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 27
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But by far the most important of them was opened in the summer of '36, in the Com- mercial building over the Council Hall, on Superior street, by a young Yale graduate named Franklin T. Backus. He came with high recommendations from Professors Olmsted and Silliman and President Day, and time was to prove they were not mis- taken in their man. The number was limited to fifteen; many of them had been previ- ously with Mr. Foster but the list comprises most of the names foremost in our annals. Cases, Williamsons, Winslows, Kelley, Hoadley, Cushing, Cleveland, Bartlett, Whita- ker, Gaylord, Coon, Burgess, such were the boys growing out of childhood who were committed to this rare master of mind. It is impossible to estimate the influence of such a character on the circle who were to make the Cleveland of '50 to '70. In the enthusiastic tribute to him from the pen of Judge Cleveland, in the Leader, of Febru- ary, 1895, we learn much of what he was. Whoever enters the law office of that jurist will see hanging the portrait of that beloved teacher whose name is now linked to the law department of the Western Reserve University. Among the strong educators of Cleveland, he must be set in the first rank. But the small boy of those days, any more than now, had no more than a small boy's mental perspective. From the windows of that room on Superior street, he had a commanding view of the lake. He could sit with open book and watch the boats as they sailed up and down so free; he knew them every one, and gazed after them with longing eyes when he should have been studying his lesson. Nor were the older ones forgetful of former feats, for the master looked up one day to see a future Superior Judge whittling his desk to pieces, and he continued the said whittling when informed by the court that his case would come to trial after school. Immediately following Mr. Backus another somewhat kindred spirit brought his acquirements and gifts of teaching to the youth of our city. In July, '39, was opened at number three Mechanic's block, opposite the present Prospect House, a school for both sexes whose master was a thoroughly educated man of high character. William D. Beattie. It was, so far as appears, the first which proposed to give girls as well as boys a thorough classical education, though for a time but few young women availed themselves of the privilege. There was no jumble of sciences and no embroid- ery. The master would provide desks, a separate room for the girls and a stage for declamation. Mr. Beattie had the cultivation of a scholar and a love for teaching and knew how to fan a desire for knowledge when any sparks existed. His own dignified courtesy was the index of a symmetrical character and though he wasted no power in keeping order, his discipline had so much force that he secured the' sincere respect of all his pupils and of the community at large. For seven or eight years, first in Me- chanie's block, and then to classes in his own house on Euclid near Erie, he drew the patronage of a select number of the best citizens till he went into the real estate and banking business. Among his pupils were Hugh Thompson, Bishop of Mississippi, and Rev. Joel F. Bingham. Yet another quite different person had been contributing his quota to the general variety. In '38, a year before the coming of Mr. Beattie, ap- peared the announcement by Rev. C. J. Abbott, of a boarding and day school which might allure the most fastiduous. "We can promise no valuable knowledge," so it ran, "which does not result from a slow, painstaking process on the part of the pupil."
After developments gave peculiar meaning to the closing sentence: " The govern- ment is such in its effect as exists in every well-regulated family, immediately calcu- lated to restrain vice and remove every vicious habit." Mr. Abbott's curriculum in extent was not a bit behind that with which the Cleveland public must have grown famil- iar, a thorough classical and English education with ornamental branches and French, and this time Mr. Abbott was equal to it. He had secured, after considerable difficulty, the assistance of a young lady from the east which would render the advantage equal to any institution there. No greater could mortals desire, and it was all true. The school was at first on Superior street, opposite Bond and the Square, but was soon removed to a house out in the woods near the corner of Brownell and Prospect streets, a place, according to Mr. Abbott, not more than eight or ten minutes' walk from any part of the city. In a big wagon the whole body of students were conveyed to the new location, and as each furnished his own desk, there must have been