USA > Pennsylvania > Fayette County > Connellsville > Centennial history of the borough of Connellsville, Pennsylvania, 1806-1906 > Part 9
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That commission, composed of thoroughly competent men, brought in an elaborate report of their investigations and asserted that a system of common schools, "sustained and encouraged by the public bounty," is superior "to every other plan of education of a private or partial character."
A bill was drawn. It embodied what was regarded as the best features of the systems most successful in other States. It passed both houses of the Legislature by a very large majority. Governor Wolf gratefully said: "It passed both branches of the Legislature with a unanimity rarely equalled, perhaps never surpassed, in the annals of legisla- tion." And so came into existence the law to which our State owes so much of its progress and happiness.
THE COMMON SCHOOL LAW OF 1834.
But if Governor Wolf was the founder of our com- mon school system, he may also be called its defender and preserver at a crisis when it was in danger of being over- thrown. A fierce effort was made by its enemies to strangle it in its cradle. This effort was made the very next year after the law had been enacted, at the next session of the
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Legislature, the session of 1835. Notwithstanding the very large majority by which the bill had been passed, there was continued an even intensified opposition to it in many quarters. A bitter sentiment rapidly developed, and an alarming attempt was made in the Legislature to repeal the new law, and to re-establish the old system of sub- scription schools. The attempt would, in all probability, have been successful but for the untiring exertions of Governor Wolf and the powerful speech of Mr. Thaddeus Stevens, who, in later years, became a leader in the Lower House of the National Congress, and was admiringly styled by his party The Great Commoner. One who heard Mr. Stevens' speech has described the orator standing in the broad, mid- dle aisle just in front of the presiding officer's desk, his face all aglow, his voice quivering with emotion, his feeble frame swaying back and forth and seeming to have taken on supernatural strength, his hearers awed and motionless. In closing his speech, he referred to the fact that Governor Wolf belonged to a different political party from that to which he belonged himself, and added: "He has been guilty of many deep political sins, but he deserves the undy- ing gratitude of the people for the steady, untiring zeal which he has manifested in favor of common schools .* I trust that the people of this State will never be called on to choose between a supporter and an opposer of free schools. But, if it should come to that; if that should be made the turning-point on which we are to cast our suff- rages ; if the opponent of education were my most intimate personal and political friend and the free school candidate my most obnoxious enemy, I should deem it my duty, as a patriot, at this moment of our intellectual crisis, to forget all other considerations, and I should place myself unhesi- tatingly and cordially in the ranks of him whose banner streams in light."
When the vote was taken, it was found that the friends of common schools had carried the day.
The arguments against the Law of 1834 seem trifling
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in the present day, but they carried great weight at the time and were listened to with great attention. The taxes, it was urged, would be enormously increased. The people in general were able to pay for the schooling of their chil- dren and it would be reducing them to the level of paupers to give them the schooling free. The opposition was car- ried, in some communities, to great lengths. It was made a political issue here and there, and members of the Legis- lature of 1834 who voted for the law failed, not a few of them, to be re-elected. Severe language was used. Offen- sive epithets were hurled at the supporters of the law. At least one legislator who voted for the bill was hanged in effigy. Mr. Christian Ruth, formerly of Philadelphia, now a resident of Connellsville, remembers a riot which he wit- nessed in the vicinity of the first school house opened in Philadelphia under the new law. For two or three days the disorder continued in the neighborhood of the building, corner Third and Master streets. The house was assailed, many people were injured, the whole city became excited, and the military had to be called out to disperse the crowds and restore order. The new law made it optional with each district whether to accept its provisions or to reject them. Many districts were slow to avail themselves of the benefits and opportunities of the free school system. Of nine hundred and seven school districts in 1836, five hundred and thirty-six accepted the system, three hundred and sev- enty-one did not accept it, and several years elapsed before it was in universal operation. But Connellsville accepted it promptly. There were grumblers and doubters, and there were those who refused to send their children to the free schools, but the majority of the citizens voted to adopt the system as a marvelous improvement upon the old. The citizens having so decided, the Court of Fayette county, at the January term, 1835, acting in conformity with the re- quirements of the law, transferred the schools of the Bor- ough and township to a Board of School Directors, em- powered it to levy taxes for school purposes, to receive a
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due share of the State appropriation and to have undivided authority over the schools and the school property. The Court appointed William Davidson and Henry W. Lewis directors, and two months later an election was held, in compliance with the law, resulting in the choice of Valen- tine Coughenour and James G. Turner. These first direc- tors were men of ability and prominence. Mr. Davidson had served several years in the Legislature and had been speaker of the House in 1818. Mr. Lewis was an English- man of education and talent who had been a lawyer. Messrs. Coughenour and Turner were influential citizens and mem- bers of Council.
