USA > Indiana > Lake County > A standard history of Lake County, Indiana, and the Calumet region, Volume I > Part 20
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Mr. Palmer not only worked for his own immediate locality, but was forcible and generous in his efforts to secure benefits to other towns in the county. He was of great assistance in getting the lines of the Penn- sylvania (Panhandle) and the Erie roads to run through Crown Point. He was the first to sign the right-of-way and give a mile of his own land to the Erie road, with the understanding that the line should be con- structed through the county seat.
The present railroad station is quite a point for the shipment of milk, and some live stock and grain is handled there. The settlement shows a couple of substantial stores, a brick schoolhouse and a number of resi- dences, with a substantial farming country back of it.
Winfield is also on the Erie line, about three miles northwest.
Leroy, however, is the oldest town in Winfield Township and the most prosperous. It is a product of the old Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago & St. Louis Railroad, now the Pennsylvania line, but still popularly ealled the Panhandle. The road has also gone by the name of the Cincinnati Air Line, and in 1865, when it was completed through Lake County, Leroy was made a shipping station. Year by year it has grown in importance as a shipping center for hay and grain, especially the former. It has several good stores, a large brick schoolhouse and Methodist and United Presbyterian churches.
CHAPTER XVII
SCHOOLS OF LAKE COUNTY
MONGREL SCHOOLS-FIRST SCHOOL IN THE COUNTY-DEATH OF MRS. HARRIET W. HOLTON-MRS. HERVEY (JANE A. H.) BALL-THE BALL BOARDING SCHOOL-FIRST LITERARY SOCIETIES-EAST CEDAR LAKE TEACHERS-AN OLD-TIME SCHOOLHOUSE-SCHOOL FINANCES-TWO DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES-REV. WILLIAM TOWNLEY'S SCHOOL-MISS MARY E. PARSONS AND MRS. SARAH J. ROBINSON-OTHER SELECT SCHOOLS-LAWS AFFECTING LAKE COUNTY SCHOOLS-FIRST TEACH- ERS' INSTITUTE-WILLIAM W. CHESHIRE-SCHOOL EXAMINERS OF THE COUNTY-FIRST NORMAL SCHOOL-LAKE COUNTY GYMNASIUM AND NORMAL SCHOOL-NORMAL SCHOOLS CONDUCTED BY COUNTY SUPERIN- TENDENTS-SCHOOL AND TOTAL POPULATION -- PRESENT-DAY FIELD OF COUNTY EDUCATION-OUTDOOR IMPROVEMENT OF COUNTRY SCHOOLS- INDOOR IMPROVEMENT-TEACHING CHILDREN HOW TO PLAY-AGRI- CULTURAL EDUCATION-WIDE USEFULNESS OF CONSOLIDATED SCHOOLS -IMPROVING THE TEACHING FORCE-STATISTICS, 1912-14.
The readers of this history have no practical interest in matters relat- ing to education previous to the year 1835, for the excellent reason that there were no schools within the present limits of Lake County before that time, and only one attempt had been made to instruct the few chil- dren in the Crown Point neighborhood when the county was civilly organized in 1837. The early acts of the State Legislature provided for the election of trustees and school commissioners, and for the distribution among the school districts (to be created from the congressional town- ships) of funds designed for the support of public education.
MONGREL SCHOOLS
It is believed that in the late '30s the teachers in some counties of Northwestern Indiana were paid from the public school funds and that these monies were distributed in districts which had established only private institutions. But Lake County was not sufficiently settled until some years later to receive such support generally, which is generally
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fixed at about 1842 or 1843. Even for some years subsequently many of the schools of the county were of a mongrel type-partly supported by neighborhood subscriptions and partly by the inadequate public funds distributed among the children in actual attendance.
The township trustees had charge of the schools, and the "ex- aminers," who passed upon the qualifications of the teachers, were appointed by the circuit judges.
FIRST SCHOOL IN THE COUNTY
The first school in Lake County was taught by Mrs. Harriet Warner Holton in the winter of 1835-36, the log cabin of one of the settlers at Solon Robinson's town having been thrown open for the purpose. Mrs. Holton was the daughter of Gen. Jonathan Warner, of a fine old Massa- chusetts family, was well educated and had taught in Vermont before her marriage to Alexander Holton, a lawyer, in 1804. After practicing , for a number of years in Indiana, the husband and father died in 1823, and in February, 1835, the widow located at Crown Point with one daughter, two sons, a daughter-in-law and two grandchildren. Mrs. Holton had seven sisters, nearly all of whom married professional men of New England-usually of high standing and wealth. They were all strong women, mentally and physically, and lived to be quite old.
