USA > Indiana > Delaware County > A twentieth century history of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 26
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Manufacturing.
Muncie is still an important manufacturing city, though the days of cheap natural gas are over, and a brief review may be taken of industrial interests during this century. The United States census for 1900 enumer- ated 347 industrial establishments in Muncie, of which the combined capital amounted to nearly eight million dollars. There were 6,294 wage earners, and more than three million dollars each year went to them in salaries. The value of the products for 1900 was estimated at over twelve million dollars. The two chief interests were the steel and glass industries, the former of which paid nearly a million in wages, and the latter nearly nine
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233
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
hundred thousand dollars. All of these are impressive figures, and prove that manufacturing is the largest interest of the city.
More recent figures are furnished by the state statistician, whose report covers 1905. Evidently his data was somewhat different from that ob- tained by the federal bureau, and comparisons between the two sets of figures are probably misleading. According to the state statistician, Muncie had, in 1905, 102 manufacturing establishments, against 90 in 1900. In :905 the invested capital in these concerns amounted to nearly five millions, the value of the products was six and a half millions, and the 3,074 wage earners divided a million and a half in salaries. From 1900 to 1905, the in- vested capital increased thirty-five per cent, but it is noticeable that the num- ber of wage earnerns decreased 20.1 per cent, the amount of wages de- creased 22.6 per cent, and the value of the products decreased 8 per cent. Among eight Indiana cities with more than twenty thousand population, Muncie's factories increased in number 13.3 per cent, standing fourth in the list ; but the increase in value of products was but eight per cent, placing Muncie seventh in the list of cities.
General Progress.
It is a very common habit for people, in fixing their attention on the ideals of the future or counting the milestones that have long been passed, to fail to perceive the progress that is being made at present. They forget to measure the increase of culture, the diffusion of knowledge, the accumula- tion of comforts that every decade brings. Some features of present-day life are so familiar that they are unnoticed as instruments or results of prog- ress, and yet they will be so regarded in the future. Among the many changes of the past few years, we have spoken of those produced by the interurban service. The population from the county mingles with that of the town with scarcely any obvious distinctions, and as the conveniences and comforts of life become more general, so the tastes of people are refined. Amusements have changed much in recent years. The prevalence of the- atricals of all kinds, the "five-cent shows," are developments of this period that undoubtedly mark the beginning of important changes in the future. Music is everywhere, produced mechanically, and while it is not the highest grade, it is responsible for the formation of tastes that were unknown to most people a quarter of a century ago.
The last five years have witnessed a moral movement in Muncie and the county at large, the results of which are distinctly beneficial. Reference has been made to the conditions that marked Muncie's carly career as a. manufacturing city. The ill-repute borne by the city in consequence is rapidly disappearing, if it has not already gone. The churches and both the organized and unorganized forces for civic righteousness have done
234
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
much in the last decade. In the county at large, outside of Muncie, !!:: most important public question is the liquor traffic, and several com. munities have been and are bitterly divided in this matter. In Muncie, opposition has been directed not so much against the liquor dealing a, such, but rather against the vice and immorality that find protection lx- hind the legal saloon interests. As a result of quickened public opinion and unusual police activity, it is conceded that wine rooms and the worst resorts have been abolished.
The works of charity have also advanced. In 1900 the Associate! Charities of Muncie and Delaware County was organized as a general society to which are affiliated the many benevolent organizations. For the past five years a public hospital for Muncie and the county has been the object of much discussion and individual and organized effort. There has recently been renewed activity on the part of the promoters, and with the substantial contributions that have elsewhere been noticed, it is pos- sible that such an important public institution will soon be built.
The improvement of the city with respect to cleanliness of streets and alleys, the planting of trees, and the renovation of unwholesome dis- tricts, has been actively prosecuted during the past five years. The small- pox epidemic of 1893 has ever since been a stimulus for sanitation to prevent such a recurrence. The bridges across White river are another case where steel and concrete structures are taking the place of the older type. The old covered bridge across the river on Walnut street which was one of the old landmarks, was removed about 1900.
