USA > Indiana > Delaware County > A twentieth century history of Delaware County, Indiana, Volume I > Part 28
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The fall of 1902 found consolidations in five other localities. In Mon- roe township the first consolidation was district No. 6 with No. 5 (Cowan). In Center the Boyceton school (No. 11) was combined with Whitely (No. 14). In Perry the first real consolidation was effected. Petitions from four districts, Nos. 7, S, 2 and 6, were filed with the trustee, and at the beginning of the fall termis four wagons were installed to carry the pupils of these districts to school No. 9. In the same year the Selma school in Liberty was increased by the granting of petitions from districts Nos. 2 and 3 that these schools be discontinued and their pupils conveyed to Selma.
In Union township Trustee Stradling had abandoned district No. 8 about 1899, but at that time sentiment was against the discontinuance of the old school districts and nothing in the way of real consolidation was
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done until 1902. By this time public opinion had so changed that no ob- jections were made when district No. 6 was combined with No. 7.
1903-04.
Consolidation in this year was notable for the reversion of several dis- tricts to their original form. Despite the patent advantages in consolida- tion, the new system has everywhere made progress slowly. There is a sentimental attachment for the old district schools that becomes a formid- able obstruction in the movement to establish fewer and better schools. The old school at the crossroads, within walking distance of every house in the district, was good enough for the preceding generation, why should the children of today be removed from their familiar home surroundings and conveyed four or five miles to be among strange associates? The district school was a central point in the community, and almost without exception in this part of the middle west was the pioneer institution. It preceded the church. There the settlers met to vote and perform civil business ; there the problems that confront a new social organization were discussed and solved; there the people met for social enjoyment, and there they came to- gether for religious worship. The schoolhouse was the focal point of pio- neer life, and it is not strange that the descendants of the pioneers parted with the institution so regretfully and often unwillingly. For this reason and for various specific and local causes, sentiment has usually been divided on the subject of district consolidation, and the effective work accomplished in this county is the result of persistent argument and progressive activity on the part of the township trustees and the county superintendent.
In 1903 the Pike's Peak school (No. 2) in Salem township was re- established with its original limits, the patrons having become dissatisfied with consolidation, and at the present writing this district still maintains a separate school. But to take the place of No. 2, the Davis school (No. 9) was added to the Cross Roads school, and also No. 7 (Center school) was abandoned and its pupils distributed between the Cross Roads and the Dale- ville schools. District No. 7 retained its boundaries and was re-established in 1905, and in the meantime as no wagon was used to convey its pupils, no real consolidation was effected.
In Monroe township in this year, No. 8 was abandoned, the pupils going to Cowan, and also the children residing in that part of district No. to lying within Monroe township were added to Cowan (No. 5). In Perry township there was a breaking away from consolidation, when districts Nos. 2 and 6 were re-established. In Liberty township the Selma school was still further increased by the conveyance of the pupils of district No. I to that point. The first consolidation in Niles township was effected in 1903 when No. 4 was combined with No. 9.
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1904-05.
Salem and Perry townships were the points of activity this year. In Salem No. S was consolidated with Cross Roads, making the latter the center of four original districts. In Perry a change of sentiment occurred favoring consolidation, and Nos. 2 and 6, which in the previous year had withdrawn, were again united with district No. 9.
1905-06.
School No. 9 was rapidly becoming the central and principal school of Perry township. In 1905 two new districts, Nos. 3 and 4, were annexed to it, making six districts that had been consolidated within the past three years.
In Salem township a new division of districts was made, by which No. 7 was re-established and enlarged by the annexation of No. 8, which was taken from No. 10.
In Liberty township Nos. 7 and 1I began taking their pupils to Selma.
In this year the first schools were consolidated in Delaware township. The town of Albany already had a good graded school and drew to it a number of children from the surrounding country. In 1905 the Stafford school (No. 2) was consolidated with the Albany town school. In addition, district No. 4 was combined with district No. 9, though without grading, and No. 8 was combined with No. II.
