USA > Missouri > Greene County > Past and present of Greene County Missouri, early and recent history and genealogical records of many of the representative citizens, Volume I > Part 46
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
have been gladly woven into this great effort will yet in God's providence be amply rewarded.
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.
Springfield has been called "the Athens of the Southwest" owing to her numerous and splendid educational institutions, especially since the State Normal School of District No. 4. was located here. The institution was established by an act of the forty-third General Assembly, approved March 17, 1905. The district is composed of twenty-two counties in southwestern Missouri. Although Aurora and many other towns offered great induce- ments for the school, the commission appointed to locate it selected Spring- field as the site. The bonus given by the citizens of Springfield consisted of forty acres of land inside the city limits, valued at forty thousand dollars, and twenty-five thousand dollars in cash. The campus which is in the south- eastern part of the city is a beautiful one and most desirable for the purpose. It is a level, grassy, wooded section of an old farm, near Phelps Grove, one of the city's fine parks, and the campus is covered with large maple, catalpa, ash and other trees.
The school began its work in leased buildings. June 11, 1906, and en- rolled 543 students in its first term. The total enrollment for the year of forty-eight weeks. beginning in September, 1906, was 934; for the next year. 1,087 ; for the third year, 1,237 ; for the fourth year, 1,388; for the fifth year, 1.4408; for the sixth year, 1,724; for the seventh year, 2,018.
The forty-fourth General Assembly appropriated $225,000 for build- ings. Academic Hall, or the main building, was erected at a cost of ap- proximately $225,000. The corner-stone was laid August 10, 1907. It was first occupied by the school January 4, 1909. The forty-sixth General Assembly appropriated $65,000 for auditorium and gymnasium. These structures are the only fireproof school buildings owned by the state. They are constructed of Missouri marble. finished in hard wood and handsome architecture, and is complete in heating, ventilation and light as modern science can provide.
The school has had seven commencements, in August of each year, from 1907 to 1913. In that time it has graduated four hundred eleven from its diploma course and has had two to take the bachelor's degree. It has graduated seven hundred ninety-eight from the secondary school course. Academically, the secondary school course is equal to that of a first-class high school. and the full course is equal to that of a junior college. Pedi- gogically, the secondary course equips one for the successful management of graded and rural schools, and the full course gives complete equipment for supervising and teaching any grade of public school.
STATE NORMAL SCHOOL.
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
Following are the board or regents: J. J. Schneider, Springfield, term expires in 1919: W. S. Chandler, Mountain Grove, term expires n 1919; C. A. Lockwood, Lamar, term expires in 1917; W. Y. Foster, Nevada, term expires in 1917 : H. B. McDaniel, Springfield, appointed in 1915 ; state super- intendent William P. Evans, ex-officio member. Officers: J. J. Schneider, president ; W. Y. Foster, vice-president ; Frank C. Mann, secretary ; John M. Young, treasurer. Executive committee : J. J. Schneider, W. S. Chandler, C. A. Lockwood. Organization committee : J. J. Schneider. W. Y. Foster, WV. P. Evans. There are thirty-seven in the faculty and other positions about the school.
THE SPRINGFIELD NORMAL SCHOOL.
One of the important and popular educational institutions of Greene county in the past was the Springfield Normal School, which was located in the southeastern part of the city, a few blocks east of the present State Normal School. It was built in 1893, however had been incorporated prior to that date. The main building was an attractive brick, well suited to the purposes for which it was intended, and the surrounding campus was exten- sive and attractive. Its first board of directors were F. P. Mayhugh, C. D. Mayhugh and J. A. Taylor. The school opened with an enrollment of over three hundred. The corporation failed in the fall of 1905. Several changes. took place. It was in charge of Allen Moore for some time. In 1899 Prof. J. A. Taylor took charge of the school, who continued to operate it success- fully until the State Normal was established. The enrollment during the. last year was little over eight hundred. These students were principally from other counties, comprising southern and southwestern Missouri, who were preparing themselves for teachers. The summer sessions were especially well attended by teachers, who took advantage of the opportunity to obtain special training during the vacation periods. The school did not finally close its doors until the fall of 1907. at which time it was taken over by the State Normal and removed to the new building. the old building having since- been abandoned. The normal students proper went to the new normal and the students in the business department went to the Springfield Business Col- lege. Six of the old normal faculty were retained as instructors in the new State Normal.
CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Springfield has one of the most attractive public library buildings of any city its size in the West. It is located on a high and commanding lot. at the northwest corner of Jefferson and Center streets, west of the Spring- field high school. It is a very substantial stone structure, combining every
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
modern detail of convenience and attractiveness. The corner-stone was laid in 1903 and the building was opened to the public in 1905. This magnifi- cent structure was made possible through the magnanimity of Andrew Car- negie, who donated the sum of fifty thousand dollars for this purpose. The city of Springfield was supposed to appropriate the sum of five thousand dollars a year for the maintenance of the library, but so far three thousand- dollars is all that has been received from this source by the library board.
There are now over six thousand well selected volumes, covering a wide
CARNEGIE PUBLIC LIBRARY.
range of subjects. The best standard periodicals are also to be found on the tables in the reading room.
Following are the names of the present library board: George Pepper- dine, president: Mrs. Edward M. Shepard, vice-president: Mrs. Victor O. Coltrane, secretary and treasurer ; R. G. Porter, O. E. Gorman, Mrs. Samuel Rogers, Rev. J. T. Bacon, Louis Reps and William Ullman.
There are committees on finance, books, house and grounds.
The first librarian was Dora A. Wilson, who was succeeded by Flor- ence Wilson. The present librarian is Harriet M. Horine, who has two as- sistants. Susie C. Fellows and Lillian Sargent.
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS OF GREENE COUNTY AND OUTSIDE OF SPRINGFIELD.
By A. M. Haswell.
No region in the West was more fortunate in the class of men and women who were its pioneer settlers than was Greene county, and in nothing was the high quality of these people better evidenced than in their eagerness to secure the best obtainable educational advantages, for their children.
Coming, as nearly all of them did, from the isolated mountain com- munities of Tennessee, Kentucky and southwestern Virginia, it is certain that, at an early day, their own schooling must have been of the scantiest. Probably with the exception of a few families, better circumstanced than the majority, most of their education had been imparted at the mother's knee, in their own humble homes.
But, and herein lay the great difference between the pioneer community of Greene county and most others of that day, these people prized education and coveted it for their children. So it was that before they had been in the wilderness that was to become Greene county two years; while yet their homes were but the rudest of log cabins; while the fields that they had hewed from the surrounding forest were yet of small size, and full of stumps, these heroic men and women gave gladly out of their poverty, in material and labor to erect school houses. They denied themselves of even the few neces- sities of their rude frontier life, that they might wring out of their scanty means the amount needed to pay the tuition fees. And, while to us of this latter day those school houses would hardly be thought worthy to serve as stables, and those tuition fees seem so small as to be insignificant, there is no doubt that, taking into consideration the financial ability of the two periods, they represented ten times more of effort and sacrifice than does our present magnificent system of buildings and our hundreds of well paid teachers.
It was in the early part of 1830 that "Uncle Billy Fulbright," John P. Campbell, the Miller brothers, Joseph and David, and A. J. Burnett, arrived in the wilderness that was destined to become Springfield. It was in the spring of that same year that Burnett built his little cabin of poles on the present site of the Frisco building, the forerunner of all the pleasant homes of the Springfield of our day.
All that year, 1830, and during 1831, the wagons continued to arrive from Tennessee and Kentucky, mostly drawn by oxen and loaded with the simple belongings of the sturdy frontier life. As they arrived each head of a family selected such a location as suited him best, built his rude cabin and proceeded to hew out a home for himself and his descendants in the wooded plateaus of the Ozarks. There were plenty of children in those pioneer families ; the term "race suicide" was unknown in those days, and if known
STRAFFORD HIGH SCHOOL.
