USA > Indiana > Perry County > Perry County: A History > Part 8
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CHAPTER XI.
ORIGINAL SCHOOL LAWS AND SYSTEM.
THE same Act of Congress, approved April 19, 1816, which enabled the people of Indiana Territory to form a state government originated the Congressional Township system, whereby Section 16 in every six-mile square, numbered boustrephedon, should be granted to the inhabitants for the use and benefit of public schools. Of these, Perry County contains eleven, counting a fractional section included in the south-eastern part of Cannelton's corporate limits.
Maintenance of schools was in a measure provided for by the first State Constitution, in its declaration that all fines assessed for any breach of penal laws, and all monies paid as an equivalent by persons exempt from military duty, (except in time of war,) should be applied to the support of County Seminaries in each county where they were assessed. Such money was to be held in trust by a Seminary Trustee; at first appointed by the Governor, afterward by the Board of County Commissioners, and later chosen by the people at a general election.
Soon after organization of the state government the Legislature provided for the appointment in each township of a Superintendent of School Lands, who had power to lease the lands for a term of years, applying the rents and profits to the support of schools. The first effective law, however, looking toward establish- ing a vigourous system of common schools was con- tained in the Revised Statutes of 1824, under "An Act to Incorporate Congressional Townships, and Provid- ing for Public Schools therein."
The inhabitants of each (Congressional) township
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were authorized to elect three school trustees, having . control of the lands and schools generally, with power to divide their townships into districts and appoint sub-trustees therefor, school houses were to be built by the labour of all able-bodied male persons of the age of twenty-one years or more, residing in the district, with penalty of 371/2 cents for each day of failure to work. The houses must be eight feet between floors, at least one foot from the surface of the ground to the first floor, and finished in a manner calculated to render both teacher and scholars comfortable. The Trustees also formed a board who examined teachers in regard to their ability to teach the 'three R's,' read- ing, writing and arithmetic.
Thus was the humble beginning of Indiana's present magnificent school system. Undeniably excellent in plan, its practical workings went on slowly, for the reason that no schools were to be established in any district until the wish of its inhabitants to that effect had been declared by ballot, while a want of sufficient public funds was a further hindrance. Only the bare necessities of life could be met by the teacher's 'wages,' which no one at that time dignified by the word 'salary.' Terms were seldom more than three months in dura- tion, and rate-bills were levied upon the pupils to satis- fy deficiencies.
Without drawing upon the pages of Edward Eggle- ston, or other masters of descriptive fiction, for vivid word-pictures of pioneer schools, some passing notice is due their customs. It is related that there was no regular time for opening in the morning, but whenever a pupil arrived he was compelled to take his seat and commence the study of his task. One fixed rule, of lingering survival, which thwarted all attempted class- ification, was that whoever reached school first in the morning should recite first during the day.
Sessions were much longer than now; even said by some to have lasted 'from sun-up till sun-down,' prob- ably an exaggeration, as there was no recess except
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at the mid-day play time. This period was customarily devoted by the teacher to making or mending the goose- quill pens with which his big 'round-hand' copies were painfully followed. Pupils were not required to pre- pare their lessons quietly, but each studied aloud- Oriental fashion-in whatever tone of voice best suited him. As recitations were heard one at a time, it is difficult to imagine how reading or spelling lessons could be conducted without a premium upon noise, so that he who made himself the most audible did the best work.
Four hundred dollars was the minimum set by law as required before a Seminary might be erected, and although the number of fines before Justices of the Peace (chiefly for assault and battery) seems extra- ordinary, the amounts ranging from one to five dollars, it is probable that not over half was ever collected, hence the fund accumulated but slowly.
Trustees were successively appointed to manage the fund, make loans, etc., and its amount was reported in 1828 as $210.53, by Samuel Connor, then trustee. The next five years must have been a comparatively pacific period, since by March, 1833, the sum total had grown to only $277.10, according to Shubael C. Little's report as trustee.
About 1834-35 the fund had almost reached $400, so a small square brick seminary was erected in Rome, on Chestnut Street two blocks west of the public square, and was for years the leading (if not the only) school house in town, occupied in turn by several excellent teachers, some of whom held subscription schools not at county expense.
