, and that ignorance is the fruitful source of the evils that afflict mankind. In discussing the gods, he bluntly told his pagan school that their dieties no more caused rain to come to make the grain grow than did they send the rain to rot in the field the gathered but ungarnered products of the farm; that to worship these

gods in the hope that the worship would be pro-rated and paid in future great favors was not the most ennobling religious idea of which a great and pure soul could contemplate or have.

What, think you, would this old pagan school teacher say, could he now pay us a visit, and be taken to Oxford University, and in solemn soberness shown the exact and priceless facsimile, that is there so carefully preserved, of the horn that blew down the walls of Jericho?

Epicurns had been reared in paganism; he had been cradled in its lap, had taken it with his food from his mother's breast, and, like all men, had adopted the religion of his fathers. Yet he grew to be intellectually almost a demi- god. He did not grow to think in the old groves of formulated ideas where " to dally was to be a dastard-to doubt was to be damned." He was nominally a pagan, but he wor- shiped truth alone, and with " an castern de- votion he knelt at the shrine of his idolatry." He was illiterate, but who in the ages since he was upon earth has been great enough to take his master's seat in the school-room ?

Another great man, but not his peer, was the Swiss, Pestolozzi, the school teacher who lived and taught school a hundred years ago. He believed and taught that there was much error in the fundamental idea and system of the schools. He contended that mere mem- orizing from books was not education, was not the source of knowledge; that knowledge came not by being told so and so, either by the books or the teacher, but by experimental lessons where not only the brain, but the heart the eye, the touch, in fact, all the avenues to the brain were not only partakers but become part and parcel of the lesson.

Pestolozzi took issue with the schools as the system and science of teaching had been the accepted practice for sixteen hundred years before his day. He established a school and attempted to put in practice his theories. His

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

school was a failure, not because of the defects of his discoveries in the system, but because he taught in advance of his day-a cause of as much loss to mankind probably as all other causes combined. It is true that, in the insti- tutes and conventions of teachers we are told and re-told, as often as these bodies meet, that all schools are now taught strictly upon the " Pestilozzian plan," as they term it. Go study what the great Swiss says, and you will be amazed at the wide misunderstanding that exists between his ideas and the practices of the school room.

The profound thinker, Locke, has slapped the faces of the first schools of Europe, with the " learned ignorance " they annually pour upon the world, labeled " Education." He tells them illiterate intelligence is infinitely prefer- able to " learned ignorance." And yet a United States Senator, in Congress two years ago, in discussing some school subject, an- nounced that " every illiterate person in our country is a menace to our free institutions," and from the fact that he did not say that he had any fears of ignorance, it is a fair presump- tion that the Senator, in common with most men who think vaguely and talk loosely, con- founding words with a shocking reeklessness, used the word " illiterate" when he meant ignorance.

Richard Grant White discussed very ably re- cently, in the North American Review, the ques- tion " The Public Schools a Failure," in which he arrays the statisties of illiteracy and erime of a certain number of States north of the Po- tomac with an equal number south of that river. They were States of free public schools and States without them, classified and compared.

In the United States Census of 1870, Dr. Earle discussed at much length the question of public schools and insanity, and basing his con- elusions upon the Government statistics, he draws some frightful conclusions.

A committee of gentlemen in Chicago, deeply

interested in the schools, who had been ap- pointed to investigate the subject in that city, reported unanimously that they could arrive at no other conclusion but that the whole system had been so pressed and pushed by the ery for improvement that they were now almost value- less as a means of education.

A prominent school man of California sums up his investigations, and he has no hesitation in putting down as his best judgment that the whole system is so full of faults that it is of doubtful value. These men may, and it is to be hoped they are, in error upon this vital question; yet they start a discussion that can- not but prove wholesome. It is the waters that are stirred that are pure and healthy.

Educate! Educate! Teach all men, though, what is true education first; then you cannot provide too much of this, nor is the necessary cost a question for a moment's consideration. Because it is the inestimable boon to man -the basis of eivilization and man's welfare.

The young State of Illinois manifested a deep interest in this important subject. On the 13th of April, 1818, it was admitted as a State in the Union, and Congress in the act of admis- sion offered for the State's " free acceptance or rejection " the following among other proposi- tions:

1. " That section numbered sixteen in every township, and when such section has been sold or otherwise disposed of, other lands equivalent thereto, and as contiguous as may be, shall be granted to the State for the use of schools.

3. "That five per cent of the net proceeds of the lands lying within such State, and which shall be sold by Congress from and after the Ist day of January, 1819, after deducting all expenses ineident to the same, shall be re- served for the purposes following, viz .: Two- fifths to be disbursed under the direction of Congress in making roads leading to the State, the residue to be appropriated by the Legisla- ture of the State for the encouragement of

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

learning, of which one-sixth part shall be ex- clusively bestowed on a college or university."

These propositions were accepted by the State Constitutional Convention at Kaskaskia on the 26th day of August, 1818.