Shiner's Point.
While speaking of this kind of changes, this history should not omit the district famous in Muncie as "Shiner's Point." This will soon be only a memory, for the old houses, heaps of rubbish, and other miscellaneous material that were the distinguishing features of the Point are being re- moved or destroyed. This became possible through the recent death of the owner of the land that has so long been known as Shiner's Point. His name was Rutherford Powell, and he was about eighty years old at the time of his death. A shiftless sort of fellow, he drifted into Muncie after the war and for ninety dollars bought of Henry Wysor the narrow strip of land along the river north of Washington street. His accumulations of rubbish gradually extended his property out into the river, and on the "point" thus made he built his houses. The wife whom he married after coming to . Muncie finally left him, but he continued his quiet existence unchanged by the changes around him, and persisted in keeping the disorder and unsightli- ness of the premises until his death.
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CHAPTER XX.
EDUCATION IN DELAWARE COUNTY.
The first schoolhouse in Delaware county was built by the pioneers oi Perry township in 1827. Seven years before, the first considerable group oi settlers had located in this township, that being the first permanent settlement in the county. The fact that these first settlers and many of their successors came from Wayne county, which has always been one of the educational strongholds of Indiana, may have had some bearing on the first attempts at education in the county.
That first schoolhouse, erected just eighty years before this writing, has long been an object of historical and sentimental interest for the people of Delaware county. Many years ago a Muncie schoolboy, who had listened many times to a pioneer's description of the schoolhouse, constructed a model of this first temple of learning in the county, and succeeded so well in reproducing the original that the miniature was part of Indiana's ex- hibit at the Philadelphia centennial, and drawings and cuts of the model have been used as a perfect representation of the first schoolhouse.
This school building was a fair type of the schoolhouses attended by the children of the pioneers. This one was twenty feet square, with ceil- ing eight feet high; built of round logs, fitted over each other by rough notching at the end ; probably a puncheon floor, and a roof made of "shakes" split out with an axe, and bound down by long poles. Hardly a piece of iron in the shape of a nail went into the make-up. The door frame may have been smoothed and squared so the door would close tight; but it is likely that the door sagged as it swung on its wooden pivots or hinges. The cracks between the logs were chinked with mud or clay plaster most frequently. On the opposite side of the room from the door was the wide fireplace; its bottom a broad, flat stone or beaten clay, surrounded with a circle of Sones or burnt clay extending up above the reach of the flames, and then continuing in a "mud and stick" chimney, the stick scaffolding supporting and giving shape to the hardened mud plaster in which it was embedded. From each of the other two sides of the room, about five or six feet from the floor, one of the horizontal logs had been cut out for the greater part of its length, and the opening thus left was the "window." To admit light and at the same time exclude the cold winds, greased paper was stretched over this aperture, window glass being one of the later importa- tions in a pioneer community.
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
While the exterior form of the school buildings varied, the interior furnishings remained about the same throughout what may be termed the pioneer period, in fact, until after the middle of the last century. The rough walls of the room were unadorned except as the individual taste of the teacher might seek to relieve its dreariness. The seats were primitive. They were nothing more than a split log with the flat surface up, and resting on legs driven into holes on the under side, or the timber for the seat might be a plank with some attempt at smoothing the top surface. But there were no backs to these benches. There were no desks in the modern sense of the term. Around two or three sides of the room was fixed a broad board, with a slant convenient for the writer, and on this the pupils, or as many of them as this rough form of desk would accomodate, did their "copy book" writing. A piece of slate was used for all calculations, and paper was only used for penmanship exercises.
Of school apparatus there was none. Even the first forms of black- board were not introduced for some years. Graphite pencils were also unknown. A "pen knife" was then a necessary part of the teacher's equip- ment, for he used that instrument in a way to suggest the name, that is, to make for cach scholar a pen from a selected goosequill. Paper was coarse and expensive, and the era of cheap wood-pulp paper tablets did not begin until comparatively recently.
