USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > Connellsville > Centennial history of the borough of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 1806-1906 > Part 8
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Time has also changed the freight shipments of this region ; the first car-load of freight consisted of 500 hoop poles and 500 pounds of buckwheat flour shipped by James Stafford of town and John Kooser of Springfield. The Town Council on May 7, 1855, directed the Burgess to subscribe for 2000 shares of the capital stock of the Pitts- burg and Connellsville Railroad Company, the same to be paid in the bonds of the Borough. Each share of stock to be of the par value of fifty dollars.
This act placed a bonded debt of $100,000 upon the Borough. It is doubtful if all the property of the town, at a forced sale, would have brought this figure at that time.
The total valuation of taxable property in 1860 was $48,480 or less than one-half of the bonded debt of the Borough. In 1860, May 31, the Council laid a special rail- road bond tax, of 16 cents upon the dollar of valuation. If this tax had been all collected it would have furnished the Council $7,756, but at the expiration of five years much of it was uncollected and uncollectable. After much worry, many meetings of the Council, a number of public meet- ings of the citizens held in the different churches for coun- sel ; the employment of a number of different attorneys,
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ST. 49
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CIVIC DEVELOPMENT
some of whom gave them advise against their own interests ; trials in the Pittsburgh courts ; and much correspondence with the railroad officials, a compromise was agreed upon with President Latrobe. This compromise was that the Borough should pay to the Railroad Company the sum of $15,000 for the bonds, which were all to be returned to the Borough and to be destroyed, but the Borough was to re- tain the railroad stock. Of this stock some was sold to help pay this $15,000 indebtedness, and the balance was divided among the tax payers, in proportion to the amount of the bonded tax that each taxpayer had paid.
NEW HAVEN BOROUGH.
New Haven is located opposite Connellsville on the west bank of the Youghiogheny river. It is closely con- nected with Connellsville in a business and social way, and the two boroughs are bound together by a strong and sub- stantial iron bridge.
As early as 1753 William Stewart lived on the west bank of the Youghiogheny. For this man Stewart's Cross- ing was named.
The first white man to permanently locate here was William Crawford, who built his log cabin near what is now known as the Crawford spring, in the lower part of New Haven in 1765. A patent for the land was issued in the name of his son John, some four years later, for 37614 acres. John came into actual possession of this land after his father's death, and sold it to Edward Cook on Novem- ber 27, 1786. The next transfer was to Colonel Isaac Mea- son. Isaac Meason's son was Isaac Meason, Jr., and was associated with his father in business. He erected a store building near the Crawford spring and did business there for a number of years.
Isaac Meason, Sr., is credited with being the richest man in this part of the country. Among the taxables for Dunbar Township in 1799, he is credited with 6400 acres of land, one forge, one furnace, one grist mill, and two
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CONNELLSVILLE
saw mills. His store was chiefly for his own employees as he practically owned everything on that side of the river. The Measons laid out New Haven in 1996, but the town did not grow fast, and did not succeed in obtaining a post office until 1878. In 1815 it contained but two streets and about 100 inhabitants.
The town in its early history had a great number of ups and downs; first were its prosperous days under the success of the woolen manufactories, then under the Orth Brothers in manufacturing clothing for the army, then the National Locomotive works, each had their day of pros- perity, and each in turn ended in failure.
In 1839 at the March session of Court a petition was presented, praying for the incorporation of New Haven Borough, signed by Thomas Foster, John Newcomer, Jr., George W. Vance, Daniel Rogers, James Robinson, Val- entine Coughenour and others.
The Grand Jury reported favorably, and, on June ?, 1839, the report was confirmed by Court. Opposition arose at once to the adoption of the charter by those who thought their taxes would be increased. By legal action it was de- ferred until 1842. In that year an election was held in the school house and William McFarland was chosen Burgess and R. A. McIlvain weighmaster.
Before the Council elected could meet and organize, they were informed by an anonymous letter, that, if they did organize, the town would be burned. The letter had its desired effect, it so frightened the Councilmen, that they never made even an attempt to organize. This election and charter therefore failed for want of action.