DEATH OF MRS. HARRIET W. HOLTON
Lake County's first teacher died October 17, 1879, in her ninety- seventh year, having been born at Hardwick, Massachusetts, on the 15th of January, 1783. Her remains were borne to Crown Point cemetery, the progress of the funeral cortege being marked by the tolling of the courthouse bell; which was but a faint indication of the general affection and honor accorded this noble woman.
The second school of the county, after that taught by Mrs. Holton, was opened in the fall of 1837 at the Bryant settlement, in Pleasant Grove, which had been founded two years before by five brothers of that name. A man by the name of Collins was the teacher, and the log cabin of Samuel D. Bryant the schoolhouse. A citizen of Crown Point who was one of the scholars testified, after his experience had become a thing of the long past, that he vividly remembered said Collins as one thoroughly able to teach well and to wield the stick or the ruler with equal efficiency. The Mr. Bryant who owned the log house in which Mr. Collins thus held forth was one of the few members of his large family who made Lake County his permanent home. But first he returned to his old Ohio home
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By Courtesy of Frank F. Heighway, County Superintendent of Schools.
FRANKLIN SCHOOL, GRIFFITH
By Courtesy of Frank F. Heighway, County Superintendent of Schools.
GLEN PARK SCHOOL, CALUMET TOWNSHIP
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and remained there a number of years, in 1854 buying the farm south of Southeast Grove, on which he spent the remainder of his life and died as an octogenarian.
The next schoolhouse was built by Hervey Ball, on the west shore of Cedar Lake, in 1838; and it must have been quite early in that year, as the official records of the meeting held June 17th of that year for the organization of a Baptist society state that "a meeting was this day held at the schoolhouse at Cedar Lake." The Warriners, and the Balls, and the Churches, and the Cutlers appear to have formed a coterie for the dissemination of religious, literary and educational influences which for years made the settlement at Cedar Lake mueh respected and not a little renowned.
Both Mr. and Mrs. Ball were very competent teachers, and as they conducted the school at Cedar Lake together, for a number of years it was considered the most thorough and select institution of education in the county. At the time the Cedar Lake colony gathered, Timothy H. Ball, the eldest of their five children, was eleven years old. He attended the little school, and therefore speaks from direct observation when he speaks of it. its settings and its surroundings.
MRS. HERVEY (JANE A. II.) BALL
Like Mrs. Holton, Mrs. Ball was an educated and refined woman. Born in West Springfield, Massachusetts, in 1804, she was educated in the best schools of Hartford, Connecticut ; was proficient in penmanship, drawing, painting and map-making; was probably the best practical botanist who ever resided in the county, and the only woman of the early days who had studied the Hebrew language. William A. W. Holton, one of Mrs. Holton's sons, was school examiner when Mrs. Ball presented her- self before him at Crown Point that she might receive the certificate enti- tling her pupils to receive their due share of the public school money. It is needless to add that she "passed." Mrs. Ball commenced her active work as a teacher at once, continuing it for sixteen years, and, in an informal way, until her death in 1880. For about ten years that large log school- house at Cedar Lake was a center and a meeting place for schools, literary societies, for Sunday school and church work, and then was appropriated to private uses.
THE BALL BOARDING SCHOOL
T. H. Ball, who became such an active participant in all these activities himself, after deseribing the five Ball children, of whom he was the senior,
.
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says: "Associated with these in the Sabbath school and in the religious meetings were the children of the Warriner families, of the Church and Cutler families, of a Farwell family residing near the state line, and of other families that were for a time neighbors around the lake.
