History of Wayne County, Ohio, Volume I, Part 20

Author:
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1162

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With the settlement of the county, the coming of railroads and build- ing up of towns, and the growth of the Wooster University, this school largely dropped out of sight.

The public schools of Wooster will be treated in their proper place in the chapter on the "City of Wooster."

FIRST SCHOOLS OF WAYNE COUNTY TOWNSHIPS.

The first school taught in Chippewa township was near Doylestown.

The first school in Milton township was taught in a log shanty in 1817, by William Doyle, where the Knupp church later stood. It was twenty by twenty-four feet in size. In the winter the room was so cold that the scholars' ink would freeze while they were writing. This was a subscription school.

189

WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

In Congress township the first school was taught by John Totten, in the first cabin ever erected there. The first school house built for such purposes was in 1819.

In Green township the first school was taught in 1818 by Peter Kane, a student of Oxford, England. The first school house was erected on the northwest quarter of section 23, and was a log cabin eighteen by twenty-two feet in size.

In Sugarcreek township the first school building erected was in Dalton, the site being where the cemetery was later located. The first teacher was Peter Vorrhes. In the township of Sugarcreek the first school was taught by Samuel Cook.

In Franklin township one of the very earliest school houses was that long known as Polecat school house, built on what was later known as the Stephen Harrison farm. Daniel Daringer donated an acre of land for school house purposes.

In Plain township, the first teacher was John Cassiday, in about 1816.

The first school house erected in Clinton township was called the "New- kirk" building, being situated on Henry Newkirk's land, near the stream issuing from the big spring and where the road crosses it. It contained three log benches for the children to be seated upon. The fireplace ran along the entire end of the house. The first teacher was Theory Parker, of Holmes county, who received seventy-five cents a week for her wages.

In Saltcreek township the first school building was that on Jacob Beer- bower's farm. The Fredericksburg school house was erected in 1828.

SCHOOLS AT SIIREVE.

The village of Shreve has always paid much attention to the school sys- tem, and had most excellent public schools from the very earliest day of free schools. In 1858 the corporation limit of the village was constituted into one district for school purposes. May Ist. that year, a board was elected and it was decided to build a small brick school house, which was carried out at an expense of seven hundred and eighty-eight dollars. Edwin Old- royd was the first to teach in the new building. The first members of the board of education at Shreve were as follows: John Robison, W. S. Bat- tles, Henry Everly, Albert Richardson, Daniel Bertolett and W. G. Crossman.

In May, 1867, it was found necessary to build a new school house, and the present structure, in part, was erected. It is a fine two-story building on the high eminence overlooking the village. Here have been held many

190

WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

terms and school years of the best of modern-day public schools, and from the place have gone forth into the world many useful and well-educated men and women.

CANAAN ACADEMY.

Canaan Academy was one of the first educational institutions in Wayne county, located at Windsor. The building, a two-story frame, thirty-six by forty-eight feet, was erected in 1842 by a stock company. This academy was controlled by a board of directors, the first board consisting of John Paul, M. D., Jonas Notestine, Justin Mills, Harvey Rice and Alfred Hotchiss. The school was opened December 3, 1843, with forty-seven pupils, under the direction of Prof. C. C. Bomberger, A. B., who taught three years. Reverends Barr and Barker had charge during the summer of 1847, being succeeded, in the winter of 1847-48, by Prof. Isaac Notestine, who taught with short intervals and remained in charge until 1863. After that year the school was taught by a number of other professors until 1874, when it was permanently closed, under Prof. J. W. Cummings. When Professor Notestine was in charge in the winter of 1851, the house was burned, after which a brick building was at once erected. The Canaan Academy was a great educator for those living in Wayne and adjoining counties.

SCHOOL STATISTICS OF WAYNE COUNTY.

From the report of the state commissioner of common schools in August, 1876, the following has been taken, to show the contrast since then in school matters in this county, as following it will be given the latest school reports.

In 1876 the amount paid teachers in high schools and primaries was $52,797 : amount for other expenditures, including the foregoing, making a total of $121,10I.

There were in the county, between the ages of six and twenty-one years, 13,473 white children and 9 colored; of this number there were between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one 3,253 ; there were 6,228 boys and 6,645 girls ; 5 male colored and 4 female colored.