The subject of building school houses was taken up afresh. In 1838, Dr. Lutellus Lindley and Mr. John Ful- ler were elected directors. Dr. Lindley, a native of Ohio, had been located in our town only four years, but had al- ready become a leading physician and a highly esteemed citizen. Mr. Fuller, a tanner by trade, was three times a member of the Legislature and was a member of the Con- stitutional Convention of 1838. These directors urged the importance of securing new buildings, and their efforts were crowned with success, for during their term of office three school houses were erected, and opened as the property of the Board. These were one storied, one roomed brick buildings, each about twenty-six feet square.
They are referred to in the records as Nos. 1, 2 and 3. No. 1 was popularly known as the school on the Pinnacle, standing on Snyder street. The brick was made from clay in the immediate neighborhood. This building still stands. On ceasing to be used as a school house, it was sold to the late John K. Brown, and by his heirs to Clair Still- wagon, whose father, the late William P. Stillwagon, had at one time taught school in it. It is now used as a dwelling.
No. 2 was built on the school house grounds, near where the high school now stands. In the records, though generally styled school No. 2, it is sometimes spoken of
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as the school on Mount Puff and, in a few instances, as the school on Baldwin's hill. When it had served its day, it was turned into a home for the janitor and remained such for several years before it was taken down.
School house No. 3 was located close to the Quaker burial ground on ground bought from Henry Black- stone. The ground was then outside the Borough limits, but was within a very short distance of the northwest corner of the Borough, nearly opposite the present B. & O. water tanks, and in the point formed by the junction of Witter avenue and Fayette street. The building was used exclu- sively by the township from 1852 until 1871, when it came into the Borough with the 51 acres added by the Connells- ville Building and Loan Association. It was variously known as "No. 3," "the Quaker Graveyard School," and "the North Bend School," the latter name having been given it from its location, overlooking a bend in the Yough River. It was sold by the school board, August 4, 1891, to Mrs. Catherine Cramer for $350, and was occupied as a dwelling until a few years ago when it was torn away and a two story frame dwelling erected on the site.
It is a matter of regret that no school board records have been found earlier than March 30, 1848. It would be impossible to give an accurate list of teachers before that date. Even in the old log school house, there were teachers who are not mentioned in the Council minutes. One of these was Thomas McMullin, a Dunbar township man, afterward a farmer and County Commissioner, who taught in the log school house two or three years before it was destroyed. Our fellow-citizen, Mr. J. M. Lytle, attended Mr. McMul- lin's school at five years of age, and remembers him kindly as his first teacher.
Among the early teachers were a Mr. Hunter, who became a physician, and another Mr. Hunter who was much given to pulling his pupils' ears; Mr. Hugh Espey, of Ty- rone township, afterward County Treasurer ; a Mr. Brazee, an exceptionally good teacher, who used no rod; Mr. Bud-
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ariah Page, familiarly known as "Bud" Page; Messrs. Mc- Giffin and Dare; Robert Torrance who taught in his own house on Church, now Pittsburg street, and is said to have had as many as eighty pupils in his school; Nathaniel Walker, from Dunlap's Creek, and James McIlvaine who taught No. 2, the new brick school on Mount Puff, in 1840.