"A day school was commenced in 1838, which soon became a family and a boarding school, where attended, as boarders in the family, Maria Bradley, Melissa Gossett, Ann Nickerson, Sophia Cutler, Augustus Wood, Abby Wood and John Selkirk. Here much attention was given to spell- ing and penmanship, to reading and to English composition, as well as to other elementary branches; Latin and natural philosophy were dili- gently studied, and drawing, painting and botany were successfully taught. The largest and best library then in the county was accessible to these students, periodicals from the East were secured and diligently read; and while some read Paley's works, and Dicks', and Smelley's, and Johnson's and Addisons's, others read the writings of Cooper, and Bulwer, and many other choice writers of fiction. A somewhat curious mixture, both in respect to literary and religious writings, formed the range of reading for all the children of the lake household. It is not to be supposed that anything positively bad was within their reach, but they were left for the most part, or entirely, to their own taste and judgment in gaining a knowledge of some of the choicest of English literature, in reading the best of American novels and in becoming ac- quainted with such works as "Elizabeth the Exile of Siberia,' as Bulwer's 'Zan Oni' and the 'Last Days of Pompeii,' and even of such as Eugene Sue's 'Wandering Jew.' In their hands were the writings of Baxter and Doddridge and Flavel and Bunyan and Schougal, and also of Unitarian, Universalist and skeptical writers.
FIRST LITERARY SOCIETIES
"Connected with the school and home life of the lake household were two literary societies. An intense love for intellectual pursuits and for literary exercises had commenced to grow among the children before they left the valley of the Connecticut ; and here, notwithstanding the fascina- tions of the chase-and to hunt and read Ossian were for a time the great delights of the oldest boy, who was for several years the principal hunter of the family, furnishing large supplies of game-notwithstanding the great attractions of the lake, in summer for boating and bathing and fish- ing, and in winter for sliding and skating ;- here that love was cultivated, entering into every heart and rendering every one of the children in- tensely fond of literary efforts and intellectual life.
"Very soon, therefore, societies were organized. The first was called
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the Cedar Lake Lyceum. Visitors were admitted, but no girls were among its members. The second bore the name of the Cedar Lake Belles Lettres Society. This admitted girls to an equality of membership and participation in its exercises. It met onee each month, when sure of moonlight nights; the former society held meetings each week during the fall and winter. Between twenty and thirty young people derived much profit from the exercises of these two societies. When they had both accomplished their work they were disbanded; but several of the members retained a lifelong love for such exercises and for literary pur- suits."
EAST CEDAR LAKE TEACHERS
Among the early teachers on the east side of Cedar Lake were Albert Taylor, Lorin Hall and Norman Warriner, who taught in the winter of 1838-39, Miss H. Caroline Warriner, in the winter of 1843-44, and T. H. Ball himself a little later (some time in 1844). Others of these pioneers in the field of mental and moral training-for the two were seldom separ- ated in those days-were Eliza Kinyon, at Southeast Grove in 1843, Miss Rhoda Wallace in 1844, and Miss Ruby Wallace and her sister, now Mrs. William Brown, in 1845.
AN OLD-TIME SCHOOLHOUSE
As we have learned, not a few teachers of the pioneer era were men and women who were highly educated, several of them being clergy- men, and although then, as now, church and state were jealously parted by the constitution, in practice there was considerable admixture of religious and intellectual education. The teachers were far ahead of the schools and the appliances provided to further their work. As a descrip- tion of one of those erude, old-time schoolhouses will substantially apply to all, a picture is drawn of one built at a very early day in the southern part of the county. It was of unhewn logs, "chinked" with pieces of wood and plastered on the outside with clay mortar. The fireplace was made of compressed mortar, supported by pieces of wood, and the re- mainder of the chimney was built with long strips of wood, like lath, laid in common mortar. The roof was made of long shingles or clapboards, supported by logs and held in position by poles laid across each tier. No nails were used in the roof.
The internal arrangement was as crude as the outside of the building. The floor was made of puncheon split out of logs. The seats were made of slabs with the level surface upward, supported by wooden pegs and, of
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course, were without backs. The houses were generally warm in winter and comfortable enough for the kind.
SCHOOL FINANCES
The teachers boarded around with the parents of the scholars, the time of boarding at each place being in proportion to the number of scholars. At the end of the terms the teachers would make out their bills and collect them at their leisure. That arrangement, with the collec-
By Courtesy of Frank F. Heighway, County Superintendent of Schools.
ABANDONED DISTRICT SCHOOLS NOS. 4 AND 9
tion of such monies as could be obtained from small county and state funds, constituted the financial system by which the schools were sup- ported until the adoption of the state constitution of 1861.