a baggage truck behind. There girls and boys had separate play grounds, each pupil a little garden plot and in the large pleasant yard was an immense, curiously constructed swing, besides a pole for gymnastic exercises. All this was very fine and the school was soon filled with the sons and daughters of the most intelligent citizens. For term after term he received their patronage, and at the end of a year a high commendation of the institute and its methods was published over the signatures of such men as An- drews, Walworth, Williams, Otis, Sterling, and Ilicox. . Did they know about that family government of his, or did not the children dare to tell? It was unique. A corner of each schoolroom was cut out by a semi-circular petition separating them
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from the recitation room. All along this were curtained windows just above the heads of the scholars. Pulling up the curtain, Mr. Abbott could see all that was going on without being seen. There he kept his instruments of torture. Failure in lessons, whispering, any schoolroom trick stimulated by the knowledge that those eyes might be watching, brought down on the discovered culprit, boy or girl, a chastisement of se- vere pain. The methods "immediately calculated to restrain and remove " such vici- ous habits were: beating with rawhide and ferrule; boxing both ears as giving blows on a punching bag; hanging up by the thumbs four or five at a time; tying the hands together and hanging them by hooks to the ceiling, with other freaks of pas- sion. Her recollection fully justified the verdict pronounced by a lady fifty years after: " He was the most cruel man I ever saw." 'On special occasions of disobedience. cor- rections, incredible now, like keeping a scholar all night from home, flogging with a rawhide until it broke in his hand, which in our days would have brought the master before a police court and into jail, were administered in that high class Seminary, and in the one pitched battle the victory remained, not, Oh! writer of boy's story books, with the boy, but with the master. What a revolution for the better has taken place since these methods inherited from English schools and in vogue there long after 1838, were endured here in Cleveland. That the institution contributed to our literary ad- vancement, is undeniable. Instances of fine scholarship and literary culture came out of that discipline, yet it is a little surprising that this was the leading institution here for three or four years. It is certain that with a grown up son Mr. Abbott came back here and attempted to re-establish himself with no great success. A throng of differ- ently marked personages crowded the stage in the last years of the decade. Two brothers, A. N. and J. W. Gray, with a third came here from Lawrence County, N. Y. Both entered the ranks of educators. A. N. had first a private school a little east of where the Crocker block now stands, then went into the Rockwell Street public school. J. W. also first taught a private school on St. Clair street, then in a public one, then . ·studied law, but before he began to practice found by intuitive genius his true vocation, bought out the Cleveland Advertiser, changed its name to the Plain Dealer, and wrote his whole self in capital letters in the front of our history. September second, 1839, A. N. announces to the public that he will "review" in the presence of such as are disposed to meet his pupils at the buildings on a certain day. It is hard to believe that J. W. ever enforced a rule against laughing among these young folks. But like all wits he had a great undercurrent of sadness. Both brothers are kindly remembered now by more than one of the good citizens they helped to make.
"Miss Hines had a room full of nice boys and girls at the Academy," says one of them, who was once the May queen and looks it now. The standard of education for girls was not yet very high. In the spring of 1841 began an enterprise that was to continue longer with a marked character. Miss Elizabeth Allen, from Troy Female Seminary, opened a school for young ladies first in a house just west of the Stone Church, then in a room over Mr. Camp's store, Superior street, eventually in a small white building west side of the Square. In November, 1842, Miss Allen became the wife of Rev. Wm. Day, Chaplain of the Bethel, and that seminary was long known as Mrs. Day's School. Her long continued patronage was probably due to her extreme conscientiousness and very strict ideas as to proper behavior and religious duties. She had after two years a talented associate. Kind women were always gathering the little ones to take the first steps in learning unentangled by any red tape, like the tots under Miss Whitman and