Many of the teachers during the first thirty years or more of the Borough's history were from Ireland. Occa- sionally "the Yankee School Master" came, but much oft- ener "the Irish School Master" appeared in town and ap- plied for a school. They were from the north of Ireland, (Scotch-Irish), and though there were some excellent teachers among them, their brogue perplexed and amused the pupils, as they were told to stand upon "the flure," to be good or they would get "a baiting," and not to whit- tle "the boords." They were generally strict in discipline, and believed in the educational value of the rod. One of them, who taught in Connellsville and New Haven at in- tervals for twelve years or more, was noted as a disciplin- arian.
"A man severe he was, and stern to view,- Well had the boding tremblers learned to trace The day's disasters in his morning face ; Full well they laugh'd with counterfeited glee At all his jokes, for many a joke had he."
It was one of the favorite sayings of this good man from Ulster as a warning to an idle or mischievous scholar : "I see it's a bit of the birch you're wanting. You'd better behave, or you'll get what you're workin' for."
The building and opening of the three brick schools was an important and gratifying event in the educational history of our Borough, but within a few years the school population outgrew the accommodations. Rooms had to be rented, as in former days. At a meeting of the School Board held at T. G. Ewing's store on Monday evening, October 2, 1848, it was decided "to rent an extra house ;"
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other houses may have already been rented. At about this time, an additional building was advocated, and the Board, at a meeting in John Cooley's shop, Friday evening, March 30, 1849, appointed John Cooley and Stephen Robbins a committee to make an estimate of the "cost of a brick house, sixty feet long, twenty-two feet wide and eight feet high, said house to be for the use of two schools." The state of the treasury was such that in order to build the house, it would be necessary either to levy an additional tax of "thirty cents on the one hundred dollars over and above what has heretofore been laid," or to close all the schools for a year. It was submitted to a vote of the people and on Saturday, May 12th, an "election" was held to decide the question of an additional tax, John Cooley acting as judge, Stephen Robbins inspector, and William Cooley and Mat- thew Seaton, clerks. When the vote was counted, it was found that thirteen of "the taxable inhabitants" had voted for the additional tax and that thirty-seven had voted against it. Notwithstanding this, the Board decided, eighteen days afterward, to advertise the sale of a contract for build- ing the house in question. On Saturday afternoon, June 30, 1849, bids were received and "the building of the school house" was "knocked off to John Shallenberger" for $550, he to find all the materials and "put the house up, everything complete, by the first day of November." The next Satur- day evening, July 7, the Board of directors received a remonstrance, signed by "many of the citizens," objecting to the location, claiming that the building ought to be put somewhere else than on the Connell school grounds. The Board answered that no situation, suited to the convenience of the "vacant districts," could be had, and dismissed the whole subject. "Be it resolved," said they, "that the present Board have nothing more to do in the matter." Almost 20 years passed before a new building was erected.
When the Common school law of 1834 was accepted and was put into operation in our community, the Bor- ough of Connellsville and the township of Connellsville con-
wand
THE SECOND WARD SCHOOL
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stituted one district, and this arrangement continued until March 1852. At the March term of the Court of Quarter Sessions of Fayette county, that year, the Borough of Con- nellsville was made a separate and independent school dis- trict. In compliance with the requirements of the law and in obedience to "the proclamation of the high sheriff of the county," an election was held for six school directors, Mon- day, April 5, 1852. The following persons were elected : Stephen Robbins, Josiah Kurtz, Abraham Shallenberger, John Taylor, John Collins and George White, the first two for one year, the second two for two years, the third two for three years. Stephen Robbins was made president of the Board, Josiah Kurtz, secretary, and Abraham Shallen- berger, treasurer. A tax of "thirty cents on the one hun- dred dollars was levied for school purposes for the current year." By this separation from the township, the Borough lost the school at the Quaker Graveyard which, as we have said, was outside the existing Borough limits. That school became the property of the township. A substitute was found for it.in October. A building, owned by Mrs. Sarah Clayton and situated on what is now the southwest corner of Grape and Meadow alleys was rented. It was once a carpenter shop, but it was made to serve as a school room for many years and was called No. 3. It would be hard to form a list of the rooms rented from 1835 onward. The Fuller School was beside a tannery south of the present freight depot of the Southwest Penn'a railroad. The pupils made good use of the heaps of tanbark as a play ground. Another rented room was on Grave street (now Fairview avenue), another was on Peach street; another in what afterward became the S. W. Penn'a railroad station; one was rented in '55 from J. T. McCormick; one in '56 from Thomas Evans. In almost every year, several rooms were rented. Sometimes the directors owned the seats and desks, sometimes the teacher owned them. In either case they were often stored in the old market house when schools were closed.