In Center township No. I was combined with No. 14 (Whitely), and also the wagon that had previously conveyed the pupils from the Center- Hamilton joint district to the Riverside school now brought them to Whitely.
1906.
This year is notable by Washington township entering the consolidation movement. The Gaston school (No. 10) was a natural center for graded school work, and in the fall of 1906 districts Nos. 8, 9 and II were combined with it. In the same year school No. 9 in Perry received the pupils of dis- trict No. 1, and the Selma school district increased its area by the inclusion of districts Nos. 6 and S.
1907.
A new law became effective in the spring of this year, favoring the consolidation movement. This made it obligatory upon a trustee, when the average attendance in a district fell below twelve, to abandon the school and find education for the pupils in another district. This law has already affected schools in four townships. In Salem, district No. 12 had to be abandoned, the pupils now going to Daleville. In Monroe, No. 2 was aban- doned and combined with No. 5 (Cowan). In Niles, the pupils of No. 7 have been combined with No. 9, and in Delaware township school No. 10 has been annexed to Albany.
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Besides these schools that have been abandoned according to the new law, regular consolidation has been effected in several other instances. In Monroe township No. 4 has been consolidated with No. 5. This year has seen the complete consolidation of Liberty township into one district, with Selma school at the center. No. 9 was the last outlying school to come in, and at this date the thirty-six square miles of Liberty's arca are all in- cluded in one school jurisdiction, and every child in the township has school advantages hardly inferior to the best city schools.
In the southwest corner of Delaware township the sentiment of the people has been for consolidation during the past seven years. The De Soto school (No II) is the natural center for a consolidated district, and yet owing to the lack of building accommodations the trustee has never been able until this year to permit consolidation. At various times as far back as 1900 districts Nos. 8, 9, and 4 have petitioned to combine with De Soto, In 1907, in answer to another set of petitions from Nos. 4 and 9, the trustee granted consolidation and at this writing a new building is in process of construction in De Soto to accommodate the increased attendance .at that point. No. 5 is also combined with De Soto, and in consequence of school- house No. 7 having been burned a short time before the opening of the school term, it has become necessary for the pupils of that district also to at- tend at De Soto.
Some of the results of consolidation may be briefly stated. It is less than ten years since the movement started in this county, and the consolidated districts now embrace nearly half the entire arca of the county. Mt. Pleasant and Harrison townships are the only ones in which consolidation has as yet obtained no foothold. The other townships have arcas under consolidation as follows : Liberty, 36 (square miles ) ; Perry, 27; Hamilton, 25; Delaware, 23; Salem, 22 ; Monroe, 147/2 ; Center (exclusive of Muncie), 12; Washing- ton, 10; Niles, 10; Union, 6. Out of a total area of 395 square miles, outside of Muncie, 1851/2 square miles are consolidated, practically one-half the county. Evidently consolidation has passed the experimental stage in this county. The conveyance of pupils has been proved practicable and less expensive than the wages of a separate teacher. The increased efficiency of the central school is in itself the best vindication of the system.
Representative Consolidated Schools.
Royerton had the first modern school building for the accommodation of the pupils of the combined districts. In 1903 a four-room addition was built to the two-room school which had first served the district. The building, which stands on the south edge of the village, is the best public structure in Hamilton township and in every way a credit to the school architecture of the county. It is a two-story brick building, with large corridors on the second
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floor which are converted into an auditorium seating three hundred persons. In the basement is a lavatory, a modern steam heating apparatus is a welcome change from the stove to which many pupils had been accustomed in the old district schoolhouse, and in convenience, comforts and sanitation the Royerton school is equal to most city schoolhouses. The cost of the building was $17,500. The Royerton high school has a recognized efficiency in second education, having been recently commissioned by the state uni- versity. The school has seven teachers and is maintained eight months in the year. The average daily attendance of pupils in Hamilton township is 309, all but five square miles belonging to the consolidated arca. The daily cost per pupil, including transportation, is about 16 cents. Going back about twenty years, we find that with a school term of six months, the average cost per day was between ten and twelve cents per pupil. In 1884 a teacher's pay averaged $1.85 a day, while now it is $2.93. Taking these things into consideration, the average daily cost per pupil under the new system is very little more than it was twenty years ago, while even the most prejudiced would have to admit that the advantages offered by the Royerton school are far and away superior to those afforded in the best dis- trict schools. Some of the teachers are university graduates, all have had special training for their work, and the classification of pupils in grades makes the teachers' work more casy and more efficient.
