History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 46

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666

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HISTORY OF CINCINNATI, OHIO.

suggestion of Mrs. Dr. Williams, one of the ladies long connected with the association, an application was made to the trustees of the Camp Meeting association at Loveland, for accommodation. They met the request in the most cordial spirit of encouragement, promising to do- nate an eligible site for the erection of a cottage, and even securing for the ladies the plan of such cotlage prepared by an accomplished archi- tect, with the estimated cost of erection. The ladies hope that in an- other year they may have the means to add this most needed feature to the sum total of their association work.

At the twelfth anniversary meeting of the society, held November 17, 1880, very favorable reports were received in regard to the establishment of the summer boarding- house for working-women. A lady of Mount Auburn pledged two thousand dollars for it, and other subscrip- tions were taken. The Broadway boarding-house had cost for the year six thousand two hundred and forty-one dollars, and was self-supporting at rates for board of three to four dollars a week. The debt upon it had been cleared, and it was generally full of boarders. The em- ployment bureau had one thousand four hundred and fifty-five applications during the year. The work of the Bible-reader, the mothers' meeting, and the Lincoln ly- ceum and sewing-circle for colored people, had been steadily kept up. The association was free from debt, and the Unity club during the year had paid its surplus of five hundred and ten dollars into the treasury of the association. The officers of the previous year were re- elected, and comprise most of those upon the board first chosen twelve years before, including Mrs. John Davis as president; Mrs. Sage, recording secretary; Mrs. A. J. Howe, corresponding secretary; and Mrs. J. T. Perry, treasurer.

CHAPTER XXI. EDUCATION.

THE FIRST SCHOOL

in Cincinnati, as local tradition goes, was opened in 1792, with thirty pupils. It was probably kept in the little log school-house which stood for a number of years below the hill, about at the intersection of Congress and Lawrence streets. Possibly this is the same building mentioned somewhat mistakenly by one of the writers as standing in the early time on the river bank, near Main street, upon ground now covered by the public landing. It will be observed that neither of these locations was very far from the fort, and the former was quite near it, so it is thought that the site (or sites) were determined not only by the convenience of the population, but also by the safety of the children against Indian attack. Judge Burnet also mentions among his reminiscences of 1795, that, "on the north side of Fourth street, opposite where St. Paul's church now stands, there stood a frame school- house, enclosed but unfinished, in which the children of the village were instructed." This was, of course, upon the public square, where the Lancasterian seminary and the public college afterwards stood. In the neighbor- hood of the old Cincinnati, there was very early a school-

house at Columbia, which shall receive notice in due time; and Mr. E. D. Mansfield names a log school house which stood in 1811 opposite the present site of the house of refuge, and in which he attended school. He was victor in a spelling match at the close of the first quarter, after which the pupils were formed in line by the schoolmaster, marched to a neighboring tavern, and treated to "cherry bounce," which made some of their little heads reel.

The germ of anything like a parochial or denomina- tional school in the Cincinnati region appeared in April, 1794, in a resolution of the Presbytery of 'Transylvania, within whose jurisdiction the first Presbyterian church of Cincinnati then was, "to appoint a grammar school for students whose genius and disposition promise useful- ness in life." Persons from each congregation in the presbytery were appointed-Moses Miller for Cincinnati and Samuel Sarran (or Sering), for Columbia-to collect from every head of a family not less than two shillings and threepence, for a fund with which the tuition of chil- dren of indigent parents was to be paid. We hear nothing more of this scheme; but if it had been consummated, the "granimar school" would in all probability have been located in this place.

In March, 1800, a superior opportunity was offered to the boys of the Miami country in a classical school then opened at Newport by one Robert Stubbs, Philom., as he delighted to write himself, where, besides the ordinary branches, were. taught the dead languages, geometry, plane surveying, navigation, astronomy, mensuration, logic, rhetoric, book-keeping, etc .- a truly surprising curriculum for that time and place. The price of tuition in elementary branches was eight dollars a year, in the higher branches one pound per term, or two dollars and sixty-esven cents a quarter.

In 1811 Mr. Oliver C. B. Stewart announced himself in Cincinnati as teacher of a Latin and English school.

In this year a day and night school was advertised here by Mr. James White. About the same time Edward Hannagan kept a school in Fort Washington, of which the late Major Daniel Gano was a pupil.