Isaac Hill, a well-educated man from Maine, was said to have been the first teacher and continued for several terms, as did his successor, Charles Brown. Solomon Lamb also taught in this building, and another early teacher was John C. Shoemaker, afterward a notable horticulturist, besides the incumbent of several county and state offices.
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The frequent changes of teachers, each newcomer bringing to bear his own opinions upon problems he was not destined to remain long enough to solve, made practically impossible any educational scheme aiming at well-conceived results. With gradually increasing facilities of transportation, however, Perry County felt the advance ripples of that wave of population soon to sweep across the Middle West, covering South- ern Indiana perhaps less deeply than other sections, but still with effect.
The pioneer Virginians, Carolinians and Maryland- ers who had crossed the Ohio were-in many instances -men of marked energy, mental and physical, who had made their own primitive schooling the foundation of a broader education whose dominant characteristic was an enlightment of mind wholly independent of mere scholarship.
By heredity and environment they were thinkers, accustomed to look facts straight in the face, and thus had a training better in many ways than any school could furnish. From infancy they had lived in a cer- tain atmosphere of backwoods culture, drawn in part from the few-but good-books accessible to them, yet in greater part through association with the powerful men, founders of our Nation, from whom was caught that dauntless spirit which conquered a new, virgin territory and made of Indiana a princely possession of the great Republic.
Adding to this Cavalier strain of blood the men of decided intellect who had come in smaller numbers from New England and the Middle Atlantic states, one can trace from the very first an impulse of betterment in the social atmosphere of Southern Indiana, a dis- tinct uplift, sufficient to raise the average level. Bring- ing thus from widely remote sections their ideas, con- victions, view-points, customs and standards of living, to dwell side by side in a region whose very fauna and flora show a singularly harmonious blending of two latitudes, Northerner and Southerner alike lost some-
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what of prejudice and provincialism, gaining far more in a breadth of tolerant comprehension.
Into the composite communities of Perry and the other river counties came now and again an Irish, a French or a German family, some 'Pennsylvania Dutch,' Scotch or Welsh, groups of Switzers, to become neighbours and friends. Each outgrew the narrow- ness or bigotry in which he had been bred and de- veloped a generous humanity unknown in sections whence each had come, so that Southern Indiana be- came more accurately representative of all that is best in American thought and life than any other part of the Union had ever been.
Joshua B. Huckeby, Samuel Frisbie and Solomon Lamb constituted the first Board of School Examiners for Perry County, appointed 1836, from which time a more orderly system of organization and maintenance came by degrees into the county schools as a unit. From this time on 'to keep school' was no longer the privilege of any ignoramus happening to be out of a job, rigid examinations in test of their fitness being re- quired by the board of all who wished to serve as teachers. The courses of study were prescribed and regulated by boards, besides the choice of text-books and classification of pupils, even in country districts where complete grading was out of the question, and this personal supervision gave to school training a new and larger meaning which Perry County yet feels.
After erection of the seminary itself the fund seems to have constantly accumulated without being ex- pended, and had reached $2,285.64 in 1853, when by change of law it was absorbed into the common school fund and the building sold to private parties, of whom Elijah B. Huckeby was the final owner, after another purchaser had failed to meet deferred payments.
All three of the men comprising this original board were notable for their versatility, representing by birth the widely differing environments of Virginia, New York and Connecticut, and each in his turn played
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many parts upon the stage of Perry County official life, where their names are of frequent recurrence.
Solomon Lamb was the senior of the others, both in years of age and of residence in the county, having come about 1808-09 from New York to Indiana with his parents, John and Beulah (Curtis) Lamb, whose eldest son he was. Born July 21, 1780, in Albany County, New York, he was married May 26, 1811, to Elizabeth Shepherd, a native of Kentucky. Like his father, he became the parent of twelve children: 1. Isabelle; 2. John; 3. William Shepherd; 4. Helen; 5. Amanda ; 6. Thomas ; 7. Robert Negus ; 8. Solomon, Jr .; 9. Israel; 10. Eliza ; 11. Ezra B .; 12. Cynthia.
