A twentieth century history and biographical record of Branch County, Michigan, Part 20

Author: Collin, Henry P
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: New York : Lewis Publishing
Number of Pages: 1198

USA > Michigan > Branch County > A twentieth century history and biographical record of Branch County, Michigan > Part 20

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When the settlers came from the east many of them brought along a few school books such as the parents had used, coming from every one of the New England and middle Atlantic states, these books when brought into the school by individual pupils formed a heterogeneous collection. Yet from these the teacher was supposed to assign the lessons, and from a chaos of texts to reduce uniformity. The difficulty was not so great as might be imagined. For the curriculum consisted of the three r's, "reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic." and so far as the instruction in these branches went it might be obtained from almost any set of books. The one book that seems to have an abiding place in every memory was the old blue-backed Webster's Elementary Speller. This was the backbone of every school, and far from being cast aside when school days were over it continued as the basis for the spelling schools which young and old attended until within the memory of men and women who are not yet past the prime of life. And if we may trust the judgment of many, spelling was a more carefully cultivated art in those days than at present, and the boys and girls of half a century ago would be more than a match for the present generation of spellers.

A school inspector's report on Batavia township for 1838 names the following books as most commonly used in the schools: The Elementary Speller, Olney's Geography and Atlas, Daboll's Arithmetic, and Murray's Grammar, and Murray's English Reader. To modern taste. these books are dry and unattractive both in form- and content. What would a boy or girl think of a reader without a single illustration and with such a title page as this :- " The English Reader : or Pieces in Prose and Poetry, sel- ected from the Best Writers, designed to assist young persons to read with Propriety and Effect; to Improve their Language and Sentiments, and to inculcate some of the most important Principles of Piety and Virtue; with a few preliminary observations on the Principles of Good Reading." Such

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was the Murray English Reader, printed in 1818 and in common use among the first schools of Branch county.

Such were, in general. the first schools in Branch county. Although no efficient system of education was established until after Michigan became a state, there were, as above noted, voluntary associations among the settlers for holding school sessions in certain localities. The data is not available for a complete sketch of the early schools, and no complete reports from over the county are to be found previous to 1850.

The first school was taught in the locality of the first settlement. John Toole, an immigrant of 1829. located in what is now Bronson township and taught a small school there in the winter of 1829-30. There were at that time probably not more than five or six families in all to contribute to its support. Shortly after, perhaps in the next winter, a school was taught on Bronson prairie by Columbia Lancaster, the versatile pioneer who could be pedagogue, lawyer and doctor at will. School was held in a log build- ing, probably the first erected for that purpose in the county. Mrs. David Waterman was teacher of a summer school at the same place. Cynthia Gloyd is also named as one of the first teachers of the township.

In 1832 the well known Bishop Philander Chase, who did so much in building up Episcopacy in the west, came to the county seeking a farm. Delighted with the country about Gilead, he settled there with his family. and built a school building in 1833. This house was twenty by thirty feet and two stories high. The first teacher was the Bishop's nephew, Samuel Chase. The old " seminary " building remained standing on section 9 for over forty years. and became in time a dwelling, being used as such until torn down. This Episcopal school was maintained for several years, and the children of the first settlers were schooled there. Mrs. David N. Green of Coldwater is probably the only surviving pupil of that school. she having come to the settlement in 1838 and attended the school while Dudley Chase. a son of the Bishop, was teacher.

The subject of the early schools of Coldwater has been very thoroughly treated by Mr. C. N. Legg. He says : " The earliest settlers appear to have combined to hire instruction for their children by tutors, and the chil- dren. the few there were, met in the cabins of the pioneers. Cynthia Gloyd, a woman who later taught in the first schoolhouse. was engaged to teach at different places prior to the erection of a schoolhouse. The first build- ing for use as a schoolhouse was erected at the corner of where is now Pearl and Hudson streets, and very near the present location of the residence of Mr. Frank Treat. This was a frame one-room building and painted red. It was called as long as it stood the " Red School House." It was built in 1834. but when it ceased to be used as a schoolhouse I have no means of learning. Cynthia Gloyd was probably the first person who taught here. A man by the name of McWhorter also taught for some time. Mr. L. D. Halsted recently related to me his recollections of this schoolhouse and the man McWhorter. One circumstance which fixed in his mind the man was. that in the winter of 1836 he attended a singing class taught in the school-

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house, and McWhorter became angry because he was compelled to sweep up the room after the sessions of the singing class. The late Harvey Haynes also taught here in 1838. Here the children of the pioneers were taught the rudiments of such an education as they were able to acquire. It is a fact which should be borne in mind by this as well as subsequent generations that the first task of the early pioneers of this city was to provide shelter and food for their families, and the next was to provide shelter and teacher for instruction of their children.

