USA > Ohio > Cuyahoga County > Cleveland > Official report of the centennial celebration of the founding of the city of Cleveland and the settlement of the Western Reserve > Part 25
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The Rathbone Sisters also held their convention during Pythian Week, being their fourth biennial session. General headquarters for the delegates were located at the Weddell House. On Tuesday evening, August 25th, a reception was tendered the members at Camp Perry- Payne. On Wednesday morning the business session opened in Army and Navy Hall. On Thursday evening the supreme body and members enjoyed a trolley ride. The number of visiting sisters in the city was 150.
The General Committee, upon which the responsibility for the suc- cess of the general encampment largely fell, consisted of the following well-known Knights of Pythias: James Dunn, chairman; Colonel Albert Petzke, first vice-chairman; A. B. Beach, second vice-chairman; Dr. J. C. Simon, secretary; C. M. Spicer, assistant secretary; Colonel Thomas Boutall, treasurer. The sub-committees were as follows:
Executive .- James Dunn, Chairman; Albert Petzke, A. B. Beach, J. C. Simon, Thomas Boutall, T. W. Minshull, A. B: Schellentrager, George Kieffer, C. G. Thomsen. Finance .- James Dunn, Chairman; Thomas Lewins, Ben B. Baldwin.
Transportation .- William Craston, Chairman; A. B. Beach, T. W. Minshull.
Reception of Supreme Lodge .- A. B. Schellentrager, Chairman; George Macey. Reception of Supreme Council .- Captain George Kieffer, C. P. Smith, J. A. Walker.
Reception of Uniform Rank .- Col. Albert Petzke, John E. Vorell, Major Charles Bittschofsky.
Reception of Subordinate Lodges .- Grand Master of Exchequer, Edmund Hitch- ens, C. G. Thomsen, Philip Graff.
Badges .- C. G. Thomsen, Chairman; C. J. Downs, W. J. Holly.
Public Comfort .- John McFarland, Chairman; Captain HI. Schanbacher, A. B. Beach.
Decorations .- Frank Grove, Chairman; Thomas Lewins, A. G. Wilsey.
Board of Information .- G. W. Jones, Chairman; B. B. Baldwin, F. Schnabel.
Hall of Supreme Lodge and Council. O. D. Parkin, Chairman; James Dunn, Fred Gunzenhauser.
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Camp and Camp Grounds .- Col. T. W. Minshull, Chairman; Captain Fred Gun- zenhauser, Lieut. H. D. Wright.
Entertainment of Supreme Lodges .- Schlesinger, Chairman; Charles G. Thom- sen, Frank Grove.
Entertainment of Supreme Council .- Captain Schanbacher, Chairman; Col. Thomas Boutall, Edmund Hitchens.
Entertainment of Subordinate Lodges .- Philip Graff, Chairman; Fred Aurand, J. J. Irwin.
Auditing. - J. J. Irwin, Chairman; James Dunn, J. C. Simon.
Music .- H. Prochaska, Chairman; John E. Vorell, Captain A. B. Schellentrager. Printing and Stationery .- Captain L. H. Prescott, Chairman; Major Bittschof- sky, William Craston.
Horses and Carriages .- Major D. S. Diesner, Chairman; J. A. Blass, Fred Sch- nabel.
Press .- Captain J. S. Cockett, Chairman; L. H. Prescott, W. H. Woodman.
Hotels .- A. B. Honecker, Chairman; G. W. Jones, Captain H. Schanbacher.
Prise Drills .- Col. Samuel Kaestlan, Chairman; Col. T. W. Minshull, C. G. Thomsen.
Privileges .- A. B. Beach, Chairman; Captain George Kieffer, Philip Graff.
Entertainment of Uniform Rank .- Captain A. Beckenbach, Chairman; Col. Al- bert Petzke, James Dunn.
Reception of Board of Control of Endowment Rank .- Col. Thomas Boutall, Chair- man; Col. Thomas W. Minshall, Captain George Kieffer.
Official Souvenir Program .- J. S. Cockett, Chairman; Captain L. H. Prescott, Albert Petzke.
Program of the Week .-- Col. J. L. Athey, Chairman; B. B. Baldwin, Fred Glueck. Hon. W. T. Clark, George Davis, Lieutenant R. Fischer, W. H. Bratten.
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CHAPTER XVI.
HISTORICAL CONFERENCE.
SEPTEMBER 7-9.