No attempt was then made until March 14, 1867, when Court again issued a decree authorizing the organization of the Borough under the charter of 1839, and appointed W. H. Brown, Judge, J. V. Rhodes and S. G. Smutz in- spectors, to hold an election for Borough officers on Fri- day, March 29, 1867, and appointed Hugh Cameron to give notice of said election according to law.
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CIVIC DEVELOPMENT
At this election S. G. Smutz was elected Burgess, R. A. McIlvain, George Nickel, J. V. Rhodes, J. M. Lytle and Hugh Cameron, Councilmen. W. H. Brown was elected Constable, George J. Ashman was elected Treasurer. This is the list of officers elected at the first election for the per- manent organization of the Borough of New Haven.
The present officers of 1906 are: Burgess, Samuel E. Nelson. Members of Council, J. R. Balsley, President ; Robert Sheppard, Harmon Hays, B. D. Shoemaker, Reason Moore, Samuel Torrence, Aleck McBeth.
CHAPTER IV.
EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS.
The early settlers along the Yough were friends of education. Though they were, for the most part, plain, hard-working men, living in a comparative wilderness, en- gaged in laborious and incessant toil and exposed to dan- gers from wild beasts and savages, they believed that edu- cation was necessary to the public welfare. Accordingly, they built school houses in all the settlements at the earliest possible date. These were of necessity humble structures. They were usually of unhewn logs. The seats were made of trees split in two, and placed with the flat side upon long pegs, and the windows were generally made of greased paper, admitting but little light. The course of study em- braced but little else than "the three R's." The teachers were often rude in their manners and meagre in their attainments. But there were devoted men among them who did faithful work, wielded great influence and contributed their share to the moral and intellectual advancement of the community. In all these efforts to" establish schools, the pioneers or our region were acting in harmony with the founders of the commonwealth. In his Plan of Government for the Colony of Pennsylvania, William Penn gave order that education should be "carefully propagated." He directed that "the Governor and Provincial Council should erect and order all public schools," and that "all persons having children and all the guardians and trustees of orphans shall cause such to be instructed in reading and writing that they may be able to read the Scriptures and to write by the time that they attain to twelve years of age," -the penalty of neglect being a fine of Five Pounds ($20).
The provisonal constitution of 1776 required that
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EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
schools should be established in every county, and, in the constitution of 1290, it was provided that "the legislature, as soon as may be, shall provide by law for the establish- ment of schools throughout the state, in such manner that the poor may be taught gratis." Legislation was tardy and, for many years, inefficient ; yet schools sprang up and multi- plied in the frontier regions of western Pennsylvania. Even classical schools here and there came into existence. These were generally established and taught by pastors. Several were in what is now Washington county, as that of Rev. Thaddeus Dodd, opened in 1282, on Ten Mile Creek ; that of Rev. John McMillan, opened at about the same date at Chartiers, and that of Rev. Joseph Smith, on Buffalo Creek. At least one such classical school was opened in Fayette county. It was located in Dunbar township-on the old Tanner farm-and was opened in 1294 by the Rev. James Dunlap, pastor of the Laurel . Hill Presbyterian church, assisted by Mr. William Littell. The preceptors announced that they would teach Latin, Greek and Hebrew, elocution, grammar, mathematics, natural and moral philosophy, logic, civil history, rhetoric ; and stated that pupils from a distance could have "boarding, washing, et cetera at reputable houses in the neighborhood, at the low rate of ten pounds per annum." This school continued until 1803, when Rev. Mr. Dunlap accepted the presidency of Jefferson College, Canonsburg, Pa.