So much for the first schools and those originating while Michigan was yet a territory. Under the first state constitution Rev. John D. Pierce was appointed the first superintendent of public instruction. In accordance with a vote of the legislature Mr. Pierce reported to that body in January. 1837, a code of school laws, which was adopted with but little change. The gen- eral plan of education thus established is the foundation upon which the present system has been built.

The township was the unit. Each township had three school inspectors. whose duty it was to organize school districts, to apportion the school moneys to the districts; to examine teachers and grant certificates; and to appoint one of their number to visit the schools twice a year and to make an annual report to the county clerk. These boards of inspectors continued to exercise control over the schools of their respective townships until the county super- intendency was established in 1867.

Each district, however, had the control of its own school. A district could vote a tax for buildings, not to exceed five hundred dollars in any one year. Each district was required to hold school at least three months each year. Each district had to assess a tax to the primary school fund apportioned to the district, and if the teacher's wages exceeded the funds, the board could assess a tax to meet the deficiency, but not to exceed ninety dollars, the limit fixed by law. Also, the district could vote ten dollars a year for a library.

It was soon found that this method of raising school revenues by district taxation proved insufficient for the support of schools. To remedy this the legislature passed. in 1843, the famous " rate bill " law, which provided that the patrons of each school might raise the funds necessary to continue the school through the term. The parents or guardians of the children were assessed a tax in proportion to the time such children attended school. This rate bill was made out by the teacher at the close of each term, and the amount distributed among the patrons. The law did not work well, for the poor parents or those indifferent to education would send to school. as long as the public funds lasted, and when the rate bill set in would take their children out. Primary education thus became a question of ability to pay for it, and the fundamental principle of popular education was threatened. Neverthe- less, despite the inequality, the rate bill law was not repealed until 1869. Some idea of the working of this rate bill law may be gained by reference to the township reports for 1850. The report from Batavia shows that district No. 8 raised $62.65 on the rate bill. Estimating the teacher's wages at the

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then prevailing average of six dollars a month for a woman teacher and thirteen for a man, it will be seen that this school was continued for several months of the year from the proceeds of the rate bill, the children of the poorer parents probably being without instruction during this time. In the same township district No. 2 raised by the same method $43.14. and dis- trict No. 1. $33. In Bronson township the four districts raised $184.06 in this way, and the six districts in California raised $217.

The original plan, as above outlined, contemplated only single districts. with a single house, and but one teacher; and all references to teachers and sites were in the singular number. But as the population increased it was seen that expediency often demanded more than one teacher, and sometimes more than one schoolhouse in the same district. The township board under these conditions would have had no option but to sub-divide the district and pro- vide for two or more separate schools in the original district. To maintain several adjacent district schools, co-ordinate in work and rank, was evidently at the expense of efficiency and economy. The laws were therefore amended so as to permit a union of adjoining districts wherever the population was sufficiently dense to admit of bringing a large number of children into one system of graded schools. without embracing too much territory to be thus well accommodated.

This was the origin of the " union school " in Michigan. The true sig- nificance of the term had reference not so much to the uniting of the districts as to the system of grading which resulted from the union. The real mean- ing of a " union school " was therefore a graded school, located in the more populous communities, with one central schoolhouse, having several differ- ent rooms and employing several different teachers. No such school was established in Branch county until the decade of the fifties, and the organi- zation of a union or graded school marked in important stage in the devel- opment of educational institutions in each of the villages.

The general supervision and control of the schools of the county and townships has been vested by the legislature in different bodies at various times. The township board of inspectors established by the original laws was changed, as noted above, by an act of March 13. 1867. which created the office of county superintendent of schools. Less than ten years later this act was repealed, and on March 31. 1875. the law took effect transferring the control once more to the township. and requiring the election in each town- ship of one superintendent of schools and one school inspector. The town- ship superintendent was required to examine teachers, grant certificates and visit the schools of his township twice a year. He with the school inspector and the township clerk constituted the board of school inspectors for each township. This system endured for a number of years, until it was again thought best to centralize the control of county schools in one office. June 19. 1891. the law still in effect was approved. This required that the board of supervisors should appoint a county commissioner of schools who should hold office until July 1, 1893. at which time the commissioner regularly elected by the voters at the election in April should begin his duties. At

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the same meeting the supervisors were to appoint two school examiners, for one and two year terms respectively, and the board should thereafter appoint one examiner at each annual meeting. The county commissioner and the two examiners constitute the board of school examiners. The county com- missioner has general oversight of the schools in the county, being required to visit each school, and also advises with the board of school inspectors in each township.