January 15, 1825, the Legislature passed an act for the " establishment of free schools and other purposes." An amendment to this act was passed February 17, 1827, providing, among other things, as follows:

" The legal voters of any school district, at their regular meetings, shall have power in their discretion to cause either the whole or one-half of the sum required to support a school in such district to be raised by taxation. And if only one-half be raised by taxation, the remainder may be required to be paid by parents, masters and guardians, in proportion to the number of pupils which each of them shall send to such school.

"SEC. 4. No person shall hereafter be taxed for the support of any free school in this State unless by his or her own free will and consent, first had and obtained in writing. Any person so agreeing and consenting shall be taxed in the manner prescribed in the act to which this is an amendment. Provided. That no person shall be permitted to send any scholar or schol- ars to such school unless such person shall have consented as above to be taxed for the support of such school, or by the permission of the trustees of said school. And provided, That all persons residing within the limits of a school district shall at all times have the privilege of subscribing for the support and establishment of any such schools."

In May, 1827, a general act relating to the school lands was passed by the Legislature pro- viding for the appointing by the County Com- missioners' Court of three Trustees in "each township where they may deem it expedient, and where the population thereof will admit, to be called the Trustees of the School Land," making the Trustees a body corporate, requir-

ing them within six months after their appoint- ment to survey section sixteen, or such other land as may be selected in lieu thereof, in tracts not less than forty nor more than one hundred and sixty acres, make a plat thereof for the Commissioners' Court, authorizing it to reserve from sale certain timber or stone or coal lands, and to lease said lands, etc., etc." These Trustees were required to lay off school districts, so that each district should not have less than " eighteen scholars subscribed or going to school." The State then levied an annual two-mill tax on the property of the State for the maintenance of schools, and thus step by step laid the founda- tion for our free schools upon a broad and lib- eral and wise financial plan. The State put the means in the school men's hands. It did all it could do in this way in the cause of education, and if there is any failure in the system, it is the fault, not of its financial provisions, but of the organizers and the workmen in the school- room.

From the little beginning in Brockett's stable has grown the public free schools of the county, of which there are seventy-seven school dis- triets, that have three log, sixty-three frame and ten brick schoolhouses, with an enrollment of pupils of 4,238, a daily attendance this school year (1882) of 327,659, the average school term of six and five-tenths months, with the schools classed as graded, and an attendanee upon these graded schools of 1,449. There were ninety-five teachers employed. The total expenditure for 1882 was $30,685.79; the amount paid teachers, $19,416.51; the highest monthly salary paid was $75, and the lowest $15, an average of $31.58. We have a school in- debtedness of $13,650. There are other than the free schools-ten schools with an enroll- ment of 520. The number of children under twenty-one years of age in the county is 9,443, and the number of school age -- that is, between six and twenty-one-is 6,218. The number of illiterate persons in the county is placed at six-

HISTORY OF EFFINGHAM COUNTY.

teen. This is palpably an error, but by how much the number is understated cannot be known.

The schools of Effingham County rank well with those of other counties in the State, and this evidences a commendable spirit of enterprise and liberality of the people. They are deeply interested in this important work, and the money they freely pay in such large sums demands of our school men a wise discharge of their duties. It demands of them that they shall educate, to the best, the rising generation; that they shall neither waste the lives of their children nor their money by false education. There is noth- ing in this life of more importance than the school-room. There is no class of people that are surrounded with such important responsi- bilities as the educator. A mistake here is a crime. To teach the young a falsehood is to poison the mind and pollute the soul. The evils of such an act are well-nigh incurable. Here is the paved highway to ignorance and mental sterility that is a menace indeed to civilization itself.

Let it be remembered that these pioneers had to begin at the foundation and from there build. To create our possessions and belongings. Did they build only upon the eternal rocks !

William J. Hankins .- Of the early legal and official life of this county, we know of no man who stands out in the picture more promi- nently than Judge William J. Hankins. He came here just when he was most needed and his finger marks are everywhere, telling the story of his handiwork, and writing his epitaph in the hearts, not only of his descendants, but of the thousands who are reaping, and who will in the future enjoy the fruits of his labors and his foresight.

He came here in 1832, with a wife and sey- eral young children-impelled, doubtless, by the Napoleonic impulse of destiny. A new county had been incorporated by the Legisla-

ture, and its people were few, and there was a demand for men competent to do the work of placing the infant municipality upon its feet. An unorganized community of people were placed by law to themselves, and society and fellowship was to be created, their own police and local laws to be made and executed, the wheels and machinery of a little govern- ment were to be constructed and adjusted, and the whole to be so adapted that it would work harmoniously and without friction.

It is the men of the strong intellects and force of character that come to the front when important work, especially work that is not routine, is to be done. Judge Hankins, in his small way-smaller because his field of opera- tions was, in the nature of things, circum- seribed within the smallest limits-is as much an expression of this truth as was the Little Corporal, whose " frown terrified the glance its magnificence attracted."

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History of Effingham county, Illinois, Part 6

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed Publication date: 1883 Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co. Number of Pages: 650

Author: Perrin, William Henry, d. 1892? ed
Publication date: 1883
Publisher: Chicago, O. L. Baskin & co.
Number of Pages: 650