The first school for young ladies in Cincinnati was thus advertised in the Western Spy and Hamilton Gazette for July, 1802 : .

Mrs. Williams begs leave to inform the inhabitants of Cincinnati that she intends opening a school in the house of Mr. Newman, sad- dler, for young ladies, on the following terms: Reading, 250 cents; reading and sewing, $3; reading, sewing, and writing, 350 cents per quarter.

The first boarding-school between the Miamis was kept in 1805 by an old couple named Carpenter, in a single roomed log cabin, only fifteen feet square, on the prop- erty of Colonel Sedam, in what is now Sedamsville. Major Gano was also a pupil at this school.

The Hon. S. S. L'Hommedieu, whose Pioneer Ad- dress is often referred to and drawn upon in the progress of this work, furnishes the following pleasant recollec- tions of the Cincinnati schools of that early day:

To show the advance made since 1830 in our common schools, it may be stated that in 1830 the average number of teachers required was twenty-two, at a cost of five thousand one hundred and ninety dollars

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per annum; in 1872, five hundred and ten teachers, at a cost of four hundred and nineteen thousand seven hundred and thirteen dollars per annuin.

In the years 1810, 18II, and 1812, I recollect of but three or four small schools. A Mr. Thomas H. Wright kept one in the second story of a frame building on the southwest corner of Main and Sixth streets. The stairs to the school-room were on the outside of the house, on Sixth street. John Hilton had his school on the east side of Main, between Fifth and Sixth streets, over a cabinet-maker's shop; David Cathcart, on the west side of Walnut, near Fourth street. The schol- ars at each school probably averaged about forty.

There was a custom in those early days, when the boys wanted a holiday, to join in "barring out" the schoolmaster. Providing them- selves with some provisions, they would take the opportunity, when the schoolmaster was out at noon, to fasten the windows, and bolt and doubly secure the door, so as to prevent Mr. Schoolmaster from obtain- ing entrance.

In the years 1811 and 1812, my father lived nearly opposite the school of Mr. Wright, and I remember, on one occasion, to have seen him on his stairs, fretting, scolding, threatening the boys, and demanding entrance; but to no purpose, except on their terms-namely, a day's holiday and a treat to apples, cider, and ginger-cakes. There are, probably, those present who attended this school.

There was still another custom among Western school-boys in the early days of Cincinnati. At that time every one who came from east of the mountains was called a Yankee, whether from Maryland or New England. The first appearance of the Yankee boy at school, and dur- ing intermission, was the time for the Yankee to be whipped out of him. When I first witnessed this operation, I was too small to be whipped; but my elder brothers caught it. Not long afterwards I helped to whip the Yankee out of the Hon. Caleb B. Smith and his brothers, who came from Boston.

THE LANCASTERIAN SCHOOL.

The intelligent men of Cincinnati were among the first to see and understand the advantages of the improved system of education introduced by Lancaster and Bell, of England, and which soon found its way to this coun- try. The Rev. Dr. Wilson and Dr. Daniel Drake be- came the founders of the Lancasterian school in Cincin- nati, and obtained the use of the school lots on Fourth and Walnut streets upon which to erect a suitable build- ing. It was erected in 1814, substantially upon a plan prepared by Mr. Isaac Stagg-a rather extensive two- story brick building, with two oblong wings, stretching eighty-eight feet back from Fourth street. They were connected by an apartment for staircases, eighteen by thirty feet, out of which sprang a dome-shaped peristyle by way of observatory. The front of this middle apart- ment was decorated with a colonnade, forming a hand- some portico thirty feet long and twelve deep, the front and each side being ornamented with a pediment and Corinthian cornices. The aspect of the building is de- scribed as light and airy, and would have been elegant, had the doors been wider and the pediments longer, and the building divested of disfiguring chimneys. As it was, it was considered the finest public edifice at that time west of the Alleghanies. One wing was for male and one for female children; and between the two there was no passage except by the portico. The recitation and study-rooms in the lower story had sittings for nine hun- dred children, and the whole for fourteen hundred. Each upper story, in the plan, was to have three apart- ments-two in the ends, each thirty feet square; and one in the centre twenty-five feet square, with a skylight and the appurtenances of a philosophical hall.