As soon as the machinery of education was set in operation by the first state legislature, the various townships took measures to form dis- tricts and conform to the general scheme of education. The existing reports and other school data do not suffice for a complete account of the status of schools in 1837, but it will be of interest to describe conditions as far as pos- sible. For that year one report of the school inspector in Ovid township has been found. In this it is stated that there was one district school in the township, thirty-six children of school age and twenty-three who attended the sessions of the three months' term. The total amount raised in the dis- trict was eighteen dollars, which went to pay the teacher. This no doubt was the first school in the township, but no further information is given concern- ing it. This also indicates an error in the History of 1879, in which it is stated that Mr. Parley Stockwell, who came to the township as late as 1842, built the first schoolhouse and taught the second term of school that was held therein. It is probable that.Mr. Stockwell's school was the first in that part of the township, that is, at Parley's Corners in section 16.

The only other report found for 1837 relates to Butler township. No school had been kept there during the year but there were twenty children of school age and five hundred dollars had been raised for a schoolhouse. This school was built on Shook's Prairie, and during the winter of 1838-39 Charles M. Wisner presided as the first teacher.

Batavia township reported in 1838 three district schools, with 29. 46 and 31 pupils respectively, and the total amount raised by taxation in the township as ninety dollars. The record pertaining to the organization of two of these districts will be found quoted in the former history, and from these it is seen that the meeting for organization of district No. I took place .in May, 1836, and that for the formation of No. 2, in December of the same year.

Each township established one or more schools about this time. As is well known. although the settlement of Branch county had hardly begun in 1830, in twenty years from that date the population had increased to a stage from which there has been only moderate changes to the present day. The formation of schools kept pace with this increase of population. and it is unfortunate that the records of this period of growth have not been preserved, for at the time complete statistics are available the school population and number of districts had reached very nearly the normal figures.

Thus the whole number of children included in the school census of 1905 was 6.505, while in 1855 the number was 6,359. While the school population and the number of districts has remained about the same, the

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story of educational growth in fifty years is best told in a comparison of the money expenditures. Whereas the Primary School interest apportioned for the year 1855 totaled $3,383.23, or a little more than fifty cents to the child, in 1905 the total distributed in the May and November apportion- ments was $21,466.50, or two dollars and thirty cents to the child. While population has remained stationary, wealth has increased enormously. The county schools in 1855 raised nearly $3.500 by means of the rate bill, in addi- tion to the $2.500 raised by the mill tax. At the present time some of the districts support their schools almost entirely through the income of the state fund.

Fifty years ago a blackboard was the extent of apparatus in most schools ; now the schools in the majority of the 127 districts in the county are supplied with dictionaries. globes, maps, and the scholars have access to libraries which in themselves offer advantages unknown to the children of the former date.

As early as 1868 the state superintendent of public instruction called attention to the need of uniting rather than dividing districts. He showed the waste and inefficiency of small districts, which condition continued be- cause the people desired to have a schoolhouse " near by." a false estimate being placed upon the value of a home school. Since then conditions have materially changed. Roads are better, and with increased facilities of trans- portation the bounds of community life have been widened. The interests of the people are more closely knit together, and old forms of individualism are disappearing.

The movement which fifty years ago resulted in the formation of the first " union schools " is now being extended to the rural schools. In line with this direction of progress, the state legislature enacted a law which be- came effective September 17, 1903, permitting the transportation of pupils to and from school at the expense of the districts concerned. This is per- haps the most important legislation of recent years affecting the rural schools. As yet the people of Branch county have not taken advantage of recent leg- islation permitting the consolidation of school districts into larger districts comprehending in some cases an entire township, with a central graded school accessible, by means of public transportation, to all the pupils in the district. As the county school commissioner. Mr. James Swain, has said in his report for 1905. " We have too many small schools, but many people seem to be jealous of their rights and are very slow to see the benefit to be derived from consolidation of schools."

One or two other statements from the county commissioner's report may serve as a basis from which subsequent developments in educational affairs may be reckoned. With reference to the study of agriculture in the rural schools he says, " Agriculture is best taught by practical experiments, and many schools have placed the book 'Agriculture for Beginners', in their li- brary. which is a source of help and a guide for the boys and girls." As to manual training, it "has received attention only in a limited way in the

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rural schools. A few teachers feel that they have the time to devote at least one hour each week to the subject."

Another subject that should be mentioned in a history of the Branch county schools is that concerning compulsory education. Until 1905 the law vested the power to compel attendance in the township board, the chairman of which was the executive officer to carry the law into effect. Practically. it was optional with this board whether the law should be enforced. and at best the board could require the child to attend school only four months of sixteen days each, or sixty-four days in the entire year. That the plan was defective is shown by the fact that in 1905 only 47 out of 127 districts in the county attempted to enforce the law.