Mrs. A. G. Parker, on St. Clair and Lake streets, in '38, and those under Miss Stoddard and Miss McCarg behind the Stone Church. In the fall of 1840, appeared from way down in Maine that small bundle of energy and enthusi- asm named Andrew Freese; with him came in embryo the High School; the scientific manual training; the organization of public instruction. This same year in the same months, the 7,000 inhabitants of Cleveland were informed of two distinct opportunities for higher education. Mr. Wm. W. Robinson, from New Jersey, and Mr. Wm. Mur- phy, from Philadelphia, felt the laudable ambition to found here a permanent institu- tion of learning. Both had the best qualifications and the correct ideals. The Cleve- land Classical and English Academy, Hancock block, corner of Seneca and Superior streets, should have lived. Yielding to necessity, it moved first to a Music Hall, and then to the Phoenix. There were separate rooms for young ladies, thorough teaching in both classies and English, and vocal music gratis, the first appearance of that ac- complishment anywhere. Their assistant was Miss Lucy Gray, a beloved teacher, now Mrs. Simmons. Quite likely the five or six competitors were too many and the "Cleveland Classical and English Academy," having at least done something toward the making of General Barnett, was crowded from the field. Mr. Robinson moved to a not distant town, married an Ohio girl and was happy ever after. One of their
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rivals had a history belonging to the "penny dreadful." That same fall of '40 it was announced in large type that Mr. and Mrs. Hamilton would begin their third term on January fourth, at number five Miller's block. Mrs. Hamilton would instruct pupils at their residence opposite that of Mrs. Miller, where boarders would be re- ceived, number limited to twenty-five. Mr. Hamilton was fortunate enough to engage as assistants Mr. Arey, afterwards Rev. Charles, of Boston, and succeeding him his broth- er Oliver, whose distinguished career as an educator here, in Buffalo, and in Albany, is well known. Other helpers would have made this story much shorter. Mrs. Hamil- ton taught the smaller pupils. He was a tall handsome man with the important air of a stiff Irish Englishman, a churchman of a pronounced type. The curriculum varied somewhat from the common, including besides the everyday reading, writing, spel- ling, arithmetic, geography, practical logic and rhetoric, - no classics or mathematics. He was unable to teach them himself but kept the secret at first. . The school drew largely. The English church service was read every day- a kind of distinction - and affairs went on till '46 when Mr. Hamilton resigned the school into Mr. Arey's hands and went to Akron as an officer in a bank. The real man then came out. He com- mitted a heavy forgery, left the country under cover of darkness, and escaped to England. Investigation showed that the Creole, Mrs. Hamilton, was not his lawful wife. A later gleam on his career lighted him up as the proprietor of a drinking place in London, and finally as hanging on the gallows for the crime of murder. Mrs. Hamilton had followed him in his flight. Mr. Arey united his school with that of Mr. Beattie for a year when he received a flattering offer from Buffalo which he accepted. Two schools for girls alone were successfully working in 1840. To Mrs. Pelton in a private school, succeeded a Miss Smith; her first name has eluded us. Mr. Freese who visited it, or her, often, says she was a fine teacher, of high cultivation and very popular. She had a brother in Wisconsin, an eminent lawyer, who persuaded her to give up teaching and go to him. This brother became a judge and took a high place on the bench. Soon after the Misses Ludlow had the privilege of numbering many of the bright girls of the town as pupils. They were, curiously. from Tennessee, were Episcopalians, and highly recommended by Bishop Otay. The sisters held the ideal of their day on what young ladies ought to learn. Music and drawing, these were to be mastered accomplishments; two or three works in French were to be trans- lated, certainly Telemachus, and as many books on science to be learned and recited through as time allowed. This school was on the east side of Ontario street, north of the Square. Miss Christina taught painting. Crayon pictures and oil paintings were produced. Lectures on art were a part of the regular exercises. Instruction in chords on the piano was a singular novelty and advantage. An antiquated, though lady-like dress, a portrait hanging in the parlor of their uncle, a British general, threw around them the atmosphere of appropriate English superiority. They were here only two years, but left a good reputation as teachers.