The handsomest school building in the county, outside of Muncie, is that which was built in Selma in 1904. As already mentioned, Selma had a four-room building erected many years ago before consolidation was thought of. With the enlargement of district No. 5, more room was nec- essary, and the structure which is now used for school purposes for all the children of Liberty township is a two-story, eight-room brick and stone building that cost about $23,000, and is thoroughly modern. This and other schools erected during the last few years have a special excellence of design that suits them to all the demands that may be made upon them in the future as in the present. This design might be called a multiple unit sys- tem, the unit being a two-story two-room building complete in itself, and yet capable of combination with similar units so that a house of four, six or eight rooms may be made as needed. Thus, the Selma school is really a combina- tion of four structural units, joined by corridors that in themselves increase the floor space of the building and afford, on the second floor, an auditorium with seating capacity for 700. An automatic steam blast heating apparatus is another modern feature of this building. The average attendance at the Selma school during 1906-07 was about 310, of whom 269 were transported at public expense. For the entire year there were but 68 cases of tardiness.
In Perry township, Center school, in the center of the township, was originally a district school. In 1899 a high school department had been
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Consolidated School at Royerton.
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established in a store building at New Burlington, but this arrangement was not satisfactory to the people in the east side of the township, and the result was the addition of a one-room building to the Center school to be used for high school purposes. There was no consolidation as yet, but the en- larged Center school was the nucleus around which consolidation was effected. In 1902. when the four districts were combined with Center (No. 0), the room which had been used for high school purposes was partitioned into two rooms, making three rooms for the accommodation of the grades. These rooms were used until the construction of the present building, which was finished about January, 1906. The Perry schoolhouse is built of cement blocks, is a two-story, four-room building, with an auditorium and cost about $12,000, being equipped with mechanical furnace and all the con- veniences. There are four teachers. The enrollment is 212, of whom 203 are conveyed at public expense. The average attendance during the past year was 168. The other school in the township, the only district not con- solidated, has an enrollment of 57.
The DeSoto building, already mentioned, was constructed in 1907, at a cost of $13.000, and is a two-story, brick, four rooms, and with the audi- torium feature. Two other township buildings should be mentioned. In 1902 Center township erected the Roosevelt school in Congerville, a two- story brick, six rooms, costing about $14,000. Properly speaking this is a district school, built to accommodate the large school population in Muncie's suburb. However, the old joint district on the south edge of the township has been added to the Congerville school, and one wagon conveys the pupils from that neighborhood. The Longfellow school in Whitely is another hand- some township school, erected by Center township in 1905, a two-story, eight- room brick building on a fine campus near McCulloch park, and costing about $25,000. The Whitely school, at the beginning of the consolidation movement which resulted in several districts being annexed to it, was located in a four-room frame building two blocks east of the present site.
MUNCIE SCHOOLS.
An account of the Delaware County Seminary and of the establishment of the first school on the site of Muncie has been given. Besides these facts, little of interest can be said about Muncie schools for a number of years. A belief that school facilities were not up to the standard during the forties is evidenced in the following excerpts from a criticism that appeared in the Muncie Journal March 21, 1846: "The town of Muncie has, I believe, about Soo inhabitants which would give 133 children between the ages of 6 and 14 who should be constantly in school. From 6 to 16 constitute one-fourth of the population. This would give two hundred. Now deduct 25 per cent for necessary detention and you have 150 children in your town
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which should be at school. What are the facts as to the number actually attending school? Not 60, including those from the country and over 16. Look at your sister county, Randolph. The seminary at Win- chester has over one hundred students. . And yet the population of Win- chester is less than that of Muncie."