While the brilliant displays of the Centennial all had their places, it was essential that other and more enduring features should be intro- duced if full benefit was to be derived from the opportunities afforded by the anniversary. Such features might have been multiplied almost without number, so rich was the period in suggestions. One line of these, and one only, was followed out - that of holding a series of his- torical conferences, treating separately the topics of Education, Religion and Philanthropy. The record of the past was examined in this three- fold light and deductions of value to present and future generations were made. Some of the foremost men and women of the day took part in the discussions, presenting elaborate papers and willingly con- tributing to the success of this department of the celebration.
The opening session was held in the Young Men's Christian Asso- ciation Building on Monday afternoon, September 7th, under the au- spices of the Section of Education. A solo by Miss Josephine K. Dorland opened the programme. Director-General Day then delivered a brief address. It was proper, he said, that education should be consid- ered first in the conference, as the school-house preceded the church. Mr. Day called upon President Charles F. Thwing, of Western Reserve University, one of the most prominent educators and literary men of the day, to preside over the session. Dr. Thwing accepted the position, in- troducing Rev. Dr. S. P. Sprecher, of the Euclid Avenue Presbyterian Church, who offered prayer. Miss L. T. Guilford, whose fund of knowl- edge of Cleveland schools was perhaps umsurpassed by any other person of the period, then presented a highly valuable treatise on " Early Schools and Teachers of Cleveland." Many requests have been made by teachers and others that this address be printed in full, and it is here- with given entire: .
SOME EARLY SCHOOL-TEACHERS OF CLEVELAND.
Nobody conversant with the men and women on the stage of action in this city from 1820 to 1870 will deny that an exceptional number of them were cast in nature's grand style. Leonard Case, Sr., Alfred Kelly, Daniel Cleveland, John W. Allen, Sherlock Andrews. Samuel Williamson, Richard Hilliard, Ashbel Walworth, and many others, threw the gold of their personality into the crucible where our civic state was being fused, and strong, womanly women set jewels to sparkle at its very beginning. To whom did these men and their fellow townsmen commit the education of their children? Who moulded, in their plastic youth, the boys and girls of that second gen- eration now fast passing away? We propose to lift for awhile the veil of oblivion which has almost covered them, for a fragmentary glimpse of some early schools and teachers in Cleveland. Records there are almost none. Not one of the first school trustees remains. The first Judge Williamson, Dr. David Long, Judge Samuel Cowles, and Noble II. Merwin sleep with the fathers. These who could have told much are gone and very few have left any account of their education. Early papers took schools for granted as they did washing days, and school advertisements were long ripening. The stinted columns were filled with more important matters; the arrival of cargoes
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of salt ; sheriff's sales and, in the midst, we meet with the burning question, " Will the United States permit the British to take and hold Cuba ?"
Two women teachers were imported with the first settlers. Not unlikely Sarah Doan and Squire Spatford's Clara walked a part of the way from the East to be school madams in log rooms, one near the Kingsbury's on the Ridge Road, the other in the front room of Alonzo Carter's cabin in the midst of the fever and ague. They had two dozen scholars between them. Not until 1813 do we catch a glimpse of another school in the village. It is given by Mr. James W. Wallace in a letter to Hon. Samuel Will- iamson, dated February 21st, 1876. He was himself a college man and a teacher, says one authority. "I obtained my first schooling," says Mr. Wallace, "in Euclid, under the instruction of Harman Bronson, boarding in Deacon Doan's family. I recollect the Rev. Barr's children attending the same school. Next Brother Geo. T. and self boarded in the family of old Mr. Gunn, on the property now known as the Whitman farm in Newburg, and attended school one or two terms taught by a lady whose name I do not remember. After this self and, may be, George went to school in Parkman, Geauga County, to one Dustan. In June, 1813, father took me and George to Warren, Trumbull County, where we attended school taught by a lady (I think her name was Jerusha Guile) till January, 1814.