Other light bearers to Cleveland ignorance clustered around '41. In May, Mr. Al- fred Muzzy made known that he would open a course of lessons on the science of grammar (apparently a favorite one with our predecessors), on a new and improved system, by lecturing, parsing, and, above all, by reference to His Tree, showing the roots of language. He could pass in review 1, 500 scholars. This Tree, etc., would be over Ross's store, corner Seneca and Superior streets, third story; terms $3 for 36 lessons. Three weeks after, June 5th, an examination was held which seems to have been assisted at by all leading men of the town, and three columns of testi- monials to the wonderful success of the system appeared in the paper, signed by Charles Bradburn, Mayor Willey, Robinson, Murphy, Rev. Tucker and others of like authority. Improbable that Mr. Muzzy paid for it. A week before two artists, Mr .. and Mrs. Wood, made promises, brilliant and so far without precedent. Any person, though previously unacquainted with drawing, could under their tuition acquire the ability to paint landscapes, flowers, buildings and all natural objects. The course might be taken in four or five days, so that persons having only that time to spend in the city could avail themselves of this instruction, though it appeared eight or nine days would be preferable. Week after week these courses were renewed, the happy and grateful artists, thanking their numerous patrons for the encouragement they had received, till probably every reputable inhabitant though previously unacquainted with drawing could both draw and paint. So Cleveland patronized art. We turn again to an early schoolroom. In August, 1846, began in a small frame building, which stood in what was an open piece of native forest, on the southeast corner of Euclid and Erie, a school for children. There for four years a group of little ones were gathered, mothered and taught to read and write and sew and do sums in Cel- burn's arithmetic as well as learn lessons in some higher branches, like Parley's His-
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tory and a Child's Book of Nature .. Fortunate children! for their teacher was Sarah Fitch, and no kindergartener was ever more skillful long before the name was invented. The first set outgrew their primary grade, and the school ceased, to re-open in 1850 in a little structure on the site afterwards occupied by the Cleveland Brick Academy. The influence of this unpretentious child's school was altogether out of proportion to its numbers. These little boys and girls in pinafores, sitting still while the Testament was read, and with folded hands and eyes shut in prayer time-the Woolseys, Head- leys, Handys, Gilletts, Severances, Hewitts, Andrews, Williams, Gardners, Willeys of the second generation were the lawyers mayors, bankers, manufacturers, philan- thropists and strong business men of this and other cities, and they carried through life the uplifting, wholesome influence of this strong, beloved woman. Among them played Susan Coolidge, who has given a little picture of the school and teacher in the story of Eyebright.
After 1840 school books were rapidly changed. Daboll had long disappeared be- hind Adams, and this with Kirkham's Grammar was ousted by Smith's Arithmetic and Smith's Grammar, both on the productive system, whatever that was. Mrs. Nettleton, who taught school in Academy lane, had "Watt's On the Mind" in her course, which showed her bringing up. As to the teachers, public and private, they no longer prom- ised to look after the morals and manners of their pupils. Between '40 and '50 10,000 people were added to the pop- ulation; the great revo- lution in education be- gan to be apparent. Mr. Freese had his own views as to the character of the teachers, and urged them on the Board of Educa- tion. In filling vacancies he was consulted, and in this manner he served the city well. To quote his own words, "When appointed superintendent I visited all parts of New England in search of teachers. I found them at Mt. Holyoke, Brad -. ford, Amherst, Hartford; up at Hanover, N. H., down in Maine and in VIEW OF PARADE ON ECCLID AVENUE-WESTERN RESERVE DAY. Vermont. In the first place, I looked always to see what they were out- side of arithmetic, to see if they had souls in their bodies, and knew what all this fuss of living here amounts to. Splendid girls, nearly all of them, capable of teaching in any grade of school. Quite a number of them after a while accepted responsible posi- tions in Ladies' Seminaries or other high schools. But what could I have done without them. They were so intelligent, so sensible, so good, so ready to do anything I wanted them to do. They graded high as 'to character." Little could be added to this. These teachers, up to 1850, taught six hours a day, half day Saturday, full forty- four weeks in a year; the men for $to a week, the women for $5. Tuition in private schools ranged generally from three to five dollars a quarter. It is a pity so few per- sonal details of those early teachers have been preserved. We would know more about the Maria Sheldon, who was in that Bethel school under the hill; the Maria Kingsbury and the Miss West, who stood by Mr. Fry in the days when the boys used to ask each other, "Are you going to Freese or to Fry this winter?" and thought they were smart. What a wonderful person Julia Hamm must have been to uphold that bundle of dis- cipline, W. S. Lawrence, whose desks in the Champlain street school bore no spot or scratch after years of use. To chronicle the array of talent which found a sphere in the public schools of that decade is the task of a more competent pen. Between '40 and ' 50, however, there were two graduates of Oberlin whose lives and gifts do not be- long exclusively to public schools. Mrs. Harriet E. Grannis Arey, in a recent letter gives