As to the ordinary schools of that period, we know little,-though we have good reason to believe that our own town of Connellsville enjoyed educational privileges before its incorporation as a borough. Mr. Zachariah Connell showed himself a friend of education and a public-spirited man when, in the Town Charter, executed March 21, 1293, he appropriated two lots, Nos. 88 and 96 on the town plot, as "a commodious seat" whereon his fellow townsmen might erect "a house or houses for public worship and school or schools," "free and clean of purchase money or ground- rent." These lots he granted "forever to the inhabitants of
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said town, their heirs and successors, to be held in common for the purpose aforesaid, or jointly, as the inhabitants may choose." Mr. Alexander Addison, some years afterward, purchased from Mr. Connell two lots (22 and 80) adjoin- ing the school lots on the east, and presented them to the Borough in 1812 "for the use of an English school or schools." These four lots were conveyed to the Borough by a deed dated May 30, 1812, signed by Zachariah Connell and Margaret his wife, and witnessed by Anthony Banning and George Mathiot. The lots form an oblong square con- taining one acre, bounded on the north by Fairview avenue, to use present-day names, on the south by South alley, on the east by Library avenue, and on the west by Pittsburgh street. They lie on an eminence which was originally much higher, having in recent years been cut down, and which was at one time known as Mount Puff. Pittsburgh street (then called Church street) extended no farther than what is now Church place. The "cut" had not yet been made, and a steep path led up the hill.
When the Borough was incorporated in 1806, a school house stood on the hill, about where Pittsburgh street now passes through it. The school house referred to is known to have been in existence in March, 1804. According to an old record a Bullskin township election was held in it on the third Saturday of that month, but the date of its erection we are not able to give. It was built by subscription of the townspeople, was built of logs, was built on Mount Puff, and did duty until October 9, 1829, when it was wrecked by fire. The "wreck" was sold at public outcry soon after, the auctioneer receiving one dollar for his services, but, for some reason, not receiving it until the fifth of the following May. We know little of the surroundings of the old log school house. A burial ground stood on the southern side of the school. As early as 1806, the pupils could look with awe upon the graveyard, as it was called, and see quite a number of graves, some of them with white or brown head- stones. Eight years later, they may have been entertained
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at recess by watching the stray hogs being ignominiously thrust into a hog pound that had just been erected by the Borough officials on the northeast corner of the school grounds, and next to a hop yard known as Barnhart's. The pupils who ventured close enough to the hog pound to exam- ine it, would find that it had "a good gate and iron hinges."
We know little of the school-room furniture. Nine years after the incorporation of the Borough, two writing tables, fifteen feet long and seventeen inches wide, were ordered to be made for the school. These were merely boards fastened to the walls at which the older pupils sat to practice penmanship, while their younger and smaller fellow students sat on rude benches with no desks at all. These wall-desks needed to have "a suitable slant" for good writing, and the benches were generally too high for phys- ical comfort.
The school house had been erected by popular sub- scription, but in October, 1806, the people asked that the Burgess and Borough Council should take charge of it, and six months later (April 2, 1807,) an ordinance was passed granting the request of the people, vesting the right and control of the school and school property in the Bur- gess and Council. Thus the Borough Council directed and managed the school, keeping the property in repair, employ- ing teachers and doing whatever else might be needed, and this relationship continued for twenty-eight years. The schools of the Borough were under the jurisdiction of the Council until the enactment of the Common School Law in 1834 by the Pennsylvania legislature.
The attendance during this period could not have been large. An old record (1819) intimates that there were sometimes rival teachers who secured more or less patron- age, and received encouragement from members of Coun- cil. A Borough ordinance inflicted a fine of twenty dollars on such members of Council, an ordinance which was re- pealed in 1819. About thirty pupils attended the Borough school during the quarter ending in February, 1821. Two
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years later the number rose to thirty-five. The teachers employed by the Council, so far as the Council records show, were Andrew Donogh (first mentioned in 1807). Benjamin Evans, Oliver Sproul, William Beatty, Seth Elias, George Bell, Dennis O'Keefe, William Clemens, Messrs. Fleming, Lewis and Mclaughlin, the last-named teacher appearing in the record in July, 1828. What appointments were made in the six years that remained of the Council's control of the school, we do not know. Sometimes there seemed to be a difficulty in finding teachers. Council now and then advertised for a teacher, but as a rule there were applicants.