Beginning with the year 1905-06 a new law became operative. Instead of the enforcement of the law being left with each township, it is the duty of the county commissioner of schools to see that its provisions are effective in all districts throughout the entire school year. The executive or truant officer is a deputy sheriff appointed by the sheriff and acting under the super- vision of the county commissioner. All children between and including the ages of seven and fifteen years are compelled to attend school so long as schools are in session in their district, in other words, for the entire school year. The only exception to this rule are children excused by physician's certificate ; or those in attendance at a private or parochial school in which the same grade of work is done as in the public schools: or in case of chil- dren over fourteen years of age whose labor is necessary to the support of the family, who may be excused from attendance with the unanimous consent of the township board and the recommendation of the county commissioner.

As to the actual workings of the law during the first year it has been in effect, County Commissioner Swain states that no difficulty has been experi- enced in enforcement except among the few foreign families in the county. This is evidence of the strong sentiment for popular education in the county, and it is no weak proof of the prosperity of the county which after three quarters of a century of growth and development can afford to provide all the means of primary education and require its children for the first sixteen years of their lives to attend school an average of eight months in the year.

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CHAPTER XXI.

EDUCATION (CONTINUED).

COLDWATER CITY SCHOOLS.

With reference to the schools of Coldwater village and city. Mr. Legg. whose article has been above quoted concerning the first Coldwater school- house, continues thus : " The next schoolhouse was built on a part of the lot No. 104 at the corner of Pearl and Clay streets on land largely owned by Dr. I. C. Iyes. A meeting was called at the 'Exchange ' on June 1. 1839. at which time a new district was formed designated as . district No. II.' This new district embraced all the territory north of Chicago street and for a mile west of Marshall street and extending north two miles; also all the land on section 21 lying south of Chicago street and west of Division street. The officers of this new district were: Silas A. Holbrook, moderator: Orse- inus B. Clark. director: Henry Lockwood, assessor. At a meeting called and held eight days later, the district board was authorized to purchase a part of the lot mentioned above as a school site and to raise money to con- struct a building. This was built in 1839. Mr. Halsted remembered the building well. and Mrs. R. M. Wilder attended school in this building and remembers seeing it being moved away years later. It is not probable that this building was used as a schoolhouse longer than about ten years, as about this time population began to increase very rapidly and more commodi- ous quarters were soon demanded. This building then was the second for school purposes. It evidently was of modest proportions, as its cost must have been less than five hundred dollars. The district contained in 1839 but 68 children of school age. In the following year the number increased to 93. It is probable that the late Hiram Shoudler taught here. A Mr. Ethe- ridge also taught here. but whether it was the late Burt Etheridge who lived here at that time, or Samuel Etheridge who was moderator of this district in 1841. or a younger man, I have not been able to ascertain.

" The next school building in order of construction was the "Old White Schoolhouse' as called in later years, erected on the present site of the sec- ond ward building. After searching the files of the Sentinel, edited by the latc Albert Chandler. it appears that this building was erected in the sum- mer of 1847. The dimensions were 30 by 60 feet, two stories high, and the contract price of the construction was $1.200. During two or three years prior to this time. notices of political meetings and other assemblages men- tioned the 'White Schoolhouse' as the place of meeting. It is therefore evi- dent that the schoolhouse on lot 104 at the corner of Pearl and Clay streets

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was painted white. The records of St. Mark's church mention a meeting at the ' White Schoolhouse,' where the society had heretofore held stated meet- ings, for the purpose of organizing a parish. This was in February, 1848, and probably refers to the building on lot No. 104 rather than the new building. There remain quite a number of the older people of the city who attended school here and the names of Mrs. George Holbrook, John Murphy, Mrs. D. H. Davis, Miss Hadley, L. R. Austin and others are remembered as teachers in this building. The first county fair was held in this building and on the adjoining grounds. It served the purposes of a schoolhouse for many years and was finally removed to the corner of Chicago and Hudson streets, where it was occupied as a wagon shop until finally destroyed by fire.

" The next building erected for school purposes was the two-story brick building on the present site of the third ward building. In recent years of its existence it was commonly known as the 'Old Brick.' This was con- structed in 1848, the year following the building of the 'Old White,' but in clistrict II. The movement to consolidate the two districts appears not to have been carried into effect until several years later. This building con- tinued in use for school purposes until torn down in 1887 to make room for the present third ward building. In this building the late D. H. Davis taught for several years while it remained the principal school of the city before the erection of the Old High School. One of the teachers whom some may recall was Miss Parthenia Havens. A man by the name of Gibson was prin- cipal at the time the Old High School building was afterwards constructed, and was transferred to the new building as its first principal. The late George W. Stevens, as well as his wife, taught here for many years after Gibson left."

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A twentieth century history and biographical record of Branch County, Michigan, Part 20

Author: Collin, Henry P Publication date: 1906 Publisher: New York : Lewis Publishing Number of Pages: 1198

Author: Collin, Henry P
Publication date: 1906
Publisher: New York : Lewis Publishing
Number of Pages: 1198