At that date there were in Wayne county 138 sub-divisions, II separate districts and II sub-districts included in separate districts. The total value of school property in the several townships and separate districts was $243.562.

There were employed during the year ending August, 1876, a total of 320 teachers and 10,064 pupils enrolled; of this number there were 10,029 between the ages of sixteen and twenty-one. The average attendance was 6.333.

191

WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

THE PRESENT STANDING OF WAYNE COUNTY SCHOOLS.

According to the latest authority, the following is the statistical standing of the schools of this county for 1908:

Number of school houses in the county, 235; number of school rooms. 345; value of all school property in Wayne county, $563,800; number of teachers employed, 254; monthly average wages for men in elementary schools, $46; women, $44; high schools, men, $74; women. $50; boys of school age, 5,352; girls, 5,042; total number enrolled in schools, 8.127; average daily attendance, 6,048; number of high schools, 84; volumes in school library, 12,936; rate of school tax (1908), eight and one-half mills per dollar of taxable property ; number of high schools in village, special and township districts in county, 15; the grades in the various districts are as follows :

Applecreek, No. 3; Burbank, No. 3; Congress township, No. 3 ; Creston, No. 1; Dalton, No. 2; Doylestown, No. 1; Fredericksburg, No. 2; Green township, No. 2; Marshallville, No. 2; Milton township, No. 3; Orrville, No. 1; Paint township, No. 3; Shreve, No. 2; Sterling, No. 2; West Salem, No. 2.

CENTRALIZATION OF RURAL SCHOOLS.

The average rural school district has but fifteen pupils, and from that number only ten upon an average attend school the full school year. There are eight hundred small sub-districts in Ohio. There can be but little enthu- siasm in so small a collection of children, either for the teacher or the students.

The first law with reference to school centralization in Ohio counties was passed April 17, 1894, and it was applicable to Kingsville township, Ash- tabula county. A law of general application was enacted April 5. 1898. The good results in Ashtabula county led many other townships in northern Ohio to adopt the same system. In 1908 there were within the state one hundred and eighty-six schools wholly or partly centralized.

ADVANTAGES OF CENTRALIZATION.

The following advantages have been set forth by the best educators of this country regarding the combining of the smaller district country schools together into one centrally located union school, to which the children may be transported to and from home by public conveyance at public expense :

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

It brings into the school pupils who would not otherwise enjoy its advantages.

It insures a much better daily attendance of pupils and greatly reduces the number of cases of tardiness and truancy.

It gives a better opportunity for a better classification of the schools and proper grading of the pupils.

It encourages supervision and gives the superintendent a much more favorable chance for thorough inspection of the work of the lower grades.

It limits the field of work for each teacher and gives an opportunity for a more thorough preparation.

It gives a few classes to each teacher and longer recitation periods.

It gives the boys and girls of the rural schools the benefit of such special branches as music, drawing, and agriculture, under a special teacher em- ployed by the board of education.

It encourages the formation of good township high schools and gives to the boys and girls in the township districts equal advantages with the children of the city districts.

It tends to prevent difficulties which often arise on the way to and from school and to protect the health and morals of the children.

School affairs can be administered more systematically. Better equip- ment in the way of apparatus and library for the different grades can be pro- vided for less money.

The children have the benefit of better school buildings and of modern conveniences in the way of ventilation and sanitary arrangements.

Better janitor service can be secured.

It helps to solve a difficult problem for the boards of education where the enumeration in several sub-districts is exceedingly small and new build- ings are needed.

It secures the employment and retention of better teachers.

It adds the stimulating influences of larger classes, with resulting enthu- siasm and generous rivalry.

It offers the broader companionship and culture that comes from asso- ciation.

It serves to bring the citizens of the township into closer relationship and to awaken a deeper interest in the public schools.

Up to the present time-1909-Wayne county has not taken this mat- ter up. There are some townships certainly in which it would not be prac- tical, while in several others it might be well worth a trial.

CHAPTER XI.

AGRICULTURE.

By Prof. Charles E. Thorne, of Ohio Agricultura! Experiment Station.

THE SOIL.

The foundation rock upon which the soil of Wayne county is laid, and which has contributed the larger part of its material, is the series of argilla- ceous shales and sandstones, usually yellowish olive in color, to which geolo- gists have given the name Waverly. It is true that in the eastern and southeastern portions of the county this formation is covered by the strata belonging to the coal measures, but these strata are cut through by valleys which extend down to the Waverly floor.