Many pages might be written about these early schools. But nearly all were of the general type which prevailed in every county of Indiana during that period, and in fact in every state of the middle west. It is a tribute to the character of the pioneers that, within so short a time after reaching a new locality, they concerned themselves with providing some kind of school facilities for their children. Coming from whatever sections of the Union, most of the settlers understood the fundamental importance of education and, as a matter of course, included schools among their foremost plans for permanent settlement. A site was selected, a clearing was made, the standing trees would quickly be converted into some such building as has been described, and as soon as a teacher could be found the children of each pioneer home would begin attendance, often finding their way to the schoolhouse along a path indicated by blazed trees.
The building of the first schoolhouse in Perry township does not nec- essarily fix the date for the beginning of education in the county. The writer has not found any traditions that some of the pioncer mothers of Delaware county turned their spinning wheels and taught the children of the neighborhood at the same time, but it is probable that this happened in some individual homes at least, and in the majority of households the mother and father did what they could in assisting the children to learn the rudiments.
239
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
Pioneer Education.
These voluntary endeavors to provide literary instruction were the basis and principal support of all the common schools in Indiana until about the middle of the century. The first schoolhouses were built not because the laws of the nation, state or county commanded the people to build them, but because the people themselves chose to take this initiative and in spite of the fact that for many years little or no financial support was received from the civil authorities for the maintenance of schools.
The first constitution of Indiana, adopted in 1816, provided for educa- tion. Yet in an early day the cause advanced slowly. There was no school law under the territorial government, nor any state law on common schools until 1824. Nearly all the schoolhouses built both before and for some time after that date were erected by voluntary efforts of neighborhoods ; and all schools were supported by agreement between teachers and patrons. The one definite provision for education made by the national government, in planning the disposition of the public domain, set aside section 16 in every township for the maintenance of public schools. When Indiana became a state the care of these school sections was entrusted to the state govern- ment ; so that, while the other sections of the township were entered at the government land office, this section 16 was disposed of by local officials se- lected by the state, and the proceeds turned over for the support of schools in that particular township. Indiana and Michigan pursued very different policies with reference to this common school fund. In Michigan the pro- ceeds from the sale of the school sections were turned into a common state fund, and the income distributed to each locality according to the school population. Evidently many of the school sections proved of little value, while others sold for a high price, thus causing a wide divergence between the amounts derived from the various townships. In Indiana, since the proceeds of the school section were devoted to the benefit of the schools in the township where the section was located, the inequity of the system proved one of the greatest weaknesses of the common school system during the first half of the century. One township would receive a disproportion- ately large income for its schools, while perhaps the one adjoining, because section 16 had sold for only a few dollars, had no income for the support of schools except the local tax.
In 1824 the general assembly passed an act to incorporate congressional townships and provide for public schools therein. The act provided for the election in each congressional township of three persons of the township to act as school trustees, to whom the control of the school lands and the schools generally was given; and for the building of schoolhouses. Every able-bodied person in each school district who was over twenty-one years
210
HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
of age must work one day in each week, or else pay thirty-seven and one. half cents in lieu of a day's work, until the schoolhouse was built. Almost every session of the legislature witnessed some addition to or modification of the school law. Provision was made for the appointment of school ex- aminers, but the examinations might be private, and the examiners were quite irresponsible. Under such circumstances it could not be expected that competent teachers be employed. Often the most trivial questions were asked a teacher, and this was called an examination. In many instances there was no examination at all-the teacher was simply engaged to teach.
