USA > Kentucky > Madison County > Glimpses of historic Madison County, Kentucky > Part 10
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Salaries-Prior to 1933 teachers' salaries were comparatively low. In 1932, for example, high school principals received about one hundred dollars per month. Average teachers' salaries increased from about $700 in 1933 to around $2,300 in 1953.
School Term-At the beginning of the period the school term was around five months. By 1917 the school term had increased to six months. Since 1932 the school term has been generally eight months, with a tendency toward a nine month term since 1953.
Course of Study-Madison County elementary schools have gen- erally followed the state course of study. In 1918, the General Assembly provided for the teaching of agriculture and temperance. In 1920 physical training and thrift were added. Singing was added to the course of study in 1922. Daily Bible reading and the teaching of the Constitution of the United States were authorized in 1924. Public speaking, discussion, debating, and parliamentary law were placed in the course of study in 1928.
During the period, textbooks used in Madison County have varied from local to state adoption. In 1910 a county commission was given authority to adopt textbooks. This law was repealed in 1914 and a State Textbook Commission was created to adopt books for a
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period of five years. In 1926 a new textbook law was enacted providing for a uniform adoption for the whole state. In 1930 a new textbook law was adopted providing uniform textbooks for county schools unless they had a school term of nine months. This law generally prevailed until 1950 when a new textbook law was en- acted providing for a multiple list from which county school systems could select textbooks.
School Attendance-For the early part of the period school at- tendance was very low. For example, in 1911-12, the average daily attendance in the Madison County schools was 47 percent based on the census. In 1929-30 the percent of attendance based on the census increased to 56. Considerable improvement occurred in school attendance, especially since 1934, when the General Assembly enacted a strong compulsory school attendance law. Since the en- actment of that law the percent of attendance in Madison County schools has been above 70 based on the census.
High School Development-The development of public high schools has come in Madison County since 1908 when the General Assembly of Kentucky passed an act providing for a system of county high schools. Shortly thereafter, the Madison County Board of Education made a contract with the Richmond City Schools whereby high school privileges would be extended to all graduates from the common schools in the county.
In 1912 public high schools were established at Waco and Kirks- ville. The Union city high school was created in 1913. The Newby and Speedwell high schools were organized in 1919. The Red House and Whitehall high schools were established in 1921, and in 1924 the Valley View and Miller high schools were consolidated at Miller. In 1928 the Bobtown high school was organized as a four-year institution but reduced to a junior high school in 1933. Some years later the number of high schools were reduced to four through consolidation: Central (Richmond), Kingston, Kirksville, and Waco. In 1954 about $650,000 was spent expanding the Central high school plant with the expectation of transferring the senior high school pupils there from Kingston, Kirksville, and Waco. This plan is to begin operation with the school year 1955-56.
School Finances-The General Assembly of Kentucky made local taxation for the support of schools compulsory in 1908 and set the rate at twenty cents on each one hundred dollars of taxable prop-
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erty for the support of public schools. Since that time the rate of taxation for the support of schools has been raised from time to time until about four years ago when the maximum rate was set at $1.50 on each one hundred dollars of taxable property for the sup- port of schools. There was a slight fluctuation in the per capita fund until 1928 when it reached $10.25 per census pupil. It has generally increased since that time until it reached $38.41 per census pupil in 1954-55.
In 1896-97, the total expenditures for public schools in Madison County amounted to $20,220.66, most of the sum from local taxes. In 1930 Madison County received $75,235.38 from local taxes and spent $188,738.50. In 1940, the amount from local taxes was $74, 359.54 and the total receipts amounted to $176,996.69. In 1952-53, $207,398.51 was raised through local taxes and the total receipts amounted to $566,233.72, which included $64,480.90 for franchise tax and $32,788.45 for vocational education and $23,090.47 reim- bursement for the school lunchroom program. The total amount spent for instruction has increased from $78,654.95 in 1934-35 to $283,195.65 in 1952-53.
Negro Schools-In 1897 there were 34 Negro schools in Madison County. The number gradually declined until it was 23 in 1919 and 14 in 1932-33. According to recent data there are only five or six Negro schools left in the County. The Negro census has also declined. In 1930 there were 666 Negro children in the census; in 1935, 591; in 1947, 341; in 1952, 225; in 1955, 192.
The County has never operated a high school for Negro pupils. The Madison County Board of Education has for years had an agreement with the Richmond High School to pay the tuition there for the Negro pupils from the County. The tuition rates have varied somewhat from year to year but generally the rate has been around $4.00 per month per pupil.