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Up until 1854, when the office of County Superintendent was created, the teachers were examined by the directors. The minute of October 16, 1848, tells us that "Almon Green- man was examined in the following branches, viz: Read- ing, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and geography." The examination was satisfactory, and the secretary of the Board was ordered to give him a certificate. A week later, David Connell and William Shafer "appeared before the Board" for a similar purpose. Such entries in the records are found at frequent intervals. The directors often had assistance in this work from a minister or an experienced teacher. From this work they were relieved when it was made the duty of the county superintendent to conduct such examinations. Prof. Joshua V. Gibbons, of Brownsville, was the first of our county superintendents, and served four terms. His first visit to our Board was made on Thurs- day, September 14, 1854. He was a man of herculean frame, of unusual ability and strict integrity.
The teachers reported to the Board every month the names and occasionally the ages of their pupils, their at- tendance, their progress in general, and their conduct. Some of the reports made out by Messrs. Josiah D. Stillwagon and David Barnes have been preserved. Those of Mr. Still- wagon are fancifully embellished with pictures and other productions of his own pen, and show that from February 6, 1849, until March 8, 1850, there were about eighty pupils enrolled in the school on the Pinnacle, with an average at- tendance of fifty. Space would fail us to give an account of the teachers in the '50s and '60s, to come no nearer to own time. Josiah D. Stillwagon, who taught a number of terms, and became prominent in the business and politics of the Borough in later life, David Barnes, who taught many years and afterward held a clerkship in the State Capitol and other responsible positions, the last being that of agent of the S. W. Pennsylvania Railroad in Con- nellsville, John Bolton, who taught several years in this place, then for seventeen years in the schools of Ports-
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mouth, Ohio, and for thirty years in the high school of Cleveland, Ohio. In the last named school he was a teacher of science. He retired from work about 3 years ago, and is now living near Mill Run. The list of Connellsville teachers includes Joseph T. McCormick, prominent in later life as a manufacturer, banker and capitalist, always interested in the schools and frequently serving on the Board, its secretary for some years; James Stimmell, who became a soldier in the Civil War; Benjamin Frankenberry, who afterward moved to Tennessee and died there; Peter A. Johns, Otho Williams, Albert S. Cameron, and many others deserving of mention. Some became ministers as Rev. Amos Hutton, who taught in '59, and Rev. Joseph M. Collins, who taught in '60. Mr. Collins, now living in Uniontown, was licensed to preach in June, '59, and during his active ministry held important charges in the Baptist Church, his last charge being at Perry, Kansas. We read of no female teachers until in the '50s. The first of which we find record were Miss Jane McCormick (Mrs. Christian Snyder), who taught No. 2 in 1850, and Miss Margaret Collins ( Mrs. Matthew Cooley ), who taught the Clayton school that same year. Then came Miss Mary Buckingham, Miss Anna Shallenberger, Miss Azubah Melindy and others, but the male teachers were greatly in the majority until near the close of the '60s. School teachers have never received extravagant salaries, but in the early days of the Borough their income was small. In 1851, male teachers were allowed $20 a month, female teachers $12.50 a month. The next year the female teachers received $13.50. The school term in the days of the old log house was seldom more than four months, some- times less. In later days five or six months seem to have been the rule. Often there was a winter school and a sum- mer school, the former for the larger pupils, the latter for the smaller. The latter were caller primary schools, juvenile schools and even infant schools. As late as 1860, the teachers were required to build the fires and keep the house clean
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at their own expense. In 1861, sextons were employed by the Board at a cost of fifty cents each per month. What amount of time or strength these sextons gave to the work, the records do not say. No doubt they earned their money. The salaries of teachers gradually advanced until in 1870 the principal male teacher received $80 a month, and the female teachers $40. There has been later advancement and it is sincerely to be hoped that those who teach our youth in the public schools to love their country and to be good, intelligent, honorable citizens will soon be accorded a compensation somewhat commensurate with the value and dignity of their calling.