He lived first in Tobin Township, but soon afterward in Troy, when the county was officially organized. He was the first Sheriff, Recorder and Clerk, all in 1814, serving only two years in the first-named capacity, but holding the other two for a period of twenty-three years. His son, William S. Lamb, succeeded in 1837 to the position, which he held fourteen years, the longest tenure on record in Perry County of one office in a single family, father and son. In 1841 William S. Lamb also took his father's place as School Examiner, but the last office held by Solomon Lamb (County Commissioner, 1845,) does not appear to have been transmitted to any of the family at his death in 1848.
William S. Lamb became a quartermaster with rank of major during the War Between the States, and his direct descendants now reside in Gibson County. Many lines of descent keep up the blood of John Lamb, Sr., and Solomon Lamb, Sr., in Indiana as well as other states, and near the old home place in Tobin Township a wide relationship has come down from the marriage of Israel Lamb, Sr., and Margaret ("Peggy") Winchel, a daughter of John and Rachel (Avery) Winchel. Israel Lamb was twice chosen Justice of the Peace, in 1814 and 1817, and in 1818 another brother, John Lamb, was elected Sheriff.
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Samuel Frisbie, born about 1779, in Plymouth, Litch- field County, Connecticut, who had been admitted to the bar in 1819, was one of the most notable and suc- cessful of the early resident lawyers and was elected County Treasurer in 1822. At the election of 1828 he was chosen Representative and was sent to the upper house two years later as joint-Senator. In 1833, 1835 and 1840 he was elected Justice of the Peace, thus de- riving the title of 'Squire, which clung to him the re- mainder of his life, and in the Constitutional Conven- tion of 1850 he was Perry County's delegate, elected by one vote over his opponent, Dr. Robert G. Cotton, of Troy.
His letters from Indianapolis, which were printed at the time in Perry County's first newspaper, the Can- nelton Economist, give their own testimony to his abil- ity and broad-minded views. As a lawyer he was above the average, painstaking and adroit in the management of a case, swift yet deep of comprehension, with the principles of common law thoroughly at heart. His acquaintance was extensive throughout Indiana and the expression then current, 'a man of parts,' well de- scribes him.
The provision contained in the new constitution that whenever the citizens of Perry and Spencer Counties became so inclined they might establish metes and bounds of a new county, to be formed out of about equal parts of each, not to exceed one-third thereof, and that an election should then be held whereby a majority of the voters in both counties should determine whether a new county should be formed, was not, however, the work of Samuel Frisbie, but represents an early phase of legislative "lobbying," reading between whose lines it is easy to trace the fine Italian hand of Troy.
Resentful over their loss of the court house to Rome in 1818 the Trojans brought to bear a strong pressure on the convention, their leader being John P. Dunn, who had removed in 1846 to Troy from Dearborn
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County, his birthplace. He was a man of powerful personality, the father of eighteen children by three marriages, and was delegate from the senatorial dis- trict embracing Perry and Spencer. But the insertion of the aforesaid clause was the full measure of success gained, so far as Troy was concerned. Although Dunn himself was chosen Auditor of State in the election of 1852 the local result was crushingly adverse to the Trojans' fond hopes, to-wit: For a new county, 311; against a new county, 1,041.
Samuel Frisbie's death occurred May 24, 1854, and is thus recounted on the records of the circuit court then in session at Rome: "Mr. Pitcher (John Pitcher, Prosecutor) now here announces to this court that Samuel Frisbie, late an attorney of this court, departed this life at his residence in Rome on the twenty-fourth instant, whereupon, as a testimony of respect for the deceased, court adjourned until 3 o'clock p. m., May 25, 1854."
Joshua Brannon Huckeby, often a colleague and not infrequently an opponent, was perhaps less versed in law, but as an orator was said to have wielded far more power over a jury than Frisbie, though a close personal intimacy existed between the two men, Huckeby surviving his friend and fellow-politician for an entire generation, or until March 22, 1889.
Those were the golden days of stump speakings and cross-roads flag-raisings, now gone forevermore. Per- sonality rather than partisan issues struck the domi- nant note in all political discussion. He who could vituperate an adversary the more vehemently in joint debate was rated by his listeners the more powerful orator.
