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 26
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Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40
When they were good they took home with pride the pretty certificates of good be- havior, painted with the juice of the poke-berry. When they were naughty they had to stand in a kind of recess and be gazed at by the whole school. But one master had made two of the very tallest boys with fools'caps on stand high on a stove. This was worse, though there was no fire in the stove. It was an era in the education of girls here, when it was announced, May 15th, 1827, " Miss Irene Hicox will open a school in this village. Reading and writing $2.00; grammar, geography, arithmetic, and his- tory, $2.50; rhetoric, natural and moral philosophy and chymistry, 83.00; drawing, needle work and composition." No location was given; it was easily found in a place of 700 people. This young lady, born with a thirst of knowledge, had gone from Ohio to the famous school at Litchfield, Conn., and brought thence some of the newer ideas on the training of character as well as mind. At first the school was in the building next west of the Phoenix, afterwards nearer the Square, on Superior street. Her pupils were from the best families. Mary Long, Mary and Sophia Perry, Jane Short, Mary Williamson, Harriet Johnson (Sackett), Henrietta Hine (Baldwin), being among them. Her strong good sense, cultivation, and sweetness of disposition made every one of these young girls her ardent admirers. Undoubtedly she was the first in the royal line of Cleveland women educators, for her influence stamped the first leaders of the social world. Swayed by her in girlhood, crowned with perfect womanhood, they gave her their lasting, grateful love. June, 1820, she became the wife of Joel Seran- ton, and her daughter has kept green her memory .. A few years before this, we might
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have peeped in at a private house, corner of St. Clair and Bank streets, and seen a bevy of these patrician daughters as very little tots under the care of Miss Newton, of whom we know nothing more. Maybe Irene Hicox reaped where Miss Newton sowed for many were in both schools. Two years later the village was growing to number scarce a thousand, yet we learn that Mrs. Smith, in Oviatt's brick building, had a school in which was taught the fundamentals, grammar, arithemetic, rhetoric, elegant needle work and painting on velvet; that in March, Mr. J. Mills was teaching all branches of a college preparatory on Ontario street, south of the court house, $2.50 to $3.50 a term, Greek and Latin, $5.00 (terms are coming up); that Oet., 29, Noah D. Haskell, on second floor of the Academy, would devote himself with assiduity to the instruction of such children as should be committed to him; that Mrs. Grieve would have a school in the room formerly occupied by Miss Hicox, in the house of Mr. Clark. But Mrs. Grieve does not venture to teach the higher branches. In the last of '26, Mr. J. C. Hall had a school in the lower room of the Academy, to be succeeded soon in the same place by Mr. W. H. Bump, both of whom advertised like Mr. Cook above them, " No deduction for absence, except on account of illness." This was new.
Hudson College was opened in '27. Mr. Bissel came to Ohio in '28. Of the many Cleveland schools in the next decade, a number had a powerful molding influence. Among the short-lived we notice that in February, '32, Miss Bennet desired some pupils to educate with her sisters, she herself having received a superior education in England. She would give lessons "in various studies," whatever that meant. Her father, an Englishman, ran the only brewery in the place, and naturally she owned the only piano. The beautiful black-eyed girls used to play on it, and the young Edwin Cowles listened with wonder. More prominent in the profession was Miss Frances C. Fuller, who, in November, 1833, opened a school for young ladies on Superior street, near where Hudson's store now stands. For some years it was con- tinued in various places, two terms it was in Farmer's block, corner of Prospect and Ontario streets, and she' was at some time in the Academy. Miss Fuller's school con- tinued long enough to have a distinctive character, and very many young ladies of the place attended it. She is the first known user of blackboards in a private school, and greatly interested her pupils in botany. The flats were then covered with wild flow- ers, and expeditions after them were the girls' gala times. One herbarium of the epoch is in existence, and perhaps Miss Blair's lovely garden all these years owes some- thing to her. She was strong in discipline, monitors were a part of her system, and whispering scholars were sometimes sent home. Order, however, was disturbed one day, when a man's leg was seen descending through the plastered ceiling. Young Bond, walking overhead, had broken through. He pulled himself out with alacrity, but that Descent of Man made a stir in the little world. At an uncertain date Miss Fuller gave up her school here, and had for a time a small boarding school in Bedford, but returned to Cleveland in 1844, to re-open her teaching career. She is described as hav- ing "black eyes, with black cork-serew curls waving about them," and as being general- ly "brisk and snappy." We are pained to say there was on the part of many lady teachers moral obliquity as to examinations. " They used to tell us what questions they were going to ask us," is the testimony, "and make us learn the answers." This last would seem unnecessary. "We studied mineralogy," is the remembrance of one, "and on examination day we stood up by a small table covered with specimens. The spectators were ranged along one side of the room, the scholars at one end, and the teacher, in great dignity, at another. We named the stones to the admiration of all present - Miss Fuller had told us beforehand just what to say."