This was really a very respectable institution of learn- ing, for the first on the larger scale in Cincinnati. It was

destined to a short-lived career, however, as a Lancaster- ian school; for by the time the building and school were well under way the ambition of its projectors had grown, and Lancaster's scheme was altogether too nar- row to meet them. In 1815 the institution was chartered as a college, with the powers of a university, and its his- tory thenceforth is that of Cincinnati college, to come later in this chapter.

In 1817 the city was visited by an observant English- man, Mr. Henry Bradshaw Fearon, who gave education in Cincinnati the following notice in his Sketches of America:

The school-house, when the whole plan is completed, will be a fine and extensive structure. In the first apartment, on the ground floor, the Lancasterian plan is already in successful operation. I counted one hundred and fifty scholars, among whom were children of the most respectable persons in the town, or, to use an American phrase, "of the first standing." This school-house is, like most establishments in this country, a joint-stock concern. The terms for education, in the Lan- casterian department, are to share-holders eleven shillings and three- pence per quarter, others thirteen shillings and sixpence. There are in the same building three other departments (not Lancasterian); two for instruction in history, geography, and the classics, and the superior department for teaching languages. Males and females are taught in the same room, but sit on opposite sides. The terms for the historical, etc., department are, to shareholders, twenty-two shillings and six- pence per quarter; others twenty seven shillings. There were present twenty-one males and nineteen females. In the department of lan- guages the charge is, to shareholders, thirty-six shil ings per quarter ; others, forty-five shillings. Teachers are paid a yearly salary by the company. These men are, I believe, New Englanders, as are the schoolmasters in the western country generally.

I also visited a poor, half-starved, civil schoolmaster. He has two miserable rooms, for which he pays twenty-two shillings and sixpence per month; the number of scholars, both male and female, is twenty- eight; terms for all branches thirteen shillings and sixpence per quarter. He complains of great difficulty in getting paid, and also of tbe untameable insubordination of his scholars. The superintendent of the Lancasterian school informs me that they could not attempt to put in practice the greater part of the punishments as directed by the founder of that system.

"A View of the United States of America," published in London in 1820, as an emigrants' directory, after an appreciative notice of the public buildings of this city, and especially the churches, says:

But the building in Cincinnati that most deserves the attention of strangers, and which on review must excite the best feelings of human nature, is the Lancaster school-house. This edifice consists of two wings, one of which is appropriated to boys, the other to girls. In less than two weeks after the school was opened upwards of four hun- dred children were admitted, several of them belonging to some of the most respectable families in the town. The building will accommodate one thousand one hundred scholars. To the honor of the inhabi- tants of Cincinnati, upwards of twelve thousand dollars were sub- scribed by them towards defraying the expenses of this benevolent undertaking. Amongst the many objects that must arrest the atten- tion and claim the admiration of the traveller, there is none that ean deserve his regard more than this praiseworthy institution.

The winter of 1818-19 was prolific in educational pro- jects for Cincinnati. The previous year John Kidd had made his bequest of one thousand dollars per year, for the education of poor children, which began to be pro- ductive in 1819. Among the charters granted by the Legislature in the winter named, was one for the Cincin- nati college, and one for the Medical college of Ohio, to be also located in Cincinnati. Eight years afterwards, the charter for the Woodward free grammar school of Cincinnati was obtained.

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In 1823, Dr. John Locke established the Cincinnati female academy, which was a school of high class and became very popular. Some years after this, much at- tention was attracted to the subject of female education by the lectures of Fanny Wright upon the subject, who also awakened the attention of a different class of the community by her diatribes against marriage. Her inti- mate friend, Mrs. Trollope, gave Dr. Locke's school the following notice in her book on the Domestic Manners of the Americans:

Cincinnati contains many schools, but of their rank or merit I had little opportunity of judging. The only one I visited was kept by Dr. Locke, a gentleman who appears to have liberal and enlarged opinions on the subject of female education. I attended the annual public exhibition of this school, and perceived, with some sur- prise, that the higher branches of science were among the studies of the pretty creatures I saw assembled there. One lovely girl of sixteen took her degree in mathematics, and another was examined in moral philoso- phy. They blushed so sweetly, and looked so beautifully puzzled and confounded, that it might have been difficult for an abler judge than I was to decide how far they merited the diploma they received.