Muncie schools were under the direction of the township trustee until I853, and were supported only by the townshhip school fund and general tax. Under such conditions free public schools were not possible, and "pay schools" were the rule with the exception of a few weeks each year. In June, 1853, a special school tax was voted down, but in the fall of the same year the proposition to levy a special tax carried. At this time Muncie had two schools, one of them in the seminary building, and the other, becoming too large for the schoolroom, was moved, about I854, to the Methodist church.
During the ten years from 1855, while Muncie was a town corporation, the officials under whose direction the schools were improved were F. E. Putnam, Wm. F. Jones, Edward G. Keasby, who were on the board most of this period, George W. Spilker and Robert Winton serving brief terms. These trustees, in their report for 1859, said that in the spring of 1855 they "had found the corporation without schoolhouse or real estate, with the cx- ception of one lot." In that year the trustees bought the old seminary build- ing, and in the spring of 1856 commenced the erection of a new schoolhouse, which, until torn down to make room for the modern building, was the south room of the Washington school. A. J. Finch was principal in the Wash- ington building and O. S. Howe in the seminary building. With an enumera- tion of nearly four hundred, even then there was not sufficient room. It is said that when a family was largely represented in school, the younger mem- bers were told to go home and remain until there should be more room or the older ones had completed their course. With the repairs and additions to the seminary, these two buildings served for school purposes until Muncie became a city. Until a few weeks, three months at most, of free school was afforded, each family contributing its share to support school for additional time.
Arthur F. Patterson, John A. Husted and Stacy A. Haines were the first school board under city government in 1865. They found the Wash- ington school in good condition, capable of accommodating about three hun- dred pupils, but pronounced the seminary building unfit for use. In the meantime the school enumeration had increased to nearly eight hundred, with an enrollment of over six hundred, so that the Washington school could not accommodate more than a third of the children in the city. It was finally decided to remove the seminary building and build a two-story brick struc- ture on the site. At a total cost of nearly $S,ooo a schoolhouse, 33 by 65
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Prof. George H. Richardson Resigned his position as principal of Muncie Schools to enter army. and was killed at South Mountain, Maryland. Sep. 14th 1862.
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feet, and two stories, was completed by December, 1866, and thenceforth was known as the Jefferson school. This location, when first occupied by the seminary, was thought to be out in the country. Many persons are still living who were pupils of the city schools about this time, and will be inter- ested in recalling the names of the teachers; they were: Charles R. Paine, superintendent ; Julia Gilbert, grammer room; Sophia Gilbert, intermediate, all in the Washington school ; while in No. 2, or Jefferson school, the teach- ers were Thomas Marshall, Josephine Gilbert, Abraham J. Buckles, Miss Sarah M. Kemper. Including several assistants, there were twelve teachers altogether, and the entire length of the free-school term was 60 days.
Two conspicuous figures now become identified with Muncie's educa- tional affairs, and so influence and mold them that the schools became largely representative of their ability and personality. A change in the superin- tendency was made in the summer of 1867, and Hamilton S. McRae was chosen to that position and Miss Mary Emma Montgomery became principal of the high school. At the same time the school board resolved to inaugurate a free-school system worthy of the name, extending the term to ten months or 200 days.
These changes were epochal in the history of Muncie's schools. Mr. McRac. who was born in Indiana, January 2, 1833, was an organizer as well as educator. and gained a place of lasting esteem because of his work in Muncie. A few years after coming to Muncie he married Miss Montgomery, the principal of the high school, a woman whose many excellencies of charac- ter and versatile ability brought her into prominence in various movements connected with education. She was best known, after her marriage, as Mrs. Emma Mont. McRac. Her activity in woman's club work is told on other pages. Mr. McRae was superintendent of Muncie schools until 1883, and four years later, in April, ISS7, he died at Marion. He was buried in Muncie and the honor in which he was held by all classes of citizens was shown in many ways at the time. Besides his activity in the schools, he has been given the credit for organizing the Muncie public library.