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would have been treated with the contempt that it deserves, and the families in the little log cabins were of good old fashioned proportions.
So in the autumn of 1831. the project of building a school house, and finding a teacher to instruct the children, a project that had been frequently discussed even before that date, took definite shape. A site for the building was selected in section 22. township 29. range 22. This site was about half a mile west of the present city limits of Springfield and was probably on a part of what is now the Charles Holland dairy farm. Here one morning the father of the settlement gathered; some cut and bauled the logs, others notched them and laid them up in the approved "cob house" fashion, some
CAVE SPRING, CASS TOWNSHIP.
split clap boards from straight grained blocks of oak, for the roof, some split and hewed the "puncheons" for the floor, and soon there stood, ready for its high mission, the first school house in Greene county. For windows it had square holes cut through the log walls, with neither sash, glass or shutter. For seats it had split saplings with sections of other and smaller saplings driven into augur holes to serve as legs. To save labor there were but three legs furnished to each bench, two at one end and one at the other. As for desks, there were none and the complement of books comprised stray copies of Pike's arithmetic, a few odd readers and some of the old blue backed Webster spelling books. But with all its limitations, it was a school.
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
In this primitive building "Uncle Joe Rountree," of blessed memory, taught the first school of Greene county. One who was a scholar in that school, John Miller, has left on record that the pupils were: "Henry Ful- bright and some of his younger brothers, the Rountree boys, John Miller, Joseph J. Weaver. his two older sisters, Louisiana and Jane, and a few others." Notable family names these, all of them. Names that have stood high in all the past of Greene county and which today, most of them, occupy positions in the business and social world. worthy of the ancestry from which they sprang.
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SUNSHINE, CAMPBELL TOWNSHIP.
As the country around Springfield was gradually settled other schools were opened. All of them housed by the voluntary labors of the settlers, and supported by tuition fees paid monthly to the teachers. In 1835 a little building was erected in the northern part of what is now Campbell township, close to the Franklin township line. Some five miles northeast of Spring- field. Here David Appleby, ancestor of the prominent Greene county family of that name taught the first school in that part of the county. His school house had the solid earth for a floor and was equipped with the latest make of three legged benches as was its only predecessor.
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434
GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
In 1837 Robert Foster, the first of many of that family name in the county, taught in a little log cabin built in section 10. township 30, range 21, nearly in the center of what afterwards was erected in Franklin township, which name it still bears. Foster's school would seem to have entered the educational field as a competitor of Mr. Appleby's carlier institution, for, while Appleby received the rich compensation of one dollar per pupil per month. it is of record that Foster only charged half that sum and "taught the young idea how to shoot" for fifty cents cach per month.
In 1836-7 the extreme northwest part of the county opened a school in a log cabin, about a quarter of a mile west of the present village of Walnut Grove, with B. F. Walker as the teacher. . Boone township followed during
HICKORY SPRINGS, FRANKLIN TOWNSHIP.
1837 with a school house in its extreme eastern boundaries, taught by John H. Tatum. Another name borne today by prominent families in the region. Taylor township opened its first school in 1836 in a cabin on the Danforth farm. About 1837 the settlers in Cass township met and put up a school house and school was taught, although. as in the case of Taylor township, the name of the first teacher has not come down to us.
Pond Creek township too, at about the same date built its first school house. It was only fourteen by fifteen feet, but it served its purpose and the children attended the school there. Center township. although not organized as a separate township quite so early as the others, put up a building on sec- tion 23. township 29, range 24, in 1841 and the school had for a teacher
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
Miss Rachel Q. Waddill, a sister of the late Judge Waddill of Springfield, and aunt of the present old citizen of the town, General John B. Waddill, and of his sister, Mrs. Mary S. Boyd, who is the oldest by length of service of all the corps of Springfield teachers today.