In 1826, Dr. Locke's school was located in a new brick building on Walnut street, between Third and Fourth. Besides the principal, there were teachers of French, music, painting, and needle-work, and an assistant in the preparatory department. The methods of instruction were on the plan of Pestalozzi, and the following caution- ary remark was thrown out : "The idea entertained by some persons, that the system of Pestalozzi tends to in- fidelity, would seem to be unfounded : abstractly it appears to have no immediate connection with the doctrines of the Bible." An honorary degree was granted after four years' study. Tuition was four to ten dollars a quarter, exclusive of French and music. Twelve gentlemen had been secured as a board of visitors, to examine the pupils, and supervise the interests of the academy. It was noted that, of several hundred pupils, who had attended the school to that time, not one had died, and but few were afflicted with disease.

At this time the leading schools of Cincinnati, besides this, were the Medical college of Ohio, the Cincinnati college, the Misses Bailey's boarding school, the Cincin- nati Female college, Rev. C. B. McKee's classical acad- emy, the private schools of Kinmont, Cathcart, Win- right, Talbot, Chute, Morecraft, Wing, and others, in all about fifty. The Cincinnati Female school was kept by Albert and John W. Picket, from the State of New York, and authors of the series of "American School Class-books," which followed the analytic or inductive system. Their school occupied a suite of rooms in the south wing of the college building, where the ordinary branches, together with Latin, Greek, French, music, dancing, etc., were taught. Both were men of note, but Albert became the more celebrated. Hon. E. D. Mansfield, in his Memoir of Dr. Drake, pays the follow- ing tribute to his memory :

Albert Picket. president of the College of Teachers, was a venerable, gray-haired man, who had been for fifty years a practical teacher. He had many years kept a select school or academy in New York, in which, I gathered from his conversation, many of the most eminent literary men of New York had received their early education. He removed to Cincinnati a few years before the period of which I speak, and estab- lished a select school for young ladies. He was a most thorough teacher, and a man of clear head, and filled with zeal and devotion for

the profession of teaching. He was a simple-minded man, and I can say of him that I never knew a man of more pure, disinterested zeal in the cause of education. He presided in the college with great dignity, and in all the petty controversies which arose poured oil on the troubled waters.

Mr. Mansfield also gives generous eulogy to another educational worthy of that era:

Alexander Kinmont might be called an apostle of classical learning. If others considered the classics necessary to an education, he thought them the one thing needful, the pillar and the foundation of solid learn- ing. For this he contended with the zeal of martyrs for their creed ; and if ever the classics received aid from the manner in which they were handled, they received it from him. He was familiar with every pas- sage of the great Greek and Roman authors, and eloquent in their praise. When he spoke upon the subject of classical learning, he seemed to be animated with the spirit of a mother defending her child. He spoke with heart-warm fervor, and seemed to throw the wings of his strong intellect around his subject.

Mr. Kinmont was a Scotchman, born near Montrose, Angusshire. He very early evinced bright talents, and having but one arm, at about twelve years of age was providentially compelled to pursue the real bent of his taste and genius toward learning. In school and college he bore off the first prizes, and advanced with rapid steps in the career of knowledge. At the University of Edinburgh, which he had entered while yet young, he became tainted with the skepticism then very prev- alent. Removing soon after to America, he became principal of the Bedford Academy, where he shone as a superior teacher. There also he emerged from the gloom and darkness of skepticism to the faith and fervor of the "New Church," as the church founded on the doctrines of Swedenborg is called. His vivid imagination was well adapted to receive their doctrines, and he adopted and advocated them with all the fervor of his nature.

In 1827 he removed to Cincinnati, and established a select academy for the instruction of boys in mathematical and classical learning. The motto which he adopted was " Sit gloria Dei, et utilitate hominum" -a motto which does honor to both his head and heart. ·

· In 1837-38 he delivered a course of lectures on the "Natural History of Man," which was published as a posthumous work ; for in the midst of its labor of preparation he died.

Kinmont made a profound impression upon those who knew him, and to me lie had the air and character of a man of superior genius, and what is very rare, of one whose learning was equal to his genius.