INDEPENDENT SCHOOL DISTRICTS
There are two independent school districts in Madison County: Berea Independent Graded School and the Richmond Independent district. These districts were created by special school legislation.
Berea Independent Graded School-The Berea Independent Graded School was created by a vote of the people of Berea and certain contiguous areas of Madison County about 1915, although a
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school had existed there for some years before that time. After some defeats in trying to establish a public high school, the people of Berea voted a bond issue for it in 1929. Soon thereafter the high school was reorganized on the 6-6 plan which has generally been followed since that time.
The Berea Independent Graded School is administered by a su- perintendent of schools and a board of education composed of five members.
In 1933 the Berea school system enrolled 529 pupils. The en- rollment for 1954-55 was 419. The school term has usually been nine months since 1933. The system employs fifteen teachers.
Richmond Independent District-The transition from private to public school was rather gradual in Richmond. Although the school is actually 157 years old in the city, and even though several prom- inent private academies flourished in Richmond between 1798 and 1910, the public school system generally began on May 20, 1890, in an act of the General Assembly of Kentucky, which empowered the citizens of Richmond to vote a bond issue not to exceed $20,000, which they did, for the purpose of building one or two school- houses. In that same year the Richmond City Schools acquired the Madison Academy property. After the bond issue carried, an eight- room building was erected on the Madison Academy lot shortly thereafter. The new school building was dedicated in 1894. Several years later two more rooms were added to take care of the increas- ing enrollment of that period. That building was used for school purposes until 1921 when it was destroyed by fire.
Another landmark in the development of the Richmond City Schools occurred on July 5, 1919, when the Richmond City Board of Education leased the property of the Madison Female Institute for ninety-nine years.
The high school department was moved to the Madison Institute building in September, 1919.
When the Caldwell building was destroyed by fire in 1921, an $80,000 bond issue was voted to erect a new building on the Madi- son Institute property on the hill. In 1928, the present city-school building for white pupils was completed at a cost of about $250,000. At that time it had thirty-one classrooms, one music room, a science laboratory, three rooms for domestic science and manual training, a large cafeteria, a library, an auditorium seating about 900, a
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gymnasium, and two office rooms. Several years ago several new classrooms were added to provide more space, and now the entire building is so crowded that double sessions will be necessary in several grades in 1955-56.
Richmond has operated the Richmond High School, including elementary grades, a class "a" high school for Negro pupils for many years. In 1932 the school enrolled 94 high school pupils. In 1954-55 the enrollment was 171 in high school. There are 358 on the census.
The Richmond City Schools are administered by a superintendent of schools and a board of education composed of five members .- See Barksdale Hamlett, History of Education in Kentucky, Frank- fort: Kentucky Department of Education, 1914 (In reality, T. J. Coates, then a member of the Department of Education and later President of Eastern Kentucky State College, prepared the book for publication, J.T.D.); Ruth Allene Hammons, "History of the Richmond City Schools," Richmond: Eastern Kentucky State Col- lege (unpublished), 1949; Edgar W. Knight, Education in the United States, Boston: Ginn and Company, 1929; Moses Edward Ligon, A History of Education in Kentucky, Lexington: College of Education, University of Kentucky, Bulletin of the Bureau of School Service, XIV, 1942; Robert E. Little, "History of Education in Madison County, Kentucky," Lexington: University of Kentucky (unpublished ), 1933 .- By Dr. D. T. Ferrell, Head of the Depart- ment of Education, Eastern Kentucky State College.
CHAPTER VIII Colleges
BEREA COLLEGE
B EREA COLLEGE, a liberal arts school with a secondary depart- ment and a school of nursing, nationally known for high standards of teaching and for its student industries program, grew out of the idea of a non-slaveholding community founded in 1853 by the abolitionist minister John G. Fee, originally of Bracken County, and the outstanding emancipationist General Cassius M. Clay of White Hall. Early in the enterprise Fee was joined by student assistants from Oberlin, Ohio. The three primary figures in the establishment of the school were Fee, Clay, and the Rev. John A. R. Rogers, who joined the undertaking in 1858. From the first they enjoyed the backing and financial endorsement of the Ameri- can Missionary Association.
Fee had turned against slavery while studying for the ministry at Lane Seminary near Cincinnati, after previous work at Augusta College and Miami University. Alienated from his slaveholding father, he lost early pastorates for preaching and writing on aboli- tion, and had attracted Clay's attention previous to the undertaking of the Berea settlement with a number of pamphlets issued on the slave question.