The upper strata of the Waverly, as found in the central and southern parts of Wayne county, are soft, fine-grained shales, easily ground into dust. only the deeper layers being sufficiently hard for building stone. The decom- position of these shales gives rise to a silty soil, intermediate in texture between clay on the one hand and sand on the other, its particles being so fine and so loosely bound together that the smallest stream of water loosens them from their surroundings and carries them to lower levels.

The soil of the county has been modified by the great sheet of moving ice which once covered the greater part of Ohio, and which in some sections exerted a tremendous influence in the formation of the soil; but in Wayne county the effect of glacial action has been comparatively small, and even where the drift material left by the glacier is most in evidence it consists chiefly of sand and gravel produced by the grinding up of rocks lying a short distance to the northward and very similar in character to those upon which the drift is laid.

The flat, marshy plain which marks the divide between the drainage towards Lake Erie to the north and the Ohio river to the south lies along the boundary between Wayne and Medina counties, chiefly in the latter county. As the drainage from this watershed has moved southward it has

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

at once begun the cutting of valleys, small and shallow at first, but growing larger and deeper as the volume of water has been swollen by affluents from the sides, until by the time the south half of the county is reached the entire surface has been eroded into alternations of hill and valley, the hills, which give such beauty to the landscape, being hills simply because the valleys have been dug out between by the floods of ages.

That this cause is adequate to produce the effect no one can doubt who has observed the result of a single heavy shower in a freshly plowed field, or the gullying which results from a single season's rainfall on a neglected hillside.

The result of this tendency to wash is that the hillsides are covered with but a thin sheet of soil, which, though giving good returns for a few years after being put under the plow, soon begins to show the effect of excessive cropping. On the higher and more level lands the soil sheet is thicker, and its productiveness in consequence is more permanent than on the slopes where the washing has carried away a larger proportion of the soil.

When the country was first visited by the white man it was covered with a dense forest, and the first labor of the pioneer settler-and strenuous labor it was-was expended in cutting away enough of this forest to give a small field for cultivation.

The location of the pioneer home was determined by a spring, and the multitudes of springs of pure water in Wayne county were a potent factor in securing its rapid settlement. Near the spring the log cabin was built, and around the cabin home the trees were cut away, the cleared area enlarg- ing year by year, and for many years the axe and the rifle were the most important implements on the farm-the one extending the area on which bread could be produced, the other supplying a large part of the meat re- quired to keep the axe and plow in motion.

As the springs were on the hillsides, it was on the hillsides, when not too steep for cultivation, that the first fields were cleared; and on these hill- sides the loose shales which constitute the upper rock strata lie so near the surface as to give natural drainage-this formation being the cause of the springs, as the water passes readily between the joints of the shales, to be arrested and brought to the surface at lower levels by the denser strata lelow.

Within a few years the earlier fields on these thin, hillside soils began to show some indication of reduction in yield under the system of continuous cropping, which was the logical system to a farmer who had wrested his

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

little fields from their natural condition at such tremendous effort, and who had, by the very exigencies of his situation, become more woodsman and hunter than farmer; but by the time these symptoms had appeared the axe had penetrated a little farther into the forest and other fields were ready to respond to the plow with full harvests.

If these fields were on the more level summit lands where the soil sheet was thicker they did not at first suffer materially from lack of drainage, because the deeply penetrating tree roots as they decayed furnished drainage channels to the rocks below.

The pioneer farmer, therefore, found in Wayne county a soil of such physical texture as to be easily worked, so situated as to be perfectly under- drained, and both soil and climate admirably adapted to the growth of winter wheat, and the production of this cereal became the leading industry of the county at an early date.

THE PROGRESS OF AGRICULTURE.

Ohio's agriculture has passed through three general periods and is now entering upon a fourth, namely :

I. The pioneer period (1800 to 1850).

2. The developmental period (1850 to 1880).

3. The expansion period ( 1880 to 1900).

4. The scientific period (since 1900).

THE PIONEER PERIOD.