A certain Eastern lady, teacher at the Academy in those years, lives in the heart of her pupils as one to whom they owed much. Miss Abigail Billings came in '32 or '33 to cast into the fountainhead of youthful thought and feeling those purifying motives that were to sweeten and brighten all their course. The secret is given in a letter from her dated March, '93. . "I attended Mary Lyon's school four winters in Ashfield and Buckland, and, under her inspiring influence, I was led to feel that to do good was the great object of life. I may say that the school you refer to was characterized by something of Miss Lyon's spirit. Around it cluster many fond memories. The Bible was made a text-book as it had been in Buckland, Colburn's Arithmetic had its daily drill, recitation by topics in Miss Lyon's way wakened every power." " Miss Billings was the first one who taught me to think," said the life-long president of the Woman's Christian Association. So a beam from the great founder of Mt. Holyoke was struck so far away to be reflected in the character of Sarah Elizabeth Fitch. While Miss Billing's was at the Academy two other persons were linking a story of Christian devotion to these annals. In November, '31, Newton Adams was teaching over Mr. Stebbins' store a classical school, "being," according to the papers, "well acquainted
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with the most approved methods of education." At some time he became acquainted with a young lady who was practicing them as a preparation for her life work. Down by the river there gathered very early in the city's history a mass of degraded humanity we now call a slum. Ragged, neglected children were growing up as criminals. Be- nevolent hearts were stirred, and in some squalid cellar a Sabbath school was started by Sarah Van Tyne, out of which grew a day school.
When the Bethel church was built in '33, on the corner of Diamond and Superior Street Hill, this school was transferred to that edifice. Funds for its support were supplied by generous citizens, none but the poorest attended; it was the first free school, and in it Miss Van Tyne labored with cheerful zeal the induction to years of missionary work among the Zulus of South Africa. In November, '34, she married Dr. Adams. They were a year making their transit to their field of labor, four months of it traveling by ox cart, but privation, loneliness and danger were borne with steady courage and sweet submission. In that far land she toiled for twenty years till hus- band was taken, then health failed, and she came back to Cleveland (in 1870) to die. That Bethel Ragged School was the pattern for one, two decades later. Between '30 and '40, the number of schools in this small town was astonishing.
In 1831, Mr. George Brewster having, as he said, purchased the Academy build- ing, was to do great things, and opened an institution on the extended plan of all well regulated academies, affording instruction in English, French and Spanish (only men- tioned here), Latin, Greek, giving honorable induction to any college in the coun- try. Tuition was high beyond precedent: $15.00 a term. Though Mr. Brewster had prayers in the morning, he did not rely on religious motives to order the untamed spirits of his pupils. "He was," said one of them who brought up in a feeling manner the corrections undergone, "both active and despotie and could whip a boy easy." If the corrections had anything to do with making the man who has had that career, both military and civic, they were blessings indeed. Mr. Brewster, in his own opinion, had no small share in the progress of learning here till 1835. He even wrote a book on the subjest of education, a pioneer author among Cleveland teachers.
Then there were the Roscoes, from the Emerald Isle, conspicuous and not to be classified. Two sisters, the younger, the teacher, a tall woman wearing a green calash, like a small chaise top, under which her face was lost, a dressmaker, the elder, and still taller, and a stout florid brother, the head educator. Their advent in 1832 was not un- assuming. Their Cleveland High School would give a commercial, mathematical, clas- sical, French and English education in four departments; preparatory, junior, senior, and collegiate. It included application of mathematics to mensuration, surveying, and navigation, instruction in Latin, French, Belles Lettres, intellectual and moral phil- osophy, with weekly lectures on Saturday morning in the hall of the institute and monthly ones to which the public were invited. The government was to be paternal. " The grand desideratum will be to deliver students from the severity and useless labor of former plans of education to reject from courses of study whatever has not a direct tendency to improve the mind, to mehorate the heart, and to dignify the manners, that the student may be subjected to no greater task than that of learning only literal truth and useful knowledge." So ran the circular. The location of this all-sufficient high school was probably in the Academy, though the boys under the brother were at one time near the present entrance to the viaduct. What with flourishes and festivities on all days that could be celebrated and learning only " literal truth," the girls seem to have had fine times, and also to have made great progress in their studies. One little miss finished Blake's Natural Philosophy, and nearly finished Chemistry and Astronomy at the age of seven. But she is an exceptionally bright woman now. As to the lectures, public or otherwise, nobody heard any more of them. Be sure there was a little sniffing when the brother came to teach them map drawing and his person was redo- lent of whiskey, for Mr. Roscoe had an infirmity. In the forenoon he was tolerable, in the afternoon, savage. A participant in the suffering said recently: "I wonder he . did not kill us shutting us up for punishment six or eight at a time in a room as many feet square till we were faint. I have seen him pick a boy up and throw him into the street, and his desk after him, but that boy probably deserved it." The legend is cur- rent that when Miss Roscoe's school was having an examination in a house on Super- for street, a pig ranging the walk carried off a visitor's bonnet. There were. street pigs in those days. At the last public notice of the Roscoes, they were in the second story of the Farmer's Block, in '39, having flourished seven years - a fact more inex- plicable when we consider what educators were at work here during that time. They must have " met a want."