Clay, like Fee, was raised in a slaveholding family, Fee's father having owned more than a dozen Negroes and the more prosperous Clay a much larger number, together with vast estates in land. Like Fee, Clay turned against slavery while a young student, dur- ing his days at Yale. The inclination of youth to question old insti- tutions ran strongly in both. During the 1840's Clay engaged, with his characteristic energy, in the advancement of emancipationist feeling in Kentucky and in the defense of the principle of free speech, and in the 1850's quickly associated himself with the newly founded Republican Party, being chiefly interested in its stand on the spread of slavery into the territories.
He had inherited large landholdings in Madison County from his father, General Green Clay. Opposed to slavery on economic as well as social and moral grounds, he was motivated by the idea of setting
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up a non-slaveholding community in the mountainous south part of the county, where the benefits of free society might be demonstrated. On his return from the Mexican War he contacted Fee asking for copies of pamphlets on slavery for distribution in this area, and readers soon asked the minister to preach there.
Arriving in the early spring of 1853, Fee delivered nine sermons and organized a small anti-slavery church on non-denominalist prin- ciples at the Old Glade Meeting House, near the present site of the Dixie Park Community. He returned to his home, then in Lewis County, but difficulties threatened the failure of the Glades estab- lishment and he accepted its permanent ministry rather than see it dissolve.
The idea of founding a school, not merely to advance the cause of abolition but with a more general educational mission, had ap- parently long been in Fee's mind. Local citizens, led by John Burnam, Sr., proposed to him that he proceed to add this project to his preaching activities. Clay approved the idea as part of his community design, and offered Fee any ten acres the minister might choose for a homestead in a six-hundred acre tract which Clay was then breaking up and selling to non-slaveholders in the settlement.
Fee declined the first offer of land in the Glade, having learned that a prospective purchaser was already negotiating with Clay for the same lot. With Hamilton Rawlings, a local resident, he instead went up onto less desirable land on the ridge and there Rawlings, with a young man named W. B. Wright, surveyed what became the Fee homestead. Fee moved there with his family in 1854.
The next year community citizens around the ridge supported him in beginning the proposed district school, assisted by William E. Lincoln of Oberlin, who was then preaching in the area under the American Missionary Society. Previously there had been a public district school in the Glade Settlement, but indications are that Fee started his on the ridge, on land known to have been donated by Wright near Fee's homestead. A small slab meeting house for preaching and teaching was erected here, on the site now occupied by the Berea City Schools, and it appears that Fee's enterprise never met at the Glade Meeting House. Available records do not indicate whether the new school on the ridge was in a sense an outgrowth of the Glade Public School, or whether it received the
John A. R. Rogers, one of the founders of Berea College.
John G. Fee, one of the founders of Berea College.
Dr. William J. Hutchins, President of Berea College, 1920-1939.
Dr. Francis S. Hutchins, President of Berea College 1939-
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official school district number. The Glade institution continued in operation for a time after Fee began the operation of his new school.
Fee did not consider south Madison County the best site for a permanent undertaking of this kind, since like Clay he was thinking in terms of a general colony as well as an educational institution. The soil in the Berea Ridge area was poor and water a scarcity, and he therefore turned his attention to a site in Rockcastle County with abundant water and good soil, where two young ministers from Oberlin, Otis B. Waters and George Candee, had previously worked. Their buildings had been burned by incendiaries, however, and the general lawlessness there subsequently caused Fee to abandon the idea.
Fee was several times mobbed during this period, at Dripping Springs in Garrard County, in Rockcastle County, and finally at Lewis Chapel on the Kentucky River, on which latter occasion he was threatened with drowning and an assistant severely whipped. He was saved on several occasions by a public understanding of Clay's friendship, since the General's ability to defend himself and his friends by force was legendary in Kentucky. On July 4, 1856, however, at a public speaking at Slate Lick Springs near Berea, Clay's concern for the coming political campaign of that fall and his connection with the Republican Party forced him into a dis- agreement with Fee on the point of obedience to the Fugitive Slave Law, and made it appear that he had withdrawn his active backing.
Despite this, however, a seeming change of fortune after the Lewis Chapel mobbing encouraged Fee to continue his work in south Madison County. The arrival of Rogers that spring (1858) supplied a teacher for a subscription term which followed the regular term of the school, and a public exhibition on June 24 showed a degree of good will, even from slaveholders, a few of whom were allowing their children to attend. The day previous Clay had visited the settlement and showed more cordiality than at any time since Slate Lick.
