USA > Indiana > Johnson County > History of Johnston County, Indiana. From the earliest time to the present, with biographical sketches, notes, etc., together with a short history of the Northwest, the Indiana territory, and the state of Indiana > Part 34
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* Nile's Register, vol. 20, p. 108.
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It is much to be regretted that we have no record of the time when the earlier schools of the county were opened. It would seem that the time has passed when the information can be supple- mented by an appeal to human memory. No other query calls out such a diversity of answers as the one relating to the time and płace of the first schools. Inasmuch as a considerable settlement was established on the Blue River, before at any other point, it seems reasonable to suppose that the first school in the county was opened in that neighborhood. In this place a reference will be made to some of the carlier schools of which we have knowledge, but without any attempt at a chronological arrangements of them.
In White River Township I have encountered three first schools. It is claimed that a school was taught somewhere in the south half of the township, in a log school-house, in which the fire was built in the center of the dirt floor. The name of the teacher is not given. It is very certain that Mrs. Samuel Parks, a widow, taught a school in her own house, sometime after her husband's death, which occurred in August, 1825. By some, hers is said to have been the first school in the township. In very early times a double log cabin stood on the Bluff road between the bluffs and the pres- ent site of Brownstown. One John Collins, a school-master, lived in one of the rooms, and taught a school in the other, as early as IS26. It is remembered of him that he owned the land on which the house stood, and at play-time he made the school children " pick trash." The labor of the children at the noon hour in the clearing may have been understood beforehand. I remember a school which run four days in the week, nor was he required to call books before 9 o'clock in the morning. Fridays as well as Saturdays the teacher gave to the cultivation of his corn. Three of the largest boys of the school, all belonging to the same family, by some sort of an arrangement between the father and teacher, worked in the latter's clearing of mornings, and helped him plant his corn. They thus earned the money to buy their books and possi- bly paid a part or all the schooling of the family for that term. They had a walk of two miles to the master's clearing, and were always on the ground by sun up. I yet remember the great store they set by their bright new Eclectic Readers.
A like uncertainty as to the first school taught, we encounter on entering Union Township. William Bond, about 1832, taught a summer school in the neighborhood of the present site of Union village. About the same time, a pole cabin was built for a school- house, on the west side of George Kerlin's farm, on the Three Notched Line Road, in which Jeremiah Callahan opened the first school. In Hensley Township there were three first schools, but
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the weight of evidence seems to point to the fact that in the winter of 1826-7, Jesse Titus taught the first schoot. The log house in which the school was taught was erected near the present Friend- ship Church site, and was 16x18 feet, and fronted south. A log for a window was cut out at the west end, and the sash was filled with " paper glass." The wide-throated chimney was in the east end, and under the long window, logs split into halves, and smoothed to a face, were mounted on a sort of trestle work for a writing table. The following is the roster of children that attended that first school: Ephraim Ilarrell, Gideon and Betsy Stevens, Betsy Har- rell, Avery, Godfrey, Elizabeth and Nancy Chase; Abram, Daniel, Permelia and Anna Heethers; Polly, Bloomfield, Roland and Richard Hensley; Milford, Bluford and William Richardson. The American Spelling Book was used in that school, and the English First Reader. Toward the close of the school, six or seven of the scholars were furnished with copy books, and set to making " pot hooks and hangers." The succeeding winter, Samuel B. Elkins taught in the same house, and by some this was thought to have been the first school. Elkins is said not to have been " very good in figures, but wrote an excellent hand, and was a good reader and spelled well," and above all, was a " good hand with young chil- dren."
In IS24, Aaron Dunham moved from Brown County, Ohio, to the Nineveh neighborhood, in which there were living at the time, twelve families. He was an educated man for his time, being a good mathematician and a good grammarian. I have seen speci- mens of his hand writing among the files of the Circuit Court, and I know that he wrote an excellent hand. In November of this year, Dunham came to open a school in a log cabin, formerly lived in by William Strain, about one-fourth of a mile northeast of Williams- burg. This house was furnished with a puncheon floor, split log benches, greased paper windows and a hewed log writing table, resting on stakes driven into the earth. The teacher was paid $40 for a three months' school. About twenty scholars attended, of whom Jeremiah Woodruff, then twelve years old, and still living, was one. One of the girls, a Miss Dunham, studied grammar, and young Jeremiah tried it for a day, but his father, Joab Woodruff, who was the leading man in the community, pronouncing grammar nonsense, the boy abandoned it. About twenty scholars attended that school, the following of whom are remembered, viz .: the brothers, Jeremiah, William and Nelson Woodruff, a Miss Dunham, Benjamin Crews' three boys, David Twet's two children, William Strain's two, and Daniel Pritchard's two. Mr. Dunham continued to teach
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for many years in Nineveh Township with the approbation of his patrons. and the loving remembrance of his pupils.