The record says that Miss Rachel Waddill taught two terms in that little building. That one entire end of the house was taken up by the fire- place, and that her compensation was seventy-five cents per pupil per month. The house was but fourteen feet square, and when its twenty-five scholars were in attendance it was well filled. There were not lacking, a little further on in the history of the county, other schools of more pretentious character. Thus, Ebenezer had a "Select School" for years, and in Springfield were a series of schools of much higher grade than those we have enumerated.
SALEM, CENTER TOWNSHIP.
But all these pioneer schools were, as we have seen, "subscription" or "pay" schools. The modern idea of free schools provided and taught at public expense, and to which all children were welcome "without money and without price," was making but feeble way even in the older and more closely settled parts of the nation, and had not yet penetrated so far into the frontier as Greene county. But the day came, and that very early in the history of the county, when the modern system was inaugurated here.
It was in 1842 that we find the state of Missouri making the first feeble beginnings in its aid to public schools. The apportionment amounted only to the trivial sum of $1,999.63 for the entire state, but it was the first few drops before a plentiful shower. In 1845 the Legislature of Missouri en- acted a law which proved that the men in that body were worthy to represent
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
even as progressive a community as that of Greene county. In that law it was enacted that each Congressional township in Missouri should be erected . into a school township. That the inhabitants should meet at some selected point and elect school directors, settle the length of term to be taught, choose teachers, and take such other necessary steps towards the establish- ment of a public school as they deemed fit.
That act really marks an epoch in the history of the whole state. It is, indeed, the germ from which has grown one of the greatest and most com- plete system of public schools in the United States. Under its provisions the amount appropriated from the state treasury steadily increased. Be- ginning, as we have seen, with only $1.999.63 in 1842. it increased year by year. until in 18449, it amounted to $59,456, and the total from 1842 to 1849, inclusive, was no less than $225.334.
The Legislature of 1887 passed a measure giving the public schools of the state an even one-third of all monies collected by state taxation, and that is in force at the present time. Out of the little appropriation of 1842 Greene county received as its share much less than $100.00. In 1914 the county received $33,910.00. Those figures give in a nut-shell the story of the growth of the public school system of the state and of the county of Greene.
The people of Greene county did not take prompt advantage of the privilege of organizing into school townships, and while the law was passed in 1845, it was not until the latter part of 1847 that, in compliance with peti- tions submitted to it, the county court of Greene county, made an order calling school elections in three townships. A majority of the inhabitants in each township having signed the petition to that effect.
At that time Smith School Township, Number 21, was organized. This was Congressional township 30, of range 20, then, and now a part of Jackson municipal township. At the same time Chaffin school township was or- ganized out of Congressional township 29. of range 18. This has been a part of Webster county ever since that county was formed from a part of Greene. The third to organize was Pryor school township, in township 27, of range 19. This has long been a part of Christian county. Others quickly followed and during 1847 and 1848 every township in Greene county was organized. Thus was established the free public school system of Greene county, which has grown to such notable proportions in our day.
The records of the public schools of the county, from their inception until the outbreak of civil war in 1861, are but scanty. Doubtless many of them were lost or destroyed during those four years of strife. That they had grown in number, attendance and influence goes without saying. The county court records show that county school commissioners were appointed from time to time, who filled much the same place as the modern school su- perintendent, but were appointive officers. instead of elective, as at present.
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
In the spring of 1861, as all know, the storm of civil war swept down upon Greene county. Springfield was a strategical point in war, as she is, and always has been in commerce, and both sides strove manfully to hold control of the prices. The marching and countermarching of armies, the roar and confusion of battle, and the disrupted condition of society in gen- eral, would seem to afford scant occasion for the peaceful duties of the school room. Nevertheless. it is evident that for a very large part of the four years of war at least, more or less of the public schools of Greene county maintained a precarious existence. For proof of this see the record of a session of the county court held April 3. 1865, where it is set forth that : "R. A. C. Mack has been performing the duties of county school commis- sioner for sixteen months." That period of sixteen months would carry his term of service well back towards the middle of the four years of strife.