Mr. John Angell began in '32 a mathematical and English school in the building cast of Spangler's tavern. He taught all the sciences, composition, and elocution, and
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particularly shorthand, for a dollar extra; prices ranging from two dollars to five. In '33, Mr. J. H. Breck was in the upper room of the Academy, Mr. Brewster's purchase of the building having fallen through, apparently, as he reopened his school in another place. Mr. Breck intended to devote his personal and exclusive attention to the pro- fession of teaching, but in this city must have been thwarted, for, before long, he was up two flights of stairs just this side of the Merchant's Bank, and then we hear of him no more. Other teachers were still finding patrons, Mr. Fry, so conspicuous after- wards in the public schools, taught a private one before '36 on the corner of Superior and Seneca streets. In '36, Mr. A. Wheeler began in the new brick block corner of Prospect and Ontario streets, long the Farmer's Block, and now the Prospect House, a Cleveland seminary for young ladies on an elaborate plan, proposing three regular classes. All will observe the pliability of the next regulation. " The seniors can attend to any study of the middle class and higher branches, or to any or-all of the studies taught in any female seminary in the United States. Moral, amiable, and graceful cul- ture will be considered highly important. Greek, Latin, and French, tuition, each, $5.00 a term. Sacred music, $3.00; piano, $1.00, embroidery, gratis." Ear-marks of this pro- spectus suggest a change in the standard of female education. Mr. Wheeler intended to employ four female teachers. He refers to Dr. Aiken and Mayor Willey. Unfortu- nately nothing more is heard of his seminary. Perhaps pupils were all seniors and graduated the first year. These gentlemen by no means covered the ground.
Into the annals of the Academy in 1835 and 1836 there stepped an interesting personal- ity who beams back in the memory of one ven- erable survivor as an almost perfect charac- ter. Mr. Faxen was from the East, a culti- vated gentleman in his very dress. The boys remembered that quiet manner in which . he knew how to draw them to himself. ." We obeyed him," said his old pupil, "without a VIEW OF PARADE ON EUCLID AVENUE-WESTERN RESERVE DAY. word of severity. He used to take us with him on excursions into the woods and to the lake. He had a good rifle and taught us to shoot. When we did what was wrong he would just talk to us kindly and we would be sorry. . We thought him rather sad. He wrote poetry. I had some of it for a long while. He influenced me more than any other teacher I ever had." Was there some story that lay in Mr. Flaxen's past ? Who knows ? But there must have been something out of the ordinary.
In that same year of 1835, Mr. William Strong, one of the County Examiners, located in the second story of the Farmer's Block, would fit pupils for any college. The round-faced, genial Englishman, John Stair, had a popular school on Academy Lane till he left the pedagogue's chair for the merchant's desk, and we may owe to him something of what his famous scholars made of themselves-the Jones boys, Gov. Fair- child, and Lester Taylor. He evidently sowed as good seed in them as he dealt in afterward. He, or somebody about then, boxed a boy's ears for boldly intimating that the text-book might be wrong.