During the first period the state was settled by the hardy pioneers, who flowed into it along three principal lines of migration: (1) The New Eng- land line, coming direct from the New England states-largely from Con- necticut-or moving in after a temporary sojourn in New York, and settling the country known as the Western Reserve and the region to the westward ; (2) the Pennsylvania line, consisting very largely of the people who have come to be known as Pennsylvania Dutch, or Pennsylvania Germans, and of Quakers, who occupied a large part of the middle of the state, and (3) the Virginia-Carolina line, occupying the southern counties. There were some cross-currents in this migration, as in the New England settlement at Mari- etta, but the inflow into Wayne county was very largely of the Pennsyl- vania Germans, a people noted everywhere for industry and frugality.

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

During this period there were no cities within the state to be fed, and none outside of it that it was practicable to reach with the ox-team trans- portation of the earlier days, or with the six-horse Pennsylvania wagon which soon made its appearance. There was no navigable stream in the county on which to float away its produce, and the lake, at its nearest point, was forty miles distant from the northern boundary of the county. The only practica- ble method of marketing farm produce, therefore, was to convert it into meat- producing animals and drive them across the mountains to the cities growing up on the Atlantic coast, and the demand by these cities was very limited.

The clothing of the farmer's family of that day was spun and woven at home from flax and wool grown on the farm; all the food was produced at home except salt, tea, coffee and spices. Sugar, if not a product of every farm in the state, was found in maple groves scattered so generally over the state as to be practically within a day's journey with the ox-team from every farm (one of the writer's early recollections is of the annual bringing home of the barrel of maple sugar, produced in the opposite side of his county ).

The implements of husbandry were chiefly such as had been in use for thousands of years. The plow had an iron share, made by the local black- smith, and a wooden moldboard made by the farmer himself. The harrow had wooden or clumsy iron teeth; the farmer's hand was the only seed- ing machine, just as it had been since the sower first went forth to sow; he reaped his grain with an implement practically identical with the sickle which Farmer Boaz had used three thousand years ago, and trampled it out with oxen or threshed it with a flail of his own making, just as the earliest farmer had done. Probably the actual cash paid out for the imple- ments used on an ordinary farm, outside of the one wagon which served every purpose for which a wheeled vehicle was required, did not exceed twenty-five dollars.

The cast-iron plow made its appearance in the eastern states about the beginning of the, century, but did not come into common use in Ohio before the thirties or later. The grain cradle appeared during the thirties. Seeding, harvesting and threshing machinery followed slowly, so that at the state fair, held in Cleveland in 1852, it is stated by Dr. N. S. Townshend in Howe's "Historical Collections," there were shown grain drills, corn plant- ers, broadcast wheat sowers, corn shellers for horse and hand power, corn and cob crushers and one- and two-horse cultivators.

The Ohio canal was completed in 1830, thus giving to the counties along its route water transportation for their products, and the farmers of

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

Wayne county began hauling their wheat to the shipping points along the line of this canal. The Pittsburg, Ft. Wayne & Chicago railroad was built during the early fifties, thus opening the era of steam transportation.

This mid-century period marks the transition between the agriculture of the sickle and ox-cart on the one hand, and that of farm machinery and steam transportation on the other, the transition between the ancient and the modern.

In 1846 a slice was cut off the western side of Wayne county and added to the new county of Ashland, so that the census statistics of 1850 are the earliest data respecting the county as now constituted. This census gave the county a population of 32,981. The collection of agricultural statistics was begun in Ohio in 1850, but the statistics for Wayne county were not collected until 1851. In 1853 the lands listed for taxation in the county were appraised by the state board of equalization at a total of $7,707,222, or $22.47 per acre,* and the statistics collected by the township assessors show the following annual average production of the principal farm crops and numbers of farm animals for the nine-year period, 1851-59:

PRODUCTION OF CEREAL CROPS, 1851-59.

Crop.

Acres.

Bu. produced.

Bu. per acre.

Wheat

38,557

485,138

12.6

Corn

20,64I

560,547

26.8

Oats

19,198

486,787

25.3

Farm animals: Horses, 11,263; cattle, 26.710; sheep, 84,194; hogs, 29,733.

If we estimate that ten sheep or hogs will consume about the same quan- tity of feed as one cattle beast, the livestock kept during this period was equivalent to about 49,366 cattle, or 100 cattle to 159 acres in the three principal crops. It will be observed that there were nearly as many acres in wheat as in corn and oats combined.