Many of the old-time customs have passed away. Men who are not yet infirm with age remember the Christmas times when in the morning, the scholars got into the school ahead of the teacher, fastened the door and the windows and notified him that he would not be allowed to come in until he had solemnly agreed to give them a generous "treat" of apples, cakes and the like. The scholars generally brought food with them and were prepared to spend the day, if necessary, "barring out" the teacher. Success, in most cases, crowned their undertaking.
THE UNION SCHOOL BUILDING.
The three storied brick school house, now standing on Fairview avenue, on the eastern end of the school house grounds, was erected after much discussion and delay. In March, 1863, the subject was considered by the Board, the need of such a building being recognized by all present. It was decided to take "immediate measures to have an Act of Assembly passed to allow the schools of this Borough to be suspended for one or two years for the purpose of al- lowing the taxes to be used in building a union school house. We hear nothing, however, of such measures being taken. Three years later, March 2, 1866, Richard Campbell, the secretary of the Board, was appointed to go to Mc- Keesport "to examine" the Union school house in that place ..
THE THIRD WARD SCHOOL
LLE
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and on the 11th of March it was decided "to build a three story house, 60x66," and to issue bonds for the necessary funds. Nothing further seems to have been done until May 6, 186?, when a plan, submitted to the Board by Barr & Moser, architects, of Pittsburgh, was adopted. Messrs. A. Shallenberger and J. T. McCormick were appointed to su- perintend the erection of the building.
From the first there was determined opposition to this building. It was said by some that the Borough would be plunged hopelessly into debt, and by others that a building of such dimensions would not be needed for fifty years to come. The question agitated the community. Sides were taken and it was made an issue, the overshadowing issue in municipal politics. On the 21st of May, a protest came before the Board signed by 38 citizens. In August a ques- tion arose between the Borough Council and the Board which for a time threatened a collision. In March, 1868, an unsuccessful effort was made within the Board itself to have the new house made two stories high instead of three. The only change was made May 4, 1868, when it was decided to make it fifty feet by seventy instead of sixty by sixty-six.
The work, begun late in 1861, was completed June 11, 1869. On that day the building was "taken off the hands of the contractor," and on Monday morning, June 14th, the schools were opened in the new Union school house, under Connellsville's first principal, Samuel A. Espey. Mr. Espey had been elected April 8th, and he served as principal six years. He proved himself thoroughly fur- nished unto his work-firm, prudent, active, a man of fine intellectual training, of attractive character and winning manners. He was devoted to the work of teaching, and rendered most valuable and efficient service in organizing our Union schools. From Connellsville he went to Alle- gheny where he has been through all these thirty years the honored and successful principal of one of the city schools.
On opening the new building and until the year 1878,
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only the first and second stories were occupied as school rooms, eight rooms in all. The third story was fitted up in a humble way as a hall. Though intended for school pur- poses, it was in demand for various entertainments, being the only hall in town. Soon after it was opened, the "Me- chanic's Dramatic Association" received "the use of it at $15.00 a night." The Carrington Cornet Band gave three concerts in it. Exhibitions and lectures were also given in the hall. But in the summer of 1878, two rooms were fitted up on the third floor for additional schools, and soon the School Hall was no more. The patrons of these entertain- ments in the hall seem to have been sometimes noisy, for the Board was compelled, on some occasions, to employ "two persons to attend as policemen-to enforce good or- der and arrest any or all persons engaged in any acts of misdemeanor," the Board to pay half the expense, the Bor- ough the other half. Notices were likewise posted in the hall prohibiting persons from "standing on the benches or sitting on the backs of same."
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