There were no schools in Cleveland till after the beginning of that year. Then I attended one taught by a Mr. Chapman. They used a small frame building standing on the Case lot, after- wards used as a shelter for the old white horse. "The pupils were all small. I can almost see them sitting round on three sides of the room, and I recollect a little incident that hap- pened in the school which caused Mr. Chap- man's dismissal." So mysteriously does the first Cleveland school master disappear from the eyes of posterity. During the winter of 1814-15, the Rev. Stephen Peet ruled over the children in the then Newburg, and at the end of the term, according to the fine New England custom, gave an exhibition. This was in the - spacious upper room of Samuel Dille's log house situated on the present Broadway where you first get a view of the river. All Cleveland and Newburg crowded to the performance of "The Conjurer," "The Dissipated Oxford Student," "Brutus and Cassius," and several other pieces critically selected from the Colum- bian Orator and American Preceptor. From Mr. Wallace we learn the brilliant termination YOUNG MEN'S CHRISTIAN ASSOCIATION BUILDING. of another school taught two terms by a Mr. Foote, in the winter of 1815-16. "This," he re- lates, " was held in the building where Almon Superior street, nearly opposite Miller's block. acted the parts of David and Goliath. Kingsbury afterwards kept store, south side of "Chauncey Warner and my brother I don't remember Warner's being a pupil, but he was a fine, portly looking fellow, wearing his hair standing up on his forehead. George, on the other hand, was small and rather modest in appearance. The slaying of Goliath produced a sensation and made the teacher proud of the performance. This school was one of the best we had."
From the mists of antiquity now emerges the six-windowed school cabin erected in 1816 after the strict forefathers' pattern, on the east end of the site now occupied by the Kennard House. It was sixteen feet by twenty-eight, with stone chimney at one end, the windows so high no child could look out, seats with no backs, and so high from the floor that little legs were dangling. In that first Cleveland school house the boy James Wallace went the summer of 1816 to a lady, but, of course, he does not remem- ber her name. During the winter of 16-17 Luther M. Parsons was the teacher, and the inhabitants paid him one hundred and ninety dollars and board for six months' service. These last two schools were well filled with pupils of pretty good size. The young men among the 250 population of the place were assessed to pay the levied share of expense for those too poor to pay it themselves, a fact showing there was a class of very poor, and society had a conscience in regard to them. That same year the village council voted to re- imburse the twenty-five persons who had built the school house in the sum of $198.
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HISTORICAL CONFERENCE.
The experience of another small boy of these years was related by the father of the present Judge Williamson. That little Samuel Williamson trotted to a school in a barn which stood back of the American House. Between the rough logs and through knot holes beat the storms so that the school was broken up. Then he went to a Mr. Benjamin Carter in a small building on Water street. Then to a school kept in the family room of the janitor at the old Red Court House till that first building of 1816 was put up. Of none of these realities to that child have we discovered any other trace. A few long-honored citizens remember that as very little boys they went to a Mrs. Colwell, who lived in a low frame house on Superior street, nearly opposite the present City Hall, but they were too little to appreciate that she was doing them good and so have forgotten all but her name. If she was the same Mrs. Colwell who taught two generations of children in ambitious Ohio City, the tribute of grati- tude to her should have been more widely published.
Our city had from the first a tough element. Its whiskey still started in 1800. Not until years after did a few of the citizens meet to worship God on Sunday when Judge Kelley offered prayer and some one read a sermon. If the bad were aggressive and reckless, the good were staunch and enlightened, and love of order and righteous- ness at length turned the scale. It was no ordinary community of seventy persons which formed a Library Association of sixteen men, the root of the great Case Library. So it was with just pride in 1822 that settlement of 400 in the malaria-plagued village at the mouth of the Cuyahoga pointed to the 45 x 25 two-story brick building that rose with its tower and swinging bell opposite the primitive temple of science on St. Clair street. For many years it was the educational center of the town, occupied by a long succession of teachers for a time, certainly, engaged by the trustees but seemingly run- ning the schools at their own pecuniary risk, until the city bought it in 1839 for $6,000 for a public school. Its successor is now the headquarters of the fire department. New England ideas had asserted themselves in other places not far away. Paines- ville Female Seminary (no relation of the present one) announced in 1821 that on ac- count of the " hard times " the tuition would be reduced. The academy at Burton was nourishing the vigorous germ of Western Reserve College, and a flourishing boarding school at Tallmadge was gaining a long sustained reputation. This last set itself up on the extraordinary facilities of a " Set of Globes, Three large Maps, and an extensive Atlas. One young son of the Reserve sold a cow and traveled more than a hundred miles to find a Latin dictionary. He passed through Cleveland, but there was no such