The man who "was permitted to teach in the Borough School House" visited the citizens and took subscriptions, the subscribers agreeing to send one or more pupils to the school for the quarter or the year and to pay a certain amount for each pupil. In some cases, the amount was two dollars, sixty-two and a half cents for each pupil twelve and a half cents of which amount went to the Coun- cil for the rent of the school house. Sometimes the teacher was required to give bond for "the payment of twelve and a half cents per quarter for every scholar which may be sent to school." The rents were applied by Council to repairs and the maintenance of the building, though it more than once occurred that a teacher was given the use of the building "without rent, he to make all repairs," and to allow elections and public meetings to be held in it. The teacher was his own janitor, making fires, cleaning, sweep- ing, keeping the house in order with his own hands or at his own expense. The State Law of 1819 made provision that "indigent children" might be admitted to the schools at the public expense. The indications are, however, that not many of that class applied for admission to the log school house on Mount Puff. Here, as in most other com- munities, few were found who were willing to humilate themselves by announcing their poverty to the public author- ities.
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The schools of the period referred to were commonly styled "pay schools," and "subscription schools," and their patrons were "subscribers." A subscription list, dated No- vember, 1820, contains the names of twenty-five of the resi- dents of the Borough, with the number of children each of them agreed to send to school, and the amount to be paid per scholar to the teacher, Mr. Dennis O'Keefe. The list is as follows :
Scholars
Scholars
Jonathan Page 21/2
James Inglis 1
H. Gebhart
1
S. G. Wurtz 2
Adam Snider .
1
Samuel Sharples 1
Sarah Keepers 1
James Carr 2
Nancy White 1
James Noble 1
Clement Smith 1
Michael Gilmore 1
John Talbot 1
Daniel Coughenour 1
James Johnston 1
Encal Clayton 1
Alexander Johnston 11/2
William Little 1/2
George Marietta 11/2
Esther Campbell 1
John Salyards 1
James McBride 1
Daniel Harshman 1
Alfred McCormick. . .1
Hiram Herbert 2
Scholars, 30.
LESTER L. NORTON, Treasurer of the Borough of Connellsville.
The above is a correct return of the Borough School for the third quarter, ending in February, 1821. Yours with respect,
D. O'KEEFE."
(The half scholar, in the above list, is a scholar that was to attend the school half time.)
Mr. O'Keefe taught reading, writing, spelling, gram- mar and arithmetic. We do not know what text-books he used-perhaps "The Western Spelling Book," which had been extensively in use for ten years, or "The United States Spelling Book," prepared "by sundry experienced teachers," and published in 1812. In arithmetic, it may be that he
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CONNELLSVILLE
used Stockton's "Western Calculator," which at the time had passed through several editions. His pupils may have had frequent occasion to quote the old-time saying :
"Multiplication is vexation, Division is as bad, The rule of three perplexes me, And fractions drive me mad."
It may be noted that, in the schools of by-gone days, it was no uncommon thing for problems to be put into poetic form :
"If to my age there added be One-half, one-third and three times three, Six score and ten the sum would be ; What is my age? Pray, show it me."
"Just sixteen yards of German serge For ninety dimes had I; How many yards of that same cloth Would fourteen eagles buy?"
When Mr. O'Keefe came to the writing lesson, he was kept busy. He had to set the headlines, make the straight strokes, the pot-hooks, the hangers, the small hand. He had to see to it that his pupils had each a goose quill, for there were no steel pens. Mr. Gillot did not make steel pens until the very year Mr. O'Keefe began teaching in Connellsville. The pupils brought the quills, but the teacher had to sharpen them and keep them in order. As for pun- ishments, a rod was considered an indispensable article of school furniture. Whether of birch or of hickory, it was freely used. The schoolmaster often carried the rod in his hand as he moved about the room. Sometimes he kept a collection of rods on the wall-rods of different length and the thickness to suit the age and size of youthful offenders. Sometimes a listless, sluggish pupil was put upon a dunce-block, with a fool's cap on and a pair of leather spectacles.