But with April. 1865, came the collapse of the Confederacy. Hardly had the smoke of battle cleared away than the work of the schools was taken up with renewed vigor. Mr. Mack, spoken of above, continued his work during 1865, but at the session of the county court of April, 1866, we find the court appointing Rev. L. M. Vernon "to examine teachers and issue cer- tificates." Mr. Vernon's term of service was but short, or, perhaps, he found his duties so many that he required assistance. for at the session of May 14, 1866, we find the following entry in the records of the county court : "H .S. Creighton is hereby appointed superintendent of common schools to serve until one is elected." That is the first time that the official was designated as "superintendent of schools." Mr. Creighton was directed by the court to "at once visit, organize and set in operation the several schools of the county." The salary of the new officer was fixed at three dollars per day, "for the time actually employed."
Mr. Creighton is well remembered by the older citizens of the county. He was an enthusiastic worker and carried through his hard task of re- viving the all but dead school system of the county. In the election of 1868 James R. Milner, a young lawyer recently arrived in Springfield from Ohio, after serving in the Union army, was elected county school superintendent, the first man elected to the office by popular ballot. Mr. Milner has been for several years a resident of Long Beach, California.
From the close of the war really dates the history of our public school system. No community ever had a more faithful and painstaking series of officials than Greene has had in her list of county school superintendents. The structure of our public school system owes some important part of the whole to the individual labors of each of these men. Following Mr. Milner came, in 1870, J. J. Bunch; in 1872 and re-elected in 1874, O. S. Reed; in 1876 and 1878, M. H. Williams; in 1880, Jonathan Fairbanks. And so on
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
down the years to the service of our present superintendent, Prof. J. R. Roberts. It is a list of good names ; a roll of honor in very truth.
In the year 1897 the General Assembly passed the law that permitted each county to establish "county supervision," and Greene county was among the first to take advantage of the measure. S. P. Bradley was appointed by the governor to fill the office thus created in Greene county, and by several successive re-elections, held the position until 1905, when Mr. Roberts was elected.
The report for 1868 showed the number of children of school age in the county to be 7.209. The next year. 1869, the number had increased to 7,640, a gain of 431 in the year. The apportionment of school money in 1869 was $7.706.92. As indicating the rapid growth of the county it is interesting to note. in passing, that in 1875 the county received for her school fund $30,666.14, an increase of over 400 per cent. in seven years.
For 1877 we have quite a full report of the condition of the schools. This was given by School Commissioner M. H. Williams, and its principal items are as follows :
White children of school age. 8.047 : colored, 944; number of teachers, 113, of whom 62 were males and 51 females. Average salary paid male teachers, $38.00 per month; average salary of female teachers, $27.00. There were one hundred and five schools for white children and six for colored children, and there were one hundred and five school houses.
That item of schools for colored children merits a word of comment. Greene county was. of course. a slave-holding community until Lincoln is- sued his emancipation proclamation in 1863. Beyond a doubt a large ma- jority of the people of the county, up to the day that set the slaves forever free. conscientiously believed that the system was right. And yet, as soon as war ceased, and provisions were made to educate their own children, these former slave holders, at the same time provided for the education of their former chattels, and the children of those chattels. And that they did it, as they did, without any flourish of trumpets, and as a matter of course, is a monument to their honor far more enduring than any of marble or bronze.
It would be tedious and unprofitable to endeavor to put into this chapter the statistics of the schools of this county for each individual year since the war. We will only endeavor, therefore, to give items for various years that will indicate the growth of the system. In 1878 the taxable wealth in various school districts outside of Springfield is given as follows :
Ash Grove, $117,426: Hazel Dell, $98,971 ; Edmonson, $82,767; Oak Grove, $77,234; Fair Grove, $70,251. There were fifteen districts that had an assessed valuation of above $50,000; twenty-six showed between $40,000 and $50,000 ; forty-six over $30,000; seventy-seven over $20,000, and thir- teen less than $20,000. The school levies in the various districts ranged
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GREENE COUNTY, MISSOURI.
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