Two DISTINGUISHED GRADUATES
But for twenty years previous to that year and for nearly a decade afterward, Lake County had several academie and boarding schools of really high grade. The pioneer of that class was the Cedar Lake institu- tion opened under the active direction of Mrs. J. A. H. Ball, which she conducted with such honor for sixteen years. During that period it sent six students to colleges and seminaries and fitted many for business and the varied duties of life. Among its boarders from other counties were five girls from City West, the ambitious town on Lake Michigan in Porter County. Two of them became well known both as academie teachers and church workers-Maria Bradley, who became Mrs. J. P. Early and Elisa-
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beth H. Ball, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Hervey Ball, who, after her school days, went to New York City and to Alabama, where she became a suc- cessful teacher in the Grove Hill Academy and married Judge Woodard, of Clarke County.
REV. WILLIAM TOWNLEY'S SCHOOL
About 1848 Rev. William Townley, pastor of the Presbyterian Church at Crown Point, opened an academic and boarding school, in which in- strumental musie was taught for the first time in the county. The school was so well conducted that after a time the teachers in the public schools of the locality, and for quite a district around, were largely its grad- uates. In November, 1852, Mr. Townley stated that he had had nearly five hundred scholars, and that not five young men had gone out as teach- ers. In 1856 he severed his connection with the church, closed his school in Crown Point and left for the West.
MISS MARY E. PARSONS AND MRS. SARAH J. ROBINSON
In the year named Miss Mary E. Parsons, a graduate of Mount Hol- yoke Seminary, having taught at Oxford, Ohio, opened a school at Crown Point to succeed the one closed. She accomplished much for the cause both of secular and Christian education, but her efforts were terminated by her death at Crown Point, on November 14, 1860.
A primary school for children was opened, about this time, by Mrs. Sarah J. Robinson, a daughter-in-law of Solon Robinson, and a young widow. She was pronounced by T. H. Ball to be "one of the best teachers of little children ever in Crown Point, kind, patient, loving, unselfish and truly Christian." In July of 1864 she went to Nashville in the serv- ice of the Christian Commission. She was also at Memphis, Vicksburg and New Orleans. She returned to Crown Point in September, 1865, but not to teach. In 1866 she was married to Dr. W. H. Harrison, an army surgeon, and went with him to Mexico.
OTHER SELECT SCHOOLS
The next schools of the county to be mentioned here are a girls' school started by Miss Martha Knight and Miss Kate Knight in 1865; the Crown Point Institute, also commenced in 1865, having a preparatory and collegiate course of study, and in one of its years having about sixty boarding pupils, educating a few hundred young men and young ladies and its property being sold to the Town of Crown Point in August, 1871, Vol. 1-14
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for $3,600; and the Tolleston school, established by A. Vander Naillen, a French mathematician, about 1866, in which was taught civil engineer- ing, and which was removed to Chicago in December, 1869.
LAWS AFFECTING LAKE COUNTY SCHOOLS
For a number of years previous to the adoption of the 1861 constitu- tion, the State Legislature had passed several measures which had tended to further the school interests of the several counties. By the act ap- proved January 17, 1849, certain taxes were to be assessed for school purposes, and the treasurer of the state was constituted the state super- intendent of common schools. Under the 1852 constitution the state superintendency was made a separate elective office.
By an act approved in March, 1855, each civil township was made school township, and the civil trustees were constituted school trustees, but in the enumeration of children of school age the trustee was still required to specify the congressional township in which the children resided. Incorporated towns and cities were now authorized to establish public and graded schools, and provision was made for township libraries. As in the act of 1849, negroes and mulattoes were still excluded from taxation, and their children from enumeration and school privileges. The children could attend the schools on payment of tuition, if no white persons objected.
By the act approved March 4, 1853, the school examiners were ap- pointed annually by the county commissioners, instead of by the cir- cuit judges. At first they were to examine teachers in orthography, read- ing, writing, arithmetic, geography and English grammar, physiology and United States history being afterward added. In legal regulations and in practice as well, the public school system of Lake County showed marked advancement in the early '50s. No cause contributed more to that progress than the establishment of teachers' institutes.