The Rev. Mr. McKee's classical school was on Third street, near the post-office. In the north wing of the College building was the school of the Rev. Mr. Slack, which was distinguished by a collection of valuable ap- paratus and courses of lectures on various branches of study. Sometime in the twenties, also, Mrs. Ryland, an English lady of much culture, established a girl's school in the city, and maintained it very successfully until near 1855.

In 1829 Mr. L. C. Levin had a private school on the corner of Sixth and Vine streets-very likely in the same house where Mr. Wing had taught-the site where the splendid Gazette Building now stands. Mr. Levin's pu- pils were out in the parade of the Fourth of July of that year, with the fire department and other city organiza- tions. In the historical number of the Daily Gazette, pub- lished April 26, 1879, upon the occasion of the removal of its establishment to the new building, the following pleasant notice of the educational associations of the site was made:

The very first building on this lot was a school house, built more than fifty years ago. There are many men and women in Cincinnati who have vivid recollections of Wing's school house, which stood on the southeast corner of Sixth and Vine. It was a frame building, a high story or story and a half. The entrance was on Sixth street, and the floor was constructed like that of a theater, rising from the south end of the building to the north. The teacher occupied a sort of stage at the south end, and by this arrangement had before his eyes

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every pupil. The boys occupied the east side, and the girls the west side, next to Vine street. William Wing was the founder and builder of this school. He died soon after this school was opened, and then Edward Wing, his son, took up the work and kept the school going for a long time. The house being well adapted to giving shows, or ex- hibitions, as they were called, Mr. Wing frequently gave that sort of amusement to his pupils and patrons. At one of these, Mr. W. P. Hulbert, then a mere lad, played the part of William Tell's son, to the late S. S. L'Hommedieu's William Tell, in the thrilling drama which introduces the exciting scene of shooting the apple off the boy's head. To the unerring aim of Master L'Hommedieu's arrow, and to the he- roic bravery of Master Hulbert, who endured the ordeal without put- ting himself in range of the arrow, are we, perhaps, indebted for the present Gazette Building.

This pioneer Wing school-house became one of the first school- houses of the public or common-school system. George Graham, a man who carries more knowledge of Cincinnati in his head than any man living, was one of the trustees of the common schools, and he rented this school building for the use of the Second Ward school, Here Mr. Graham appeared frequently as an examiner, for he was an active man in those days, and knew how necessary it was to inaugurate strict discipline. The common schools were new, and were not popu- lar. The name "common" was distasteful. Mr. Graham personally examined every pupil in the schools. He popularized the system by causing all the teachers and pupils to appear, once a year at least, in procession through the streets, and soon had the pleasure of seeing the common-school system regarded as one of the institutions deserving the highest esteem.

The following Academies are enumerated in the Cin- cinnati Directory for 1831, the first year of the last half century of the city's existence: Academy of Medicine, Longworth, near Race; Dr. Locke's Female Academy, Walnut, between Third and Fourth; A. Treusdell's, same neighborhood; Pickets', corner Walnut and Fourth; Kinmont's, Race, between Fifth and Longworth ; McKee's, College edifice ; Nixon's Logierian Musical, corner Main and Fourth; Findley's Classical, College edifice ; Nash's Musical, Fifth, between Main and Syca- more.

Musical education already, it seems, had secured a firm lodgment here. We shall deal with it at some length in our chapter on Music in Cincinnati.

Some of the above-named schools, and two or three schools not enumerated, had already received an appre- ciative notice from Caleb Atwater, who took this place in his tour of travel in 1829. He says in his book:

Great attention is bestowed on the education of children and yonth here-and the Cincinnati College, the Medical College of Ohio, the Messrs. Pickets' Female Academy, the four public schools, one under Mr. Holley, Mr. Hammond's school, and forty others, dcserve the high reputation they enjoy. There is, too, a branch, a medical one, of the college at Oxford here located, and conducted by gentlemen of genius, learning and science-whose reputation stands high with the public.

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History of Cincinnati, Ohio, with illustrations and biographical sketches, Part 46

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp Publication date: 1881 Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co. Number of Pages: 666

Author: Ford, Henry A., comp; Ford, Kate B., joint comp
Publication date: 1881
Publisher: Cleveland, O., L.A. Williams & co.
Number of Pages: 666