A free school system was not provided for until after 1850. Each district had complete jurisdiction over its school affairs, deciding every question concerning the building of a schoolhouse, and the regulation of local school affairs. The taxes for building the schoolhouse and for the support of the teacher was raised by the authority of the district, and the amount of tuition to be assessed against each child attend- ing school was fixed by the local board. There was no considerable state school fund until after 1837, so that the annual distribution of school money by the state had little effect on the individual schools. With local taxation kept down to a minimum amount by nearly all the counties, the school system of Indiana soon became a reproach to its free institutions. It was during this depressing period of educational backwardness that the word "Hoosier" became a term of derision, denoting the uncouth and ignorant countryman that the inhabitant of Indiana was supposed by most easterners to be.
Literacy in Delaware County.
In 1840 one-seventh of the adult population of Indiana could not read nor write, and many of those who could were densely ignorant. While one out of seven was illiterate in Indiana, the proportion in Ohio was only one out of eighteen. Ohio raised $200,000 in 1845 for common schools, while Indiana had no means of raising such tax. In the matter of literacy, . Indiana stood sixteenth among twenty-three states in IS40; in 1850 she was twenty-third among twenty-six states, "lower than all the slave states but three," as Caleb Mills expressed it. The following table contains some in- teresting figures showing the population of Delaware county and some of its neighbors in 1840 and in 1850, and the number of illiterates over twenty years of age in the same years :
Counties-
Pop., 1540.
Illiterates. 366
Pop., 1850. Illiterates.
Delaware
8,843
10,976
1.069
Grant
4,575
321
11,092
1.23%
Henry
15,128
495
17,668 .
1.21$
Jay
3,863
395
7,051
422
Madison
8,374
332
12,497
1,135
Wayne
23,290
42
25,900
1.065
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IHISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
It is seen that there was a rapid increase in most of the counties named in the number of illiterates between 1840 and 1850. Wayne county was the center of the Quaker settlements, where education was one of the chief con- cerns, and in 18440, with only 42 persons who could not read or write, this county had a remarkable record. But during the following decade, it is presumed, the inadequacy of Indiana's provisions for common schools de- prived thousands of children of the most rudimentary education, and the number of illiterates in Wayne county as well as elsewhere increased many times. A like increase out of proportion to the total population is shown in Delaware county.
With such alarming statistics before them, the people of Indiana were scon awakened to their educational necessities by such agitators as Caleb Mills, whose memorials to the legislature form a most important contribu- tion to the history of education in Indiana. Finally, on May 20, 1847, a state common school convention met in Indianapolis. Many prominent men were present, among them Oliver H. Smith of Delaware county, and their deliberations determined that: Common schools must be free; that the time had come for action by the state; that the revenue already provided must be increased by taxation until sufficient to maintain at least three months' free school each year.
Free Schools.
One of the results of this convention was that, at the general election of 1848, a question of public policy was referred to the voters, whether a law should be enacted "for raising by taxation an amount which, added to the present school funds, should be sufficient to support free common schools in all the school districts in the state not less than three nor more than six months each year." This was the question of free schools. At the election 78,523 votes were cast in the affirmative; 61,887 against it. Fiity-nine counties gave majorities in favor of free schools; thirty-one voted against them. Delaware county showed herself adverse to the estab- lishment of free schools by a vote of 715 for them and 808 against them. It is interesting to compare the attitude taken by the neighboring counties with reference to the same proposition. The vote follows:
Counties-
For Free Schools. 1,339
Against.
Randolph
573
Jay
503
1.7
Blackford
245
87
Henry
1.072
1,404
Madison
488
1,182
Grant
S80
424
Wayne
2,492
1,420
LaPorte
1,712
207
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
It will be noticed that La Porte, one of the counties on the northern line of the state, and settled largely by New England people, gave a heavy majority for free schools, as did all the northern Indiana counties. To ex- plain satisfactorily the results of the vote in Delaware county and vicinity seems impossible, except that the sentiment for free schools seemed weakest in those counties whose percentage of illiteracy had been greatest.
The following legislature provided for a general tax for the support of common schools, and then referred the law to the people for approval. This question was in concrete form and touched the people more nearly since it provided for increased taxation. The voters of Delaware county showed themselves averse to any such taxation by giving a majority of 286 against the law. In the state at large the law was approved by a vote of 79,079, against 63,312, sixty-one counties voting for the measure and twenty-nine against it.