Thus heartened, Fee, with interested persons in the region, met on September 7, 1858, to outline proposals, and on December 1 the same group adopted a draft constitution. Work continued on this document through the next spring and summer, and the consti-
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COLLEGES
tution was proposed on July 14, 1859, over the signatures of Fee, Rogers, and John G. Hanson, Fee's cousin, all three of whom had come from outside the area; Squire William Stapp, John Smith, and Thomas Jefferson Renfro, local residents, and three young ministers, George Candee, Jacob Emerick, who were preaching in the region, and J. S. Davis of Cabin Creek.
The constitution outlined Christian, anti-sectarian, and anti- slavery principles, assumed on the basis of Fee's previous teachings the co-education of the races, and encouraged the earning of self- support by students. On the point of interracial education several prospective trustees withdrew. Clay had already declined for personal reasons. The name of the school was drawn from a passage in the Book of Acts, 17:10-11, in which St. Paul referred to the residents there as searching "the Scriptures diligently."
The school's work continued until after the John Brown Raid, October 1859, with which Fee was erroneously associated because of an unguarded statement he made in Henry Ward Beecher's church, as guest minister, several weeks after the Virginia dis- turbance. A large citizens' committee of prominent figures in Richmond, excited by rumors, issued a manifesto calling for the removal of the Berea community, peaceably if possible but by force if necessary, and a committee of sixty-two men of outstanding rank in the northern part of the county, under Col. Reuben Munday, delivered the ultimatum to Rogers in early December, Fee still being absent in the north.
Recognizing the determination and high character of the group, the Berea settlement withdrew, passing through Richmond under a safe-conduct from the citizens' committee. Fee had reached Cin- cinnati but heeded warnings not to attempt to return farther. A large group of settlers from Berea also fled to the north in Febru- ary of 1860, after further warnings from the opposition.
Cassius Clay delivered a campaign address a few weeks later on the steps of the Capitol in Frankfort, in which he declared himself neutral in the expulsion, although a resident of Madison County, but in which he offered the opinion that the citizens' committee, al- though of complete honesty and honor, had been misled in their action, and he deplored the end of opportunity for the children of the area to study in Fee's school.
John G. Hanson, who owned lumber interests in the Berea area,
William Goodell Frost, President of Berea College, 1892-1920.
John G. Fee Memorial Union Church, Center of the Religious Life of Berea College.
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returned soon after to care for his property, but was quickly ex- pelled. Fee attempted to return, with Rogers, in 1862, but ran squarely into the Battle of Richmond, August 29-30, and again was forced to flee north after that Confederate victory.
The school was officially re-opened in March of 1866, and was first incorporated under the laws of the Commonwealth in that year. Rogers was named principal.
Negro students were admitted, against some degree of local op- position, and during the ensuing period many families moved to Berea for the purpose of educating their children. The background of the Negro population was the Blue Grass; the white students were drawn largely from the mountains.
The first freshman class in the college department was admitted in 1869, and the first degrees awarded four years later in 1873. Rogers continued as principal until 1878. Rev. E. H. Fairchild, the first officially titled President of Berea College, began his service in 1869. While Fee never held the office of president, he remained through his long connection with the school a member of the faculty and president of the board of trustees. As a patriarch of the community and pastor of the Union Church, however, he appears to have exerted a continuing influence. Fairchild was experienced in administration, and during his term of service the quiet develop- ment of the school gave indication of the wisdom with which he met the problems of the Ku Klux Klan period, and the difficulties of interracial education in a southern state, Most of the early large college buildings rose under his leadership.
At the end of the Fairchild administration there was a brief presidency by William B. Stewart, who apparently did not fully agree with the trustees of the school on all points. His admin- istration lasted two years, and was marked by a concentration on academic emphasis which led to financial decline. He was followed in 1892 by William G. Frost of Oberlin, who remained as president until 1920.
Frost considerably reorganized the teaching staff and program of the school, and developed a passionate interest in the idea of educating people from the mountains. Many of the students had earlier come from this area, probably because Fee had originally found most of the anti-slavery sympathy in Kentucky in that region, but the financial difficulties of the people and the lack of a program
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by Fee and his young preachers to attract them had lessened moun- tain enrollment. During Frost's administration, also, Negro edu- cation had to be abandoned because of the passage of the Day Law in 1904. The Amendment of the Law in 1950 allowed the re- admission of Negroes to higher education on a limited basis.