In 1826, Benjamin Baily taught a school close to the Vicker- man place in the same township. This school was in a cabin on a dirt floor. At a very early day a school was opened not far from the present site of Amity, by James Hemaner, who was succeeded the next year by one named McClosky. George Adams, yet liv- ing. attended both those schools and still has the " ciphering book " he wrote then. He used Bennett's arithmetic, and according to the custom of the times he transferred the examples to a copy book to- gether with the processes employed in solving them. In 1828, Elzy Mathes taught in the Price school-house, three miles north of Edinburg, a subscription school of three months at $I per scholar. During his term the deer annoyed him a great deal by coming to lick during school hours in the outside chimney corners of his school-house. The children would give attention to the ari- mals at the expense of their lessons. Mathes secured two planks which he so arranged, that by pulling a string that was brought over to his seat in the school house, as to fall with a great clatter and bang. Not long afterward the deer, a buck and a doe came, and Mathes enjoining silence, pulled the string and down came the planks with a mighty racket and away went the deer never to re- turn. The master and his school went out and were amazed at the great leap the terrified buck had taken. It was over twenty feet. The deer never after, were a source of disturbance to his school, and as far as I have heard; his was the only school in the county ever disturbed by them. Austin Shipp, the first student from John- son County, who ever attended the Indiana Seminary at Blooming- ton, " taught in 1830, in an old cabin on the Marshal farm three miles northwest of Edinburg." A log school-house stood on the Maux Ferry road, a short distance south of the present site of Furnas' mill, in which Thomas Alexander taught during the winter of 1827-S.
Coming to Franklin Township, we find that the first schools were held in the log court house. A cloud of uncertainty hangs over them. Dr. Pierson Murphy is known to have taught at an early period in the history of the town, but whether he was the first may be doubted. Aaron LeGrange attended his school seven- teen days, which he says must have been about 1825. " I used Pike's arithmetic. Our other books were anything we could get. I remember we had Dilworth's spelling book." In the winter of 1829-30, Thomas Graham is known to have taught in the log court house. John Tracy, a young man of twenty-one years,
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attended, walking from his father's house, a distance of five or six miles. Mr. Tracy studied arithmetic. Gilderoy Hicks, who moved to the town in 1834 and began the practice of law, which he suc- cessfully pursued for over twenty years, turned aside occasionally during the first years and taught school. Another who is remem- bered to have taught in the town schools during the earlier years, was William G. Shellady. " The first school between Franklin and Martinsville " was at the present site of the Mount Pleasant Church- the Byers neighborhood. Joseph Ringland was the teacher, and after him came Henry Drury, and then a man by the name of Vitito.
In September, IS25, Thomas Henderson moved from Ken- tucky, and settled at Big Spring, now Hopewell. His first inquiry was for a tract of land to enter, on which was a site suitable for a school house, a church and a grave-yard, and he succeeded in be- coming the owner of the tract of land on which these indispensable adjuncts to every good neighborhood were subsequently located. In 1829, a hewed log house, 20x30 feet, was erected, the floor and ceiling of which were laid with whip-sawed lumber. For a few years this building was used as a church, and for many as a school house. The first school taught in that house was the same year of its erection, by John R. Smock. He taught two winters out of three, one of which he boarded with Simon Covert, at 50 cents per week. Nancy Henderson taught the intervening winter. In 1833, the people of the neighborhood organized an educational so- ciety, which, by the terms of the compact, was to continue for five years, during which two terms per year of five months each were to be taught, and the patrons were to pay $1.25 per scholar, per term. This society was kept on foot for three years, during which the school house doors were kept open for ten months of each year. Two and a half years Samuel Demaree, a Kentucky school-mas- ter taught, and after him came a Mr. Ayers, who finished the last of the three years.