But before this law became effective for the improvement of the sclicols, a new constitution was adopted by the people, and pursuant to the provision that a general system of education should be established the school law of June 14, 1852, was passed. This marked the passing of the district system of schools and the beginning of the era of actual free schools. It abolished the congressional township as limiting school organizations, and made the civil townships into school corporations. Cities and incorporated towns were made school corporations distinct from the townships in which located.
Delaware County Seminary.
In the scheme of education that prevailed before the adoption of the new constitution, the place now taken by the township high school was taken by the county seminary, which was supposed to offer instruction in- termediate between that of the common school and the state university. The Delaware County Seminary during its existence gave instruction to hun- dreds of boys and girls who otherwise would never have received any of what was then considered the "higher education," and many of the best , known people of the county were students in that institution. To "graduate from the Seminary" was equivalent to graduation from the high school of this time, and because schools of that grade were not so numerous and their privileges not so free and attainable as those of the high schools now, at- tendance at the Seminary was doubtless esteemed as the highest educational . advantage.
The County Seminary was established in IS41, its first trustees being B. F. Haycock, Samuel G. Campbell and Jolin Jack. A square was donated by George W. Garst, upon which a building was constructed and many other citizens contributed generously. One of the first teachers was Volney
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HISTORY OF DELAWARE COUNTY
Willson. For several years the Seminary was little better than a com- mon school, but with the advent of James S. Ferris as principal in 1847, the school was advanced to the rank which its name implied. Associated with him was Russell B. Abbott, and both are still gratefully remembered by some who were pupils during the late forties. Mr. Ferris resigned in the summer of 1850, and was succeeded by G. W. Hoss, a graduate of Asbury University. Other teachers were Pierre L. Munnis and Marshall White. In later years, before the development of the high schools, there were several private academies that gave many young people the educa- tion which they needed above that offered by the common schools. Luther W. Emerson, George HI. Richardson,* E. J. Rice and William Richardson are those who are specially mentioned in this connection.
The following is a list of the students attending the Delaware County Seminary during the spring session ending May 22, 1846:
FEMALES.
Alinira Davis, Martha J. Davis, El zabeth Dragoo, Mary Russey. Cynthia R. Harlan, Melissa A. Turner, Sarah E. Taylor,
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Mary E. Neely, Martha J. Neely, Emily E. Jack, Mary F. Willard, Emily C. Willard, Anna Halstead,
Clara A. Jackson,
Frances C. Sayre,
Martha A. Janes,
Mary A. Perkins,
Margaret Griffin,
Mary M. Rockinfield,
Phoebe A. Davis,
Margaret A. Conn,
Etbelinda Cooper,
Samantha Cooper,
Sarah A. Stewart, Cynthia J. Brown, Josephine Norris, Emily Comerford, Eliza Hoon.
Nancy J. Martin, Henrietta Williams, Seloma Coffeen, Sarah Docherty, Melvina Swain,
Rachel A. Salisbury,
Mary J. Salisbury,
Psyche A. Jewell, Irene .Jewell,
Nancy M. Fisher,
Margaret A. Cunningham.
MALES.
William Coffeen, Martin R. Harlan, Alfred Rhodes,
Samuel Janes.
Ithamer W. Russey,
ITenry C. Hodge,
Thadeus Halstead, John Hoon, Minus B. Marshall,
* Killed at the battle of South Mountain, Maryland, September 14, 1862.
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Mary E. Taylor,
Mizabeth K. Jackson,
Hannah A. Janes,
Elith Dragoo. Clarissa Griffin,
Juliet Minshall, Elizabeth Sutton,
Nancy E. Nottingham,
Narcissa Simmons, Mary E. Barnes,
Oliver J. Norris, Harvey M1. Perkins, Nathaniel F. Ethell, James Johnson, Henry C. Sayre,
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