During the Frost administration the college department had been small, since at first there was a most pressing need for ele- mentary education. Various certificates and diplomas were of- fered for the completion of secondary and less than full college work, but always the collegiate department was maintained on the highest level of quality.
The general effect of the Frost period was to re-orient the school definitely toward the southern mountains, an emphasis which has remained its principle of operation to the present.
Frost's successor was Dr. William J. Hutchins, who played an important part in attention to high academic standards and build- ing a faculty of distinguished ability, in relation to changes in the Berea area of service caused by improvement in local schools. Efficient and far-sighted development of a program of student labor, which was mentioned without implementation in Fee's original con- stitution, was also carried on during the Hutchins administration, largely under the guidance of Dr. Albert G. Weidler, Dean of Labor, who had come during Frost's later years as president.
The succeeding president, the incumbent Dr. Francis S. Hutchins, son of his predecessor, was inaugurated in 1939. Under his leader- ship the college continues to be a great institution, varied in its activities, and now holding properties and endowments estimated at several million dollars. Outstanding donors and supporters have included Henry Ward Beecher, Gerrit Smith, Carl Schurz, Andrew Carnegie, Theodore Roosevelt, President Eliot of Harvard, Wood- row Wilson, Charles M. Hall, Dr. D. K. Pearson, William Julian, William Danforth, Charles Kettering, Charles Ward Seabury, and many others.
As of the centennial graduation of 1955, the alumni of the school now number 4368.
A continuing factor in the success of the modern institution is the calibre of its board of trustees, now made up of E. S. Dabney, president of the Security Trust Company of Lexington; Gale F. Johnston, vice-chairman of the Board of Merchantile Trust Com-
Fine Arts Building, Berea College
4
Science Building, Berea College
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GLIMPSES OF HISTORIC MADISON COUNTY, KENTUCKY
pany, St. Louis, Mo .; Dr. Hutchins, President of Berea College, J. Clyde Wheeler, (Class of 1934) pastor of the Crown Heights Christian Church of Oklahoma City, Okla .; Charles Ward Seabury, chairman of the board of Marsh and McLennan Insurance, Chicago, Ill .; Louis J. Karnosh, (Class of 1913) a physician of Cleveland, Ohio; Hugh Mahaffey, (Class of 1924) a physician of Richmond, Ky .; William Dean Embree, (Class of 1929) retired lawyer, of New York; T. J. Wood, (Classes of 1907 and 1909) vice-president in charge of Sales of the Proctor and Gamble Company, of Cincinnati, Ohio; E. R. Price, retired manager of coal properties for the Inland Steel Co. at Wheelwright; Elmer E. Gabbard, (Class of 1913) head of the Buckhorn Schools at Buckhorn; Bruce Barton, chairman of the Board of Batten, Barton, Durstine and Osborn, Advertisers, of New York; William B. Belknap, agriculturist of Goshen; Eugene Kettering, chief engineer of the Electro-Motive Corporation, La- Grange, Ill .; Barry Bingham, president of the COURIER-JOURNAL and LOUISVILLE TIMES, Louisville; Allan Knight Chalmers, professor of Preaching and Applied Christianity at Boston Univers- ity School of Theology, Boston, Mass .; Escum L. Moore, (Class of 1930) a physician of Lexington, and John D. Goodloe, (Academy Class of 1920 and 1921), vice-president of the Coca-Cola Company, Atlanta, Richard Bentley of Chicago, Ill .; Albert B. Coe, a minister of Boston, Mass .; Thomas B. Cooper, retired dean of the Agricul- tural School of the University of Kentucky, Lexington; Allen Evarts Foster, of New York; Leslie Glenn, of Washington, D.C .; Ormond E. Hunt, of Detroit, Mich .; Chase Kimball, of Milton, Mass .; Carl T. Michel, of Lake Wales, Florida; Seth Low Pierrepont, of Ridge- field, Conn .; Alexander P. Reed, of Pittsburgh, Pa .; Norfleet Turner, of Memphis, Tenn .; W. D. Weatherford, retired YMCA official and vice-chairman of the board of trustees of Berea; and four honorary trustees, William H. Danforth of St. Louis, Edward W. Edwards of Cincinnati, Joel E. Goldthwait, M.D. of Boston, Mass .; and James L. Stuart of Pittsburgh, Penn.
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