In addition to the crops above mentioned, an average area of 24.054 acres was reported as in meadow. 13,623 acres as in clover, and 6.936 acres as in minor crops during this period, the minor crops including 2.323 acres in barley, 1,296 acres in potatoes, 1,267 acres in flax, 1, 130 acres in rye. 762 acres in buckwheat, 133 acres in sorghum and 25 acres in tobacco, making a

* Ohio Statistics, 1881, pp. 728-730.

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

total of 123,000 acres in cultivation, including the meadow land, part of which, no doubt, was permanent meadow.

THE DEVELOPMENT PERIOD.

During the thirty years, 1850 to 1880, mechanical invention wrought greater changes in human industry than had taken place in all the preceding ages. In agriculture this era witnessed the substitution of the self-binding harvester and steam thresher for the sickle and flail, and in long-distance transportation the steam railway train on its steel track displaced the wagon drawn by oxen or horses.

During this period several great wars occurred: The Crimean war dur- ing the fifties; our own Civil war during the sixties, and the Franco-German in 1870, each of which caused an abnormal demand for foodstuffs, which the rapidly increasing facilities for production and transportation enabled the Ohio farmer to profit by. In Wayne county the following averages were maintained during the period 1860-69:

PRODUCTION OF CEREAL CROPS, 1860-69.

Crop.

Acres.

Bu. produced.

Bu. per acre.

Wheat

33,962

447.546

13.I

Corn

24,217

777,919

32.I

Oats

19,989

640,527

32.0

Farm animals: Horses, 11,889; cattle, 29,258; sheep, 108,990; hogs, 30,673. Total cattle equivalent, 54,913, or 100 to 143 acres in principal crops.

The war period was one of labor scarcity, hence there was no increase in the area under cultivation, while the high price of wool stimulated a great increase of the sheep flocks. The reduction of the wool tariff soon after the close of the war, combined with the cessation of the waste produced by the war itself, resulted in lower prices for wool, which caused many to lose their interest in sheep, and the number kept in the county diminished rapidly.

The Franco-German war at the beginning of the seventh decade of the century contributed to the maintenance of high prices for foodstuffs, and the area under cultivation in Wayne county was extended to a total of 95,527 acres in wheat, oats and corn, divided as below, while the livestock was reduced to the equivalent of 49,447 cattle.

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WAYNE COUNTY, OHIO.

PRODUCTION OF CEREAL CROPS, 1870-79.

Crops.

Acres.

Bu. produced. Bu. per acre.

Wheat

41,208

694.276

16.8

Corn

30,033

1,237,589 41.2

Oats

24,286

838,010

34.2

Farm animals : Horses, 11,573; cattle, 29,713; sheep, 51,822; hogs, 29,787 ; a total equivalent to 49,447 cattle.

This was a period not only of large production but of fairly good prices, the average December price of wheat for the United States being estimated by the national department of agriculture for the ten years at 99.3 cents, that of corn at 40.5 cents and that of oats at 33.7 cents. These values, it is true, seemed low, after the nominally high prices based upon the inflated currency of the war period, but as compared with what was to follow they meant prosperity to the careful farmer, and the Wayne county farmer, as a rule, was prosperous.

At the end of the decade the farms of the county were appraised for taxation at a total of $12,975,053, or $37.66 per acre, an increase of 68 per cent over the valuation of 1853.

THE EXPANSION PERIOD.

The national statistics show that in 1870 nearly 19.000,000 acres of wheat were harvested in the United States, yielding nearly 236,000,000 bushels. By 1880 the area in wheat had doubled, and the total yield had risen proportionately. This sudden increase in production was due to the rapid extension of railways through the west and northwest, on the one hand, and to the improvement of agricultural machinery, especially to the perfec- tion of the automatic binder, on the other. For a time the market absorbed the increased production of wheat at remunerative prices, but by the early eighties production had overtaken consumption and a depression of prices set in which continued downward for ten years, falling to an average ex- port price for the year ending June 30. 1896, of 651/2 cents per bushel.

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History of Wayne County, Ohio, Volume I, Part 20

Author: Publication date: 1910 Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen Number of Pages: 1162

Author:
Publication date: 1910
Publisher: Indianapolis : B.F. Bowen
Number of Pages: 1162