Joshua B. Huckeby was elected a Justice of the Peace in 1833, and three times was sent to the Legislature as Representative, in 1837, 1843 and 1845. The sec- ond of these was that memorable session at which Lieutenant-Governor Jesse D. Bright as president of
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the Senate by his privilege of the casting vote post- poned the regular election of a United States Senator until the next session, when he hoped to be-and was -- the victorious candidate.
Doctor Robert G. Cotton, of Troy, was then Perry County's joint Senator, and in the lower house Knox County was represented for the first time by James D. Williams, who became Indiana's governor long years afterward, in the spectacular "Blue Jeans" campaign of 1876. David Macy, of Henry County, David P. Hol- loway, of Wayne County, William A. Bowles, of Orange County, Samuel Hanna, of .Allen County, were fellow- members with whom Joshua B. Huckeby was closely associated, regardless of political differences. With the clerk of the house, William H. English, then of Scott County, and later Representative for the Third Con- gressional District, there grew up a very warm friend- ship which lasted into the old age of both men, al- though they were always violently antagonistic on the platform.
Language of such flagrantly unparliamentary char- acter that it would not today be tolerated in a police station was smilingly bandied to and fro. Fancy a political speaker of 1916-even a militant anti-suffrag- ist-rising to follow his opponent's address with the amazing preface: "Ladies and Gentlemen, the state- ment to which you have just listened from my friend English is as false as the dregs of Hell-and Bill Eng- lish knows it!"
Such was a specimen of the joyous pleasantries and verbal badinage exchanged in the 'forties between Whig and Democrat who were "Josh" and "Bill" to one another even down through the presidential campaign of 1880, when Winfield Scott Hancock, of New York, and William H. English, of Indiana, headed the Demo- cratic ticket, while Joshua B. Huckeby was serving his twelfth year as Republican postmaster at Cannelton, an office he filled until Cleveland's first administration.
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He was a marked example of the Old School politi- cian, violently unrelenting in many inherited preju- dices, and always delighting to dwell reminiscently upon the political triumphs of those early years when -it was his favourite boast-he knew "every man in Perry County, his politics, his religion, and the nighest way to his house."
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CHAPTER XII
FOUNDING OF LEOPOLD BY FATHER BESSONIES
TO THAT ardent missionary spirit of the French which, two centuries earlier, had sent Jacques Mar- quette and Jean du Lhut into an untamed continent's boundless wastes of forest verdure-mountains silent in primeval sleep; river, lake and glimmering pool, wilderness oceans mingling with the sky-may be at- tributed one phase of Perry County's development, distinctively individual from all the rest.
Augustus Bessonies, who was born at Alzac, De- partement du Lot, France, on the day of Napoleon's final eclipse at Waterloo, June 17, 1815, was the chosen instrument for this werk, and in him lived again the dauntless courage of his consecrated prede- cessors. As a lad he attended the preparatory school of Montfaucon, going thence to the Seminary of Isse, near Paris, for the classics and natural philosophy.
In 1836 Simon Guillaume Gabriel Bruté, first Roman Catholic Bishop of Vincennes (with jurisdiction then covering all Indiana) paid a visit to Isse during a trip abroad, and although young Bessonies had already been received as a postulant for foreign mission by the Lazarist Order, upon the advice of his director, Father Pinault, he offered his services to the visiting prelate for his far-off American diocese.
Great was the joy of Bishop Brute. Impulsively em- bracing Bessonies, he exclaimed: "Je suis heureux à penser d'un autel nouveau dans ma chère Indiana." ("I am happy to think of a new altar in my dear In- diana.") "But," he added, "I have no seminary at Vin- cennes. Remain, therefore at St. Sulpice, and in three years I will send for you."
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So he did, in 1839, but it was one of the latest acts in his long episcopal career. When Bessonies reached Havre to embark for America, the same sailing vessel in which he had engaged passage had brought to France the sad tidings of the good bishop's death. By the time the sorrowing deacon reached Indiana, Octo- ber 21, 1839, Bishop Bruté had been committed to his last resting-place. In the crypt of a mortuary chapel beneath the high altar of St. Xavier's Cathedral his ashes repose to this day, and it is easy to feel that his spiritual presence was not far distant, to add its in- tangible benediction when Augustus Bessonies was ele- vated to the priesthood, February 22, 1840, by the Right Reverend Celestine Rene de la Hailandière, the new Bishop of Vincennes.