book in the new Academy, and he went on to Tallmadge to find both dictionary and instructor. Scattered about in the woods, wherever there were families enough to hire a teacher, the larger boys and girls were gathered under a man, three months in the winter, in the log school house with seats of unplained slabs; the smaller children went as long in the summer under a woman. Old men remember the scenes of the winter opening when the master appeared, and after a few moments of intense mutual scrutiny shouted to the turbulent crowd huddled around the fire place, "Come to order," and "Take your seats," and school was begun. Most frequently the master wished to make a little money to study law, or medicine, or to enter the ministry. Little enough it was. Wyllis Terrill taught fifty scholars at Ridgeville for twelve dollars a month, and boarded himself, and an after eminent judge was schoolmaster at Burton for eight dollars a month and boarded himself. In the schools never were there books enough to go around; many must borrow or "look over." The Testament, the English Reader, with the occasional well-preserved "Orator," or "Preceptor," Dillworth's spelling book or none, a slate, highly prized possession handed down; Woodbridge's Geog- raphy. Daboll's Arithmetic-these were the tools of these boys and girls of pioneer days, and with them they learned to read and write and spell and memorize excelently well. Classes in arithmetic, there were none, each worked his way alone as best he could, going to the teacher for help, which he did not always get. "Besides," says one of these gray-haired "boys," "every new teacher put us back to the beginning of the book. I thought I should never get to the Rule of Three." With the sound of the Academy bell the dim, remote forms came out more visibly, but they are faint still. Shall we record that in the first frame school house there was a teacher by the name of Seeley and little Mary Long to earn a set of toy china dishes, knit him a pair of socks, that seemed large to her, and that is the only measure of his understanding that has come down to us. Among the first teachers in the Acade- my was a Rev. Mr. MeLane, from Meadville, Pa., a friend of the first Judge Williamson, who secured him the position. Distinctly now the "elect lady" of our city remembers how when the rumbling of an approaching thunder storm was heard, the master raised his hands and said with awful solemnity, "Silence! This is the voice of God!" and there was silence that could be felt. A Mr. Cogswell, from Connecticut, a graduate of
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CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
Yale, followed. He was a fine teacher. Both of these men set a scholarly standard, but neither remained more than a year or two. Very clearly stands out the next figure, the tall young man who shouldered his trunk up Union lane one morning in September, 1824, and the next day became Principal of the Academy. His realm was the upper room; the two lower rooms were occupied by the lady teachers, his assis- tants. What Harvey Rice did for Ohio schools, we all know. His first service was hearing recitations and keeping in order the young swarm his successors found so hard to manage. In a year and a half, the spring of 1826, he resigned to pursue his law studies, but the character which made him for half a century one of the leading men on the Reserve began to be felt in that school room. His pupils looked back to him with affectionate reverence, and this, when to whip the schoolmaster spurred the am- bition of every spirited boy, and to put bent pins in his chair was a right he stuck to. Names of some of Mr. Rice's pupils: Jesse Pease, Albert Kingsbury, Woolcot Bliss, Samuel Williamson, Louis Dibble, Don. McIntosh, Addison Kelly, Thomas and Sam Colahan, Diana Kingsbury, Fanny Rice, Loretta Wood, Catherine Spangler, Martha Pease. It is permitted to record here a quotation from an old journal: "Sept. 12th, 1826, Began teaching school in the Academy at Cleveland, with twenty-four very bad scholars of both sexes."
"Sept. 19th, ceased being a teacher in the Academy, having taught one week, for which service I made no charge. My reasons for declining were the low price of tui- tion and the total want of subordination in the scholars." The diarist held official po- sition of trust and honor to his eightieth year, but he never taught school again. Tui- tion bills were, indeed, "low." They were for a long time on the scale of Mr. Mc- Lane's Reading, Spelling, Writing, per quarter of twelve weeks, $1. 75; Grammar and Geography, $2.75; Greek, Latin and mathematics, $4.00. Some allowance was made from public money for pupils in the winter. It is the recollection of one teacher in the 20's that it was a dollar a pupil, a term. One teacher is known to us conspicuously by name through the years from 1816 to 1820, and the young lady, afterwards Mrs. Elijah Burton, may be counted in. She rode to her charge in an ox cart over a road laid with logs. One of her pupils was a stalwart young man, and she used to be amused by watching him from the window crushing chestnut burrs with his heel, unshod we sup- pose. Two young fellows afterwards constituted themselves School Superintendents by flipping a penny to decide who should have the place of instructor in the district. So Frogville escaped much croaking and at length changed its name to Collinwood. In the outlying precincts of the First Ward there must have been patient dames hold- ing the spelling book before the little ones, soon multiplying in the village .. Eliza Baird alone can be here traced. She was the daughter of a Scotch Irish Presbyterian, unbending as the Grampian Hills. He once arose and marched out of church at the sound of a bass viol. That " bull fiddle " should have no countenance from him, and the equally conscientious mother remarked in some weariness that one must keep then bonnet on all the time to do her Christian duty in visiting an invalid neighbor. But we have pleasant glimpses of Miss Baird in the first school house where Philo Sco- ville's three-year-old Caroline was knitting yarn into strips under her tuition and when the little girls used to play keeping house among the stumps, putting their pieces of broken crockery on some and making riding ponies of others. Among them was Mrs. George Merwin, and she called Miss Baird her first cultured teacher. That lady taught afterwards in the Academy for some years, marrying John McLane in 1827, and, the story goes, running away to do it. The run could not have been far. Betsy Belden, the sister of the well-known Silas Belden, was also a teacher in the early Academy. The little eyes that looked up to her used to see her keep the names of her scholars on small slips of paper in a book that looked like Pollock's Course of Time. Why the simpletons remembered this and nothing more, it is hard to tell. She did them no harm. Miss Belden married a brother of Mr. Charles Hicox, long prominent in our business world. The Knights of the Ferule have chronicles more full. After the six days' work, for which no charge was made, Rev. Silas C. Freeman essayed it next with the " insubordinate " of both sexes in the Academy. In December, 1826, he be- gan a school of twelve weeks in a term, and we have the first intimation there would be no school Saturday. The number was limited to thirty, and a small charge for fuel would be made. By the next term, in March, we have the ominous announcement that Mr. Freeman proposes to confine his school in the future to females and to be under the necessity of receiving very few boys. That summer, by resolution of Trinity par- ish, he was sent East to endeavor to raise funds with which to erect a church in the village. He was successful, and thus arose Old Trinity. Two years afterwards, he was carrying on a boarding and day school in Chagrin, and produce was taken in pay. In July he had the pleasure of conducting divine service in the church he had so
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largely contributed to build, and it was dedicated two weeks after. We have great re- spect for the Rev. Mr. Freeman, though he was bothered by young Lewis Dibble's mathematical diagrams. But the Man-not-afraid-of-Boys had now appeared. The successor of Mr. Freeman was Dewey B. Cook, who left striking impressions on the minds and bodies of the youthful Cleveland masculines. Sounds of flagellation and outeries of the victims drew often dear Mother Blair to listen in dread at her gate. It must have been on evil doers that the strokes descended, for he was flourishing two years, if not longer, to the satisfaction of the well-behaved. A sinister clause in his prospectus reads that no pains would be spared for the advancement of the scholars. The boys resolved that they would whip him when they grew up, but thought better of it. His instruction ran all the way from reading and spelling to mathematics and astronomy. and navigation, so he was no ignoramus.
Zophar Case, the uncle of Leonard and William, was his assistant and writing master, which meant making an unlimited number of quill pens every day. One rebel- lion broke out. It was a rule that the boys were to sweep the room in turns. The older ones, of aristocratic breeding, pressed a girl into that service, to the indignation of the master, who took up arms for the rights of labor or his own. Around the stove was a fight with poker and broom, which ended in the small boys sweeping. It was a small boy who told this tale of a successful strike.
There were Williamsons, Weddells, Perkinses, Spanglers, Colahans, Johnsons, Cases, Burgesses, in that school, and big girls too, and thereby a grievance. When the boys were racing at high speed to come to a finish in arithmetic, and fever to be first ran high, a girl was just behind them. Their disgust as they had to stand and wait while the master did her sums for her and she beat! But for expiation, she was finally married to a Swedenborgian minister.
At no great interval came Mr. Foote, who was also a practitioner in the science of physical government. He hung up the boys by the Academy bell rope and made use of other stringent correctives, but most of all, beat into one boy-who declares that he was the "whipping post,"-the conviction that the master was partial, in short that this autocrat was in the " favorite son " business. Horace Weddell ran away, and Foote did not kill him, and another did not get his deserts though he was punished several times before he became governor of Ohio. But Mr. Foote taught French, which gave him literary distinction. Across the stage now pass in succession a Mr. Fuller, who must have been a healing salve to wounded sensibilities -a good man-then a Mr. Bearup, who did not stand up at all, and the boys jumped over the desks and even sat with the girls, then came the wiry, quick-moving McCullom, who averred the rain drops could not touch him, for he dodged them. Under his rule it was the girls went off to play at recess, and did not come back till late, then had their choice between switch and ferule and took their punishment like little women. Through these years of the later 20's the smaller ones in the room below were standing up to say their reading and spelling and multiplication table to Miss Belden or Mrs. Pelton, or others lost in obscurity. It was possible to weave back and forth on the seats in the excite- ment of study till the bright chestnut locks were thrown on forehead and neck and so they had " physical culture."
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