While the population was creeping up from 1, 500 to 6,000, between '32 and '41, 10 less than sixteen different schools were carried on for longer or shorter periods and all found patronage. In 1837, Mrs. Gold, from New York, began the fashionable board- ing and day school of the time in the building next north of the Farmer's Block. She was a dainty little lady, accomplished and brave, who supported with the help of her three young daughters, herself and them, and Mr. Gold." She presented distinguished
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recommendations from Bishop Onderdonk, Rev. F. H. Tappan, of New York Univer- sity, Major L. Larned, in Detroit, and others in Buffalo, which letters Dr. Aiken testi- fied he had perused with satisfaction. The eclat of the establishment was great ; board and tuition was $250 a year. French and music, $10.00 a quarter. Washing for bed, towels, etc .. $6.00. It was expensive. She invented the school year of forty-four weeks, since improved to thirty-eight. The young ladies studied what they pleased, the literary standard was flexible and they learned by precept and example beautiful manners. According to the prospectus, the principles of the Christian religion would be taught without sectarian influence. One day of the week was devoted to sewing and silk and worsted embroidery, the results appearing in lovely pincushions and commend- ably fine shirts. Each was expected to own her own implements. This order of studies made a singular jumble. Grammar, ancient history, modern history, natural and moral philosophy, chemistry, botany, arithmetic, geography of the Heavens, and bookkeeping. A lady whose high position has been well filled remembers the little line in the diction- ary daily committed, the geography lesson repeated by rote, the singing of the hymn "Star of Bethlehem," the Lord's Prayer said together in the morning. and Mrs. Gold sitting with her tiny feet on a small foot stove in the school room. The institution was flourishing some ways into the '40's, and was a considerable factor in the schooling of Cleveland girls. But at the very time when New York educational ideas were being infiltrated among us, two remarkable women were exemplifying foreign female culture at the Academy: Mrs. Hewison and Mrs. E. Johnstone, Irish ladies, polished in the schools regarded best in England, had somehow drifted to the New World and the Wild West, and they referred to Bishop Mellvain as sponsor. They too had three de- partments and not to be behind, those in the senior class could pursue any or all of the higher branches among them, ancient mythology, and the middle or junior classes could do the same if their advancement allowed, which indeed was a saving clause. Board and washing, $150 a year. They must have had a house on St. Clair street. Mathematics would be extra, and Latin would be taught if desired. Both were ele- gant women, one an artist and the other an accomplished musician. If sometimes there were fits of abstraction when recitations were being heard, the girls rightly guessed the thoughts of their teachers were far away in the Old Country, and the hour of music lesson was shortened by the interesting talk which fascinated the little learner. At least one cultured lady of our city owes to Mrs. Johnstone the artistic ability which has enriched her life. Text-books were antiquated, in history, Tytler and Rollin, but besides subjects of the usual curriculum these ladies attempted the infant sciences of physiology and geology .- new then in the world, - as well as political economy and the use of the globes, which was considered a very high astronomical at- tainment. They promised the utmost attention to morals, manners and general deport- ment, and kept their promise. (Solicitude on this point seems to have been confined to girls' schools.) Mr. S. H. Wood, at the Academy in '33, was careful to say that be- sides teaching the round of sciences she would pay the greatest attention to moral and intellectual development as something extra on her part. In that same year Miss Susie Sloane in Academy street, corner of St. Clair and Bank, in a lovely orchard, gathered some of the future leaders of society and taught them their alphabet by big pasteboard letters on the wall, and how to add and subtract by white and red balls
strung on wires in a frame. They were afterwards shining pupils of Miss Gold. Miss Sloane must have done her duty. Two other notable contributions were made to our educational advancement from the mother country. Mr. Thomas Sutherland, from Edinburg, Scotland, advertised in November, '36, that he was wishing to instruct not only the English but the German citizens and all desirous of learning German. This, his familiar acquaintance with the language enabled him to do. So Mr. Sutherland anticipated his age. Far more conspicuous was the work of Elder Phillips who had a marked career. Born and reared in England in the Baptist faith, and thoroughly edu-
cated, he had taught an advanced school in London, and, in' 1829, was sent as a mis- sionary to the Chippewa Indians in Canada. Resigning this he moved to Hamilton and taught a high school there. Two of his old London graduates, then in Cincinnati, persuaded him to try Ohio, but his family got no further than Cleveland, the Cincin- nati river water not being to his taste, and in 1835 he opened a school where the Haw- ley House now stands, corner of Ontario and St. Clair streets. Not long and a house erected for it on Middle High street was occupied, and there for five years he with his
daughters conducted a boarding and day school named the High Street Classical and
Commercial Academy, which averaged fifty pupils. Judge Cleveland has described
him as "a grave and reverend Seigneur, wearing a long camlet cloak, a conspicuous figure." Ilis portrait hanging in the parlor of his daughter now living, shows a com- manding head with a flowing white beard and he must have been a man of more than
CENTENNIAL CELEBRATION OF THE CITY OF CLEVELAND.