The first school in Pleasant Township was in the Smock neigh- borhood, at Greenwood. The date is uncertain, but it is believed to have been as early as IS25. William S. Holman, since become so celebrated as a statesman and politician, is remembered to have taught one or more terms of school in the Greenwood school while a student in the Baptist Institute in Franklin. Clark Township was late in being peopled, but it is said that a school was taught therein well up toward the north side, as early as 1828; but of it little is now remembered.
Thus far have I adverted to some of the early schools of the county, and it now remains to give a list of such of the early
24
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teachers as have been remembered by their old pupils. This list is necessarily incomplete, because of the fallibility of memory. Many of these persons taught in more than one school house and township, and no attempt will be given to localize them. It is as follows: William Bond, John L. Jones, Sr., Henry Drury, Jere- miah Callahan, Henry Banta, John L. Jones, Jr., Matthew Owens, Charles Disbrow, David V. Demaree, Washington Miller, Asa B. Nay, Joseph Raynor, William Lane, Louis Shouse, John Roberts, Thomas Graham, Piersen Murphy, Gabriel M. Overstreet, A. D. Whitesides, John Slater, A. B. Hunter, Elijah Harrell, Andrew Robe, Franklin Hardin, Jacob Fishback, Hiram Jackson, D. Loper, Joseph Ringland, William F. Johns, Hugh Smiley, Sebastian C. Fox, Joshua Eccles, Nelson Brock, Elizabeth Sutton, William Mitchell, Andrew Robe, James Collins, James Abbett, Samuel Hare, Elisha Hardin, James Wishard, David Todd, Thomas Alex- ander, Thomas Lynam, E. W. Morgan, Zalmon Disbrow, A. B. Hunter, William Cotton, James Mullikin, William Jones, Peter H. Banta, Miss West, - Getty, Malcom McLean, William Allen, Peyton B. Culver, Samuel McClain, John F. Peggs, John Colvin, John Mathes, James Prather, John Abbey, Henry Woodard, Squire O. W. Garrett, -- Gaines, Ephraim Hewitt, William Irwin, William Keaton, Henry House, Cary Slack, Samuel Griffith and Willet Tyler.
During the first fifteen years of the county's history, school houses were located with reference to the accomodation of neighbor- hoods, solely. As the county became settled other considera- tions began to rule. From 1835 to 1840, the county was laid off into school districts, so as to give about five to each congressional township. White River, which is a third larger in area than a con- gressional township, was laid off into six school districts, and pro- vided with as many school houses. The Lyons school house was in the northeast corner, and the Glenn, in the northwest. The Hughes school house was toward the east side, not far from the center thereof, while the Low occupied a like position on the west side. The Dunn school house was in the southwest corner, while another stood over toward the southeast. In Union Township there were five houses, one near the center of the township and one in each corner. Something like this order prevailed in all the townships.
It will thus be seen that the division was on a geographical basis, of one house to from seven to nine square miles territory, and that some school children would necessarily have long roads to travel. Two, and even three miles were not infrequently traveled, night and morning, by the little folk of the early day. And when
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we remember that the school paths often led through the gloomy woods the greater part of the way, we may imagine something of the courage of both parents who sent, and of the pupils who went, to the early schools. One man remembers that he went a mile through an unbroken wood. He was eight years old, and used to run every step to and from the school-house, fearing lest a bear might overtake him. Another says, that he and his little brother
one morning actually encountered a bear on their way to school, and that although it fled, they were ever after so afraid that they ran from home to school and cowered in a corner if they were the first comers, until others arrived. Two young girls, the daughters of Peter Whitenack, met a bear on the way to the Hopewell school one morning a little to the east of what is now known as the Don- nell hill, and it disputed the path with them by " setting up in it." The preciptancy with which they turned and fled is easier to im- agine than describe. When the man with a gun arrived the bear had gone.
There were no teachers' institutes, no normals, no training schools in those days. There were no books to be had on peda- gogics. No " best methods" were inculcated. Every teacher was left to his own way of doing things in the school-room. Of course there was great variety in the manner of teaching adopted. Here were teachers from the Carolinas, from Virginia, from Ken- tucky, Ohio, Pennsylvania, New England, Old England, Ireland and Scotland. Each had his way -a way learned in the country he came from. The dissimilarity of methods, however, was usually seen in minor matters. In the graver phases of school life, the dissimilarities usually disappeared.