Work among the Indians of Cass County, near Lo- gansport where the Pottawatomies and Miamis under Chief Godfrey long dwelt on their 'Richardville' reser- vation, was desired by Father Bessonies, but the deci- sion of his bishop sent him instead to the forests of Perry County as the first recorded minister of the Ro- man Catholic faith therein. With that far-seeing ec- clesiastical policy which in countless other instances has secured to the Church of Rome land grants of strategic value, Bishop de la Hailandière had entered, or soon entered, a tract near the geographical centre of Perry County, and it is no reflection upon his judg- ment that its destiny has not been all that he antici- pated.
On page 355, of Deed Book C, in the County Recor- der's office, we may read:
"State of Indiana, Perry County :
"I, the undersigned, in order to promote both the temporal and spiritual welfare of the French people coming from Europe, resolved to lay off a town of the name of Leopold, in which, with God's assistance, I in- tend to erect a temple to the glory of the Almighty
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for them to worship therein their Maker, according to the dictates of their conscience; the most glorious privi- lege a human being can enjoy, and of which we boast in this country of Freedom, become for us an adopted Land of Promise.
"Leopold is situated in Perry County, State of In- diana, in Township Five South, Range Two West, Sec- tion One, and contains forty acres, more or less, to-wit : the East half of the Southwest quarter of the South- west quarter of section, township and range as above stated, containing twenty acres, more or less; and the West half of the Southeast quarter of the Southwest quarter of section, township and range above men- tioned, containing twenty acres, be the same more or less.
"There is in Leopold one hundred lots. The town is laid off with six North and South streets running the whole length of the town, every one of them numbering (60) feet in width; the first street commencing at the Northeast quarter is Belgium Street; the second, Ce- lestine Street; the third, Lafayette Street; the Fourth, Washington Street; the fifth, Caroline Street, the sixth, German Street.
"There is also six streets East and West, sixty feet in width. The first is named Rome Street; the second, Ohio Street; the third, Indiana Street; the fourth, St. Louis Street; the fifth, Troy Street; the sixth, St. Au- gustine Street.
"Each lot contains ninety-nine feet square, and every one of them is a corner lot. Four lots in the centre of Leopold will be kept for a public square, to-wit: the forty-fifth, forty-sixth, fifty-fifth and fifty-sixth ; which lots I keep the right to dispose of and to donate to the county for any public advantage, with other property whenever Leopold will be a county seat.
"To the credit thereof, before any court of the United States, or any magistrate whomsoever, I give my hand and usual seal. Given at Leopold, Perry County, In-
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diana, the eleventh day of November, eighteen hundred and forty-two.
"(Signed) Augustus Bessonies, Cath. P."
"State of Indiana, Perry County :
"Be it remembered that on the eleventh day of No- vember, eighteen hundred and forty-two, personally appeared before me, an acting Justice of the Peace for the county aforesaid, Augustus Bessonies, who ac- knowledged the foregoing deed to be his voluntary act and deed for the purpose therein mentioned. Given under my hand and seal the day and year aforesaid.
(SEAL) Arnold Elder, J. P."
Father Bessonies' own words, therefore, tell us the story of Leopold's founding, with a simplicity of pur- pose whose equivalent is only to be found in that won- derful Compact signed by the Pilgrim Fathers
- on the waves of the bay Where the Mayflower lay,"
or among those peaceful Friends who laid out, in Penn's Woods on the Delaware, their City of Brotherly Love,
"Whose streets still re-echo the names of the trees of the forest."
Difficult, indeed, must have been the beginning of Father Bessonies' pastoral labours in that almost un- broken forest which yet covered practically all of Southern Indiana, where clearings were few, estab- lished highways unknown, and the only travel possible by means of the blazed trees marking a course through the tall timber from one place to another. Further- more, although a graduated seminarian, the brave young priest's acquaintance with the English tongue was still rudimentary, while the point toward his steps were turned was as yet unnamed, even in Perry
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