During the decade from 1870 to ISSO notable progress was made in every department. The number of school buildings increased from two to four ; the number of teachers from ten to fourteen; the enrollment from about nine hundred to nearly thirteen hundred; the amount paid teachers from $4.655 to over eight thousand, while the value of school property increased from $20,000 to over $80.coo.
In the first year of Mr. McRae's superintendency the high school was moved from the Washington building and quartered in the basement of the Universalist Church. In 1873 another extension hecame necessary, when a room was rented for the children living south of the railroad. From this as a beginning came the Jackson school. Two rooms, afterward forming
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the north end of the Jackson school, were built and opened in February, 1876, and in 1878 the south half of the building was completed. This was No. 3 school building, and was located on the south side.
Plans for the crection of the high school building, on the square sur- rounded by High, Adams, Charles and Franklin streets, were made in Sep- tember, 1878. This four-story brick building, with ground dimensions of about 90 by 75 fect, is now the oldest school building of the city, and the only one in use before natural gas made a city out of the town. The build- ing was completed some time during 1880, and is now the oldest public building in the city.
The progress of the schools during a quarter of a century afforded some interesting comparisons, which were stated by Mr. W. F. Jones in an address delivered in June, 1882. "In 1855," said he, "the city of Muncie had enumerated only 396 school children. At that time we had no school- house. . . In ISSo we had scholars enrolled for the schools in Mun- cie, 1,790; we now have four large fine brick school buildings, of the value of $80,150. In 1880 we paid for tuition to our children $8,050. Our entire expenses for that year for all purposes in connection with our common and high school departments were $24,611.21."
The enrollment in the public schools in September, 1882, as given by the Daily News at the time, totaled 868, distributed in the four schools as follows :
High School :- Mrs. McRae's room, Mary Moore Ist Principal, Ella Blease, 2d Principal, 128; Primary, Lola Truitt, 60; Eva Kessler, 57. Total, 245.
Washington School :- D. H. H. Shewmaker, Principal, 51; Room 3, Kate Philips, 58; Room 2, Senora Silverburg, 52: Room I, Lizzie Willard, 92. Total, 254.
Jefferson School :- May Hathaway, Principal, 37; Room 3, Alta Stiff- ler, 45 ; Room 2, Kate Kealy, 39; Room I, Bessie Gilbert, 56. Total, 177.
Jackson School :- Harry Bowman, Principal, 21 ; Room 3, Flora Car- penter, 33; Room 2, Mrs. Monroe, 33; Room I, Mary Hockett, 105. Total, 192.
A sketch of educational affairs in such a city as Muncie must be almost a continuous record of improvements, extensions, especially in buildings and facilities. During the fifties when the board built the brick building at Vine, Adams and Charles streets that was afterward called the Washing- ton school, a distinct step had been taken in advancing the educational in- terests of Muncie. But less than thirty years afterward the agitation began for the removal of this part of the building (then only the south wing of the entire school building) and the erection of a modern structure on the site. However, the construction of the Washington school, which was the
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first of the modern school buildings that are now a matter of pride to the city and a distinct addition to its architecture, was not begun until June, 1889, after Muncie had begun its remarkable progress consequent upon the gas boom.
In the meantime Mr. McRae had resigned as superintendent of schools. lle was followed by John M. Bloss, for a short term, who himself deserves prominence in the history of education both in Indiana and Delaware county. In June, 1887, W. R. Snyder, who had been principal of the high school, became superintendent. Under his progressive control the schools had a great growth. By the close of 1890 the city had eight school buildings and forty teachers, besides the Catholic parochial school. In that year a two- room addition to the Avondale school was completed, and in July construc- tion of a four-room frame building was begun on the Jefferson school grounds. In January, 1891, an addition of four rooms was completed for the Jackson building.
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