A pre-requisite to successful teaching always has been, and al- ways will be, an ability to govern. In the early days government occupied a higher place in the teacher's qualifications than it does in this. In whatever else he lacked he must not in this. It was for him to make his scholars mind, and the entire catalogue of pun- ishments were in general at his disposal. The pioneers were a sturdy, thorough-going set of men and women, who were seldom content with any half-way measures. The same may be said of their children, and it may be doubted whether they would have entertained a feeling of respect for a teacher who would not on oc- casion, inflict corporal punishment with savage severity. Be this as it may, the early school-masters ruled with a rod of iron. It was the custom to whip on the slightest provocation, and now and then for no provocation at all. An early teacher in Blue River Town- ship would sometimes drink to a state of intoxication on Satur- day. On Monday morning he would reach the school-house all
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broken up, and sometimes he would switch the entire school before the noon hour. But there were not many drunken teachers employed in Johnson County, and the severest teachers were among the most temperate.
Sebastian Fox, an early teacher in the northern part of the county, stood at the very head of those who whipped with the greatest severity. He kept in the school room a green, tough switch, about six feet long, and he invariably took off his coat and threw it on one of the joists overhead, before administering his punishment. IIe whipped not only for violations of school rules, but he whipped for laziness and natural dullness. He frequently whipped till the "red streaks could be seen on a boy's back through
his shirt." He carried his punishments to such a pitch, that his school at last revolted, and the trustees had to be sent for. Ed- ward Keene was a young man, almost grown, whom he very much disliked, and had, on more than one occasion, mercilessly whipped, as Edward thought, without sufficient cause. One day the boy did something that inflamed the master, who told him he must take a whipping or leave school. To the big boy or girl the alternative of leaving school or taking a whipping was always given in those days. Keene left, but after consulting with a couple of his mates, he concluded to return the next day. On his arrival, the school- master at once pulled off his coat and took down his best switch. " Will you step out and take your whipping," said he. " Yes, if you are able to give it." bravely answered young Keene. At that point, his two big school-mates, William H. Wishard and Washington Culver, arose, and proposed to help him out. The whipping was put off and the trustees were sent for, to patch up a peace.
Not a few instances occurred in the county, in the early days, of the larger pupils of the school being driven to open rebellion by the severity of their teachers. Such an occurrence once took place at the Hurricane school-house. A teacher named Cottingham, whipped with a six foot switch ferociously. One day he undertook to make a stubborn boy cry, and lashed him until the school rose en masse and demanded a cessation. In Union Township, a Cana- dian by the name of Bradley, once taught. He undertook to intro- duce a new punishment, by striking the scholars with a rule on the open palm of the hand, and on the bunched end of the fingers. His punishments seemed to the eyes of the larger pupils inhuman, and once when about to beat a little boy on the finger nails, the big boys interfered. They told him he might whip the little one on the back and they would say nothing, but he could not beat the ends of his fingers; and Bradley wisely forbore to ever after whip, save in the orthodox way.
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Sometimes the school-master's discipline took a humorous turn. On one occasion, Andrew Rabe, who was an exceedingly strict school-master, but a very popular one nevertheless, went to his school and discovered that something had been going on out of the usual order, but what, he could not divine. At the noon hour he learned that two of the big boys had fought that morning, and that one of them had received a bloody nose. Immediately, on " calling books," the teacher, in accordance with his custom, impanelled a jury and proceeded to try the accused. Three big boys were selected to try the case who were acceptable to the accused. The teacher sat as judge and prosecutor, and saw that the evidence was properly introduced. But the jury hung. Two of the jurors voted guilty, affixing the proper punishment, but the third stood out for mercy. He insisted upon a verdict of "not guilty," but was willing to affix to it, "if they ever do it again, each to have twenty- five lashes well laid on."