THE HIGH SCHOOL AND THE UNION SCHOOL.
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The pupil who violated the rules was made to stand on a chair or bench, often to stand on one foot. A scourge, made of strips of leather and called the tawes, was a favorite instrument of punishment in some schools. Boxing the ears. was at times resorted to as an effective way of securing order. All in all, the rod was the chief means of discipline. It was applied with great zeal, and few there were in the schools who were not well acquainted with it. It was used to punish all manner of offences, whatever the degree, and not infrequently a victim could not have told what he was being whipped for. There was another punishment for the boys of the school-and that was the sending of a boy to the other side of the school room to sit with the girls, a punish- ment to which some of the boys submitted with good grace: and hearty resignation.
We have already referred to the "wrecking" of the old: log school house on the 9th of October, 1829. After that. event, the Borough was without a school house of its own for a period of about ten years, all schools being held in rented rooms during that time. It is true that efforts were made from time to time to have a house erected. Four months. after the old building was destroyed, a subscription was. made by a goodly number of citizens toward a new building. The matter being brought before the Council, that body authorized the citizens to appoint a building committee and go forward with the work. Later, a remonstrance, signed by certain citizens, was presented to a special meeting of Council, and so, "with occasional resolutions by the Council to build a new school house, and remonstrances against the same by the inhabitants of the Borough, nothing was accom- plished," and year after year passed without a school build- ing.
At this time the subject of popular education was being earnestly discussed throughout the State of Pennsylvania. The imperative need of a better system was widely felt. Laws had been enacted, but they were "limited in their application and local in their object." Education was largely
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EDUCATIONAL INSTITUTIONS
left to voluntary effort. There was no efficient plan for fur- nishing to the people systematic opportunity of study, while for the poor the provision made by law was ineffectual. The schools languished and declined in influence. The Penn- sylvania society for the promotion of public schools, in a document published in 1839 (shortly after our log school house was wrecked), made the statement that out of four hundred thousand children in the State of Pennsylvania between the ages of five and fifteen, "more than two hun- dred and fifty thousand, capable of receiving instruction, were not within a school during the last year." Wise men and women were alarmed. The future was imperilled. A "judicious, well-arranged system of universal education," such as was contemplated by the framers of the State Con- stitution, could not be too soon adopted and too faithfully carried into effect. There was much agitation of the sub- ject-in meetings of educators, in papers and pamphlets and in the Legislature. Governors, one after another, spoke of the subject in their inaugural addresses and in their exec- utive messages at the opening of each successive session of the Legislature, strongly recommending a more liberal and enlightened system of education. It was reserved for Governor George Wolf, the seventh Governor of the State and a Pennsylvania German, to secure the enactment of a law which, with certain amendments and additions, has given us our present splendid and eminently successful sys- tem of public schools. He had for years, in public and in private, advocated such a law, and from the time he took the gubernatorial chair on the 15th of December, 1829, he lost no opportunity to advocate this as "the cherished purpose of his administration," and as a measure second to none in its "importance to the general prosperity and happi- ness of the people of the Commonwealth, to the cause of public virtue and of public morals, to the hopes and expec- tations of the rising generation to whom the future political destinies of the Republic are to be committed. Nothing," he said, "will add so much to the sum of individual and so-
.
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CENTENNIAL HISTORY OF CONNELLSVILLE
cial improvement and comfort as a general diffusion of the means of moral and intellectual cultivation among all classes of our citizens."
The Governor met with wide-spread and determined opposition on the part of various classes of people, but with unfailing perseverance and earnestness he labored on in behalf of his favorite measure. He secured an Act of Legislature, in the session of 1831-32, levying a tax for a school fund. A year later, he secured the appointment of a commission "to collect all the information and possess themselves of all the facts and knowledge that can be ob- tained from any quarter having a bearing upon or con- nection with the subject of education, and to arrange and embody the same in a report to be transmitted to the Leg- islature at the next session for examination and final action. thereon."
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