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a lively account of her experience. "I became a resident of Cleveland in 1844, hav- ing been appointed to take charge of one of the primary schools, and was introduced to a phase of the human infant hitherto undreamed of by me. The room was crowded with German and Irish children, well educated in back lane and alley lore. On a fine day it was impossible to seat them. I had not been trained as a pugilist, and the place was the fairest representation of purgatory I have ever yet seen. My attention was constantly called off by some unhappy four-year-old tumbling from the ends of the benches, or squeezed out between two others whose crushing capacity was greater than his own, and when I had picked him up and comforted him and tried to find him a seat, there was none, unless I put him in the lap of some one already too crowded to dispose of his limbs. When I found. I could devise no means of remedy, I applied to the masculine head of the school for some suggestion to relieve the discomfort. Be- fore I had time to state the case, he threw back his head with a loud guffaw and ex- claimed, 'Can't manage those little tots ? Well, well!' Surprised and indignant, I turned my back and never troubled him again, but when the term closed I resigned my position and graduated permanently from the public schools. I had never been a good fighter. About the time I left, Miss Frances Fuller came back from Painesville to commence again the work as a teacher which she had begun eleven years before, and intermitted for some time. Mrs. Day's school on the west side of the Square was in full operation. A building next to hers was secured by Miss Fuller, and I was engaged as assistant. Here I spent some very happy years among a group of girls bright, enthusiastic and diligent. In the small rear yard in the rear of this build- ing, on a clear night, the older classes would gather while we expounded to each other the stars in the constellations. Prominent in my memory are the daughters of my cousin, C. J. Woolson, Georgina, the mother of Samuel Mather, and her sisters Emma and Constance. Georgina was brilliant, of a joyous disposition and much too witty for the dignity of a grave recitation. Constance was quiet and silent, standing behind my chair while the others were asking the final questions of the day, saying nothing but taking everything in, noting the heights and depths - for there were heights and depths-in their review of the day's occurrences, and gathering for her future work. Georgina was often wishing to inject in her history recitation some rhyme or squib or curious reference she had picked up, and when I saw the fun brimming in her face I was obliged to give a sharp ' Next ' to preserve the gravity of the class. Mary and Kitty Hilliard, Harriet and Anna and Clara Stafford, Sarah Hayden, Henrietta Rice were among the pupils, and one other from out of town, the best mind I ever had, whose name I cannot now remember. After a year of this work my friend and class- mate, Catherine Jennings, was engaged as assistant by Mrs. Day, and we taught side by side for a year, when Mrs. Day gave up her school into our hands and our joint control continued till my marriage, in September, 1848. Miss Fuller's school had been taken by Mrs. Haddock, who died before the year was out, and her pupils were at her own request, in her short sudden illness, incorporated with ours in the last term of my teaching."
This account by Mrs. Arey, who as poet, writer and woman won a high place both here and in New York State, gives not much idea of her own extraordinary accomplish- ments as a teacher. Concerning those two small white seminaries that stood in 44-45 on the west side of the Square, one may read in the story "What Katy Did." Party spirit ran high. Episcopalians and Presbyterians would not speak to each other over the fence. They made faces at each other in the street. It was not on the same clear nights that the girls gathered in the rear to study stars. Mrs. Day's pupils had decla- mations of appropriate poetry to further the elevated sentiment of the occasion. That teacher, with unceasing vigilance, did watch over the morals and manners of her pu- pils. There were parents who appreciated it. Her school was re-opened on Erie street the years from '56 to '60. Catherine Jennings adorned the ranks of Cleveland educators in no common degree. At the close of her connection with Miss Grannis she was the assistant of Mr. Freese for a year in the high school when, on December, 1849, she was married to Rev. Justin W. Parsons, D. D. They went as missionaries to Sa- lonica, Turkey, and afterwards to Bardezog, where for thirty years they took a leading part in the operations of the American Board in that region. In 18so, Mr. Parsons was murdered, shot by robbers as he was sleeping in his tent. Mrs. Parsons, with the consecration which had marked her earlier life, remained at her work for eleven years, then turned her face toward her native land to look once more for a short time on her home and kindred. But her longing heart clung to the natives of the mountains of Nicomedia and she soon sailed back. There she still lives among them. In 1856, the high school had been established in its far-reaching and beneficent activity. Twenty of the twenty-five teachers then employed in the schools were women of exceptional
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