The judge and prosecutor was equal to the occasion. There could be no failure of justice in his court because of a stubborn juryman, and so without further ceremony he was set aside and another put in his place. The new man was a brother of one of the accused, but kinship was not a disqualification in that court. The parties on trial, however, were consulted, and agreed to the substitution, and the record was thus kept straight. Thereupon the new jury retired, and promptly returned a verdict of guilty, with " five good licks apiece." The inevitable question followed: " Will you take your whipping or leave school?" One of the par- ties, now a venerable man, who has for many years wisely adminis- tered the law as a justice of the peace in his neighborhood, after a few moments' thought, said he could not afford to leave school just then, and gave his back to his master's use. Rabe was a good whipper, and it is said he got all the good there was to be had in the five strokes on that occasion. Turning to the next victim he put the same question of going or staying. This young man was not so sure. His mind was not made up. He did not much like to leave school, but he liked less to take the whipping. He had about made up his mind to leave, when the thought occurred, " What will father say?" "Go," said he to that very brother who had sat as a juror and approved the sentence, "go and see what father says." He went, and presently returned with these words: "Father says if you come home he will give you the all-firedest licking you ever had." That settled it. He, too, stood out on the floor and let Andrew Rabe tip-toe it on five of his best, and there was no more fighting in that school.
But whipping on the back with a switch, and on the hands and
.
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fingers with a rule, were not all the punishments inflicted. The early school-masters were ingenious in devising novel modes of torture for their children. One school-master habitually pulled the ears of refractory pupils. Sometimes one ear, after a manipula- tion at his hands, would puff up to double its natural size. The "dunce block" and the "fool's cap," were in every school. Some teachers kept a " leather spectacles." I remember to have seen two boys alternately tie on each other the "leather specs," in the meanwhile dancing and crying in rage. I once saw a teacher incarcerate quite a big girl for some mischief, "in the hole under the floor." I will never forget how he pushed her fingers off the unmoved puncheons at the sides, when he closed the lid over her. Making a pupil stand in the corner or by the side of the teacher, or on one leg, were favorite modes. If a boy was particularly bashful (which was not often the case) he might be seated between a couple of girls with admirable effect. " Bringing up the switch" was another mode. An idle child would be startled out of a doze by the switch dropping at his feet. "Bring up the switch!" would be the stern command, and there was no escape. The idler must carry the evidence of his subjection to the master, in the presence of the whole school.
How often have I seen a teacher rush up to an idler, or mis- chief-maker, and strike him over the back and shoulders with all his might and main. Boxing a child's ears with a closed book or the open hand was quite common with some. I remember once an edition of the elementary spelling book, bound in wooden backs. The wood was exceedingly thin, of course, and split so easily that a blow with a book over a child's head would shatter the back into splinters. After the backs of two or three books had been ruined by the teacher, the children made such an outcry over the mutila- tion, that the teacher ceased their use altogether as instruments of punishment. I have seen teachers kick their pupils; have seen them attach split quills to their noses; bumb their heads together, and one old teacher kept a short rod of whalebone, which had the merit of never wearing out.
In these days teachers were careful to seat the boys and girls on different sides of the house. This was the custom at church and at the dinner tables. In no case were the school children to sit to- gether, except for punishment. Nor were they allowed to play together. I remember one school-master who was so strict in this particular that he established an east and west line, which ran from the spring through the middle of the school-house, on the west side of which, in the house, the girls sat, and out of doors they played. On the east side, within, the boys sat, and without,
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played, and the rule was not deemed an unreasonable one by his pupils. It was the custom in that school, as in a good many others, throughout the county, for the children to be seated in the order of their arrival in the morning. The first arrival sat at what the teacher chose to call the head. The next arrival sat next to him, and so on in order to the last. The only advantage to the scholar arriving first, was that he recited his lesson first. There were few classes, save the spelling class, in the old schools. In the beginning, Dilworth's spelling book was used, and after that came " Webster's American Spelling Book," and that in time was succeeded by the " Elementary Spelling Book" by the same author, which held the field against all rivals for more than twenty-five years. The old school-masters placed great stress on spelling. Twice a day the whole school stood up and spelled " for head." A half-day in every week was given to the spelling match. Night spelling schools were of frequent occurrence. Every scholar was kept ham- mering away at the spelling book as long as he went to school, and there were few schools in which one or more pupils had not the book by heart. The words in the elementary spelling book were written rythmically, and it was no hard matter to commit by rote whole columns of words. This book was used as a reader also. In some schools, after a pupil had learned to spell sufficiently well, he was set to pronouncing the words in the book at sight. After he was able to readily pronounce all the words in the book, he was deemed sufficiently advanced to begin reading. The elementary spelling book served the purpose of reader.
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