ordinary attainments, for Hebrew was one of his specialties. He issued perhaps the first circular ever printed here, certainly the earliest one in existence-an address to his pupils full of good sense and without cant. It is good now. "Be not desirous to run over long lessons and to pass hastily from one book to another. A little business done well will turn out to unspeakably greater advantage in the end than a good deal hurried over in a careless manner." If you are late without excuse, there will be a fine of one cent; if not paid, thirty minutes of study after school. One item of advice is purely English. " Wash yourself twice a day, face, hands and neck, and behind your ears." A tabulated form for marking all studies and department on the scale from nought to six, sent to parents every term, was a forerunner of mountains more. Elder Phillips, in 1840, went to Warrensville, and taught there, preaching in various adjoining towns till his death in 1861. That school roll held the names of many after prominent and useful citizens. Willey, Abbey, Kerruish, Whipple, Earle, Adams, Townsend, Curtis, Reeves, Marshall, Seelover, Childs, Stair, Bronson and many others equally important among us heard good advice in that High Street Academy, shouted on that play-ground and most of them have kept themselves clean ever since. John Stan's pupils came there in a body when he left the profession, and Elder Phillips was the only one ever invited to the examination of Cleveland's most distinguished private educator. While these future pillars of our business world were under his training, the important line in the civic history was drawn. The village became a city of 5,000 inhabitants, and one of the first acts of the new-fledged city council was to provide for the support of public schools. Previous to this no direct tax had been levied for the purpose, though a small sum had been available from the State. At the same time the city adopted all of the private schools willing to come into the arrangement plac- ing themselves under the city's control. The very first was the ragged school under the Bethel which Miss Van Tyne had started, two others were in the Academy build- ing. Samuel L. Sawyer, a graduate of Dartmouth, was teaching the boys in the upper room, Mrs. Pelton and Miss Caroline Belden, the larger and smaller girls in the first story. There was no classification of the boys, and Sawyer had them from A, B, C, up, though none much advanced, as the private schools had the better scholars. He resigned at the end of the first term and succeeded Mr. Pratt as principal of a boy's school in the Phoenix, third story next west of the American House. . In '38 he went to Missouri, and became Judge of the State Court for the Western District, holding court at Kansas City.
Mrs. Pelton, Mrs. Armstrong, and Miss Johnson were teachers, whose schools were adopted by the city and they were continued for some time in public employ. Text-books and all came m with the private schools and there was a bewildering variety the first few years. ' These facts were stated by Mr. Samuel II. Mather, one of the first and most active members of the school board. Among the private schools which became public was one in a small chapel in the rear of the present Southworth's store taught by Miss Maria Blackmar, who soon became Mrs. Worthington. Before 1840, eighteen of the twenty-seven teachers were women; among them are names once dear to a vanished generation. Said Abby Fitch Babbit, a short time before her death, of Elizabeth Armstrong Gillespie and Louisa Snow Millett, " Oh, they were lovely." The enthusiasm of that bright-eyed, crippled woman over the companions of her teaching days was beautiful to see and she herself was not the least remarkable among them. Mrs. Pelton filled a large space both physically and professionally for many years before and after '37. She followed the custom of never allowing her pupils to be taken unawares on examination day, but prepared them beforehand, the infalli- ble way. The Roscoes were wont to celebrate May day in fine English style with gar- lands, Maypole and queen. Mrs. Pelton once made a sensation by marshalling through the streets her pupils, dressed in white, singing and each carrying two wax candles to illuminate the old Baptist church where exercises were to be held, she herself marching and singing at their head. In '38 she was the assistant of J. W. Grey, and must have been a woman of some ability. Julia Butler, Eliza Johnson, Melinda Slater, Sophia Con- verse, Louisa Kingsbury, Sarah Thayer, so long the teachers of little ones in a private school; Maria Underhill, honored wife and mother among us, Maria Stanley, who mar- ried Rev. Mr. Burton, of Kalamazoo; Amanda Beal, second wife of Charles Dean, all were women' of strong character who left abiding influence for good. Well-to-do people did not generally patronize the public schools and in the last half of the decade a number of private ones sprung up whose fame has reached to our days in living representatives. In '37, Mr. D. D. Corcoran was teaching in the city buildings, third story on Superior street. He also opened an evening school and would instruct fe- males in writing and arithmetic from 3: to 5:, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. Before '30, Rev. Colly Foster had a classical school, corner of Ontario and St. Clair streets.
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