FIRST TEACHERS INSTITUTE
The first teachers institute in Lake County opened at Crown Point, on the 1st of November, 1852. From records made by Heman Ball, of Cedar Lake, the following extracts are given: "Left home at 4 o'clock for Crown Point amid the rain and mud. Went to the Presbyterian Church. The sexton was just lighting up the house. Went over to Mr. Townley's to inquire the prospects. In about half an hour Mr. Jewel, the superintendent, and Mr. Hawkins, of Laporte, arrived in the stage. After some salutatory remarks, the conversation turned upon the pros-
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pects of the institute and educational interests generally. Mr. Townley remarked that when he came here six years ago the district schools gen- erally were very poorly kept. He had supplied from his school most of the female teachers. He had had nearly five hundred scholars, and not five males had gone out as teachers. The cause-compensation not suf- ficient.
"At 7 o'clock went back to the church. Mr. Jewel gave the opening lecture. He said that he had been traveling all day over the prairie. He had been pleased with the almost boundless prospects. He thought that all that was wanted to make the people of the West great was energy and perseverance. He spoke of the educational prospects East and West ; of Normal schools as they exist in the Eastern States.
"Tuesday morning: The students assembled in the Presbyterian meeting house and organized by appointing a treasurer and seeretary. Morning exercises opened by prayer. Then we received instruction in vocal music and the best methods of teaching it in schools. This is followed by reading. A lecture is then given on physiology by the superintendent.
"During the later part of the week Dr. Boynton, a traveling lecturer, gave lectures illustrated by a manikin or artificial man.
"We are occupied the remainder of the forenoon upon mental and written arithmetic. The afternoon exercises are as follows: First, geography ; secondly, grammar ; thirdly, composition ; fourthly, a lecture upon school tacties. Public lectures are given every evening."
WILLIAM W. CHESHIRE
Such is the outline of the first teachers' institute held in Lake County, arranged and carried out by private enterprise. Since 1866 they have been held under state supervision and support, and have increased in seope and importance year by year. The institute of that year, con- ducted under the Indiana State law, was held during the term of more than three years that William W. Cheshire was school examiner of the county.
Mr. Cheshire, who accomplished so much good for the early system of public education in Lake County, was a southern man, born in North Carolina, and a foot-traveler to Indiana. He first went to work on a farm, in 1854 was a student in Franklin College, and graduated at Miami University in June, 1858. Next, he became a teacher, in 1861 married Miss Bessie Boone, and a few months afterward came with her to Crown Point. On September 2, 1861, he opened a select school, but soon was appointed superintendent of the Crown Point public school, and in June,
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1864, school examiner. At that time, he held the office but nine months, but was reappointed twice afterward-first, in December, 1865, wben he held office two years and six months, and secondly, in October, 1878, after the office of county superintendent had succeeded that of examiner, continuing in the latter office three years and six months. The period between his terms as county examiner and superintendent he had served as county clerk, and he relinquished his work as an educator to assume his duties as examiner of pensions at Washington.
William W. Cheshire stands among the foremost of those who placed the public school system of Lake County on a broad and modern basis, and, as has been stated, no early influence contributing to its develop- ment has been stronger than that exerted through the work of the teachers' institutes.
CHESHIRE HALL
During his active career in Crown Point, Mr. Cheshire erected a building, or hall, which was devoted to public purposes for some years, and received his name. Cheshire Hall is thus described by Mrs. Belle Wheeler, wife of John J. Wheeler, and granddaughter of Solon Robin- son, thirty years ago: "When in the year 1873 the building was erected which contained the large room fitted up with every convenience, as we thought, for the holding of lectures, concerts, dramas and the like, the town had reason to feel proud of having a town hall which, after proper dedicatory exercises, received the name of its owner and builder, Mr. W. W. Cheshire, who came here from the South during the War to take charge of our publie schools, and has since remained a citizen, being now absent in Government service. The county was also greatly benefitted, for here the institutes, the political speeches, and all forms of public meetings were held. It has been the scene of many happy gatherings, and its audiences have listened to some of the lecturers of these times, the most notable of which were given under the auspices of the Lecture Club, of which Mrs. J. W. Youche was secretary, and from whose books we glean the following: There were given lectures by Professor Swing, Rev. Dr. Thomas, Will Carleton, Phoebe Cousins, Fanny McCartney, Rev. Mr. Mercer, General Kilpatrick, Mrs. Livermore, Mrs. Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Dr. Brook Hereford, Benjamin F. Tay- lor and Mrs. Dunn ; a series of five lectures by James K. Applebee ; read- ing by Laura E. Dainty; entertainments by the Hutchinson family and others. After the walls of this hall have echoed the talented voices of such a long list of lecturers of world-wide fame, it can never be utterly
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