USA > Pennsylvania > Perry County > History of Perry County, Pennsylvania, including descriptions of Indians and pioneer life from the time of earliest settlement, sketches of its noted men and women and many professional men > Part 35
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"I well remember the early battles in the neighborhood in which I lived made for the acceptance of the free school system. The original free school law was very crude, but it was the best that could be obtained at the time, and it cost the brave Dutch (meaning German) Governor (Wolf) who signed it, and many who had supported it, defeat before the people. It was not compulsory, and at any spring election a certain num- ber, of citizens could call for a vote on the acceptance of the free school law, and many times did the few Scotch-Irish in the neighborhood make
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a brave struggle for the acceptance of free schools, but they were voted down half a dozen times or more by the united vote of the Germans and others who opposed taxation for free education. Our school system was thus of little value, and advancement in it was very slow until Curtin be- came sceretary of the commonwealth, in 1855, when it was made a distinct department and placed in charge of the assistant secretary of the com- monwealth, the late Henry C. Hickok, who had heart and soul in the cause, and under Curtin's direction gave the free school system of our state a standing that commanded general respect.
"Strange as it may seem in this enlightened age, with Pennsylvania en- joying the most liberal educational policy of any state of the Union, the free school system was simply a crude, crippled, and in some localities, very generally decried system of free education of the children of the state. It had been passed by Thaddeus Stevens a quarter of a century before, but the public sentiment of the state was so overwhelmingly against it in many communities that it was impossible to make it a homogeneous and beneficent system. The same year that the law was passed, the people of the state elected a legislature that was openly and positively averse to free schools, and a bill repealing the entire system had reached a position of final passage in the house, when Stevens, the author of the original bill, delivered the most effective speech of his life, and doubtless one of the ablest and most eloquent, as it literally made the house take pause and de- feat its own openly proclaimed purpose. For many years thereafter, nota- bly in the German counties of Berks, Lehigh, and others, delegations were chosen to the legislature on the distinet issue of "no free schools," and it was nearly or quite a generation after the passage of the original bill that the acceptance of the free schools of every district was made mandatory.
"The law as first enacted authorized any township to accept the free school system by the vote of the majority at the spring elections and put it into operation, but in some sections of the state there were entire con- ties in which there was not a single accepting district. I well remember, when a small boy, the special interest taken by my father and other Scotch-Irish residents of the township to have the free school system ac- cepted. They called election after election from year to year, but suffered defeats for a decade or more, as the Germans, as a rule, were bitterly opposed to enforced education. Although Governor Wolf, a distinct rep- resentative of the old German element of the state, with his home among the Germans of Northampton, had approved the school bill, a very small percentage of the Germans of the state supported it, and it cost him his reelection, as when he was nominated for a third term a large element of the Democrats bolted, nominated Muhlenberg, of Berks, as a second Demo- cratic candidate, and thus divided the Democratic vote and elected Ritner governor."
That there never was a school at the old Dick's Gap Church, as sometimes stated, is evident from the fact that schools were con- ducted only in winter, and that this building was not "chunked and daubed" as late as 1797. Just where the first school may have been opened in the county will probably never be known, but within the limits of what is now Perry County there was opened the first free school in Pennsylvania west of the Susquehanna River. It was located a quarter-mile west of Barnett's mill, near New Bloomfield, on the Carlisle road, and was not only built at the expense of George Barnett, owner of the lands upon which it was located,
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but was proclaimed by him to be free to any and all children of the neighborhood. He even paid the salary of the teacher and fur- nished the fuel for the heating of the schoolroom. A pioneer and real philanthropist among those of his day who believed in educa- tion, George Barnett became the progenitor of a family which has left its mark in legal, educational, literary, medical and business lines. Two of his descendants have been elected president judge of the courts of his county. Just when this building was erected cannot be told, but as the lands passed to George Barnett on May 10, 1804 (previous ownership having been vested in his father, Thomas Barnett), it was subsequent to that time. During 1815 a Mrs. O'Donnell was engaged as teacher, but the school had then been in operation for a number of years, which places the date of its erection somewhere between 1804 and 1815. Whether Mrs. O'Donnell taught as early as Miss Gainor Harris, at Blain, is questioned, but the teaching period of the one was practically co- incident with that of the other. The school at Blain, however. was a pay school then, as all were save the Barnett school at New Bloomfield.
That both the first free school west of the Susquehanna prior to the free school act and the first school to be declared a free school under that act should have been located within the boundaries of the county of Perry is an interesting coincidence, and a fact. In the sketch relating to Chief Justice Daniel Gantt, of Nebraska, to be found elsewhere in this book, the statement is made which veri- fies it. The facts are these, from the diary of the late chief jus- tice, now in possession of his heirs, near Lincoln, Nebraska: To help pay his expenses while reading law at New Bloomfield, he taught a subscription school (as all schools then were save the one previously mentioned) in Buffalo Township, at Colonel Thomp- son's, in the part which later became Watts Township. Interested parties from that community had ridden horseback to Harrisburg to learn of the legislation pertaining to free schools. Ilearing that the bill had passed, they rode home during the night and arrived be- fore morning with the news. When the future chief justice opened his school in the morning he proclaimed it a free school-his diary says the first school in the commonwealth under that act. As the act had then only passed the legislature and was still unsigned by the governor his statement that it was the first to open under the act is no doubt correct. From the same source the statement comes that Buffalo Township at once accepted the free school law, the first township in the commonwealth to do so.
Perry County was one of the very first counties in the state to hold teachers' institutes. The origin of the first one dates back to a letter written by Samuel S. Saul, of Duncannon, dated June 7, 1854, and published in the county press. It suggested the forming
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of a teachers' association. The call for the first County Teachers' Institute followed, being issued July 15, 1854, and signed by Samuel S. Saul, Joseph Ogle, William Brown, Albert E. Owen, James G. Turbett, and R. 1. Heim. It was held at New Bloom- field, in the academy, on Wednesday, August 9, 1854. The first officers were: Rev. R. Weiser, Loysville, president ; John A. Mc- Croskey, New Bloomfield, secretary; committee on constitution and by-laws: A. Owen, J. R. Titzel, W. Glover, J. A. McCroskey, and Charles A. Barnett ; committee on work: A. D. Owen, J. R. Titzel, and George Tressler. This committee suggested as needing attention : I. Small pay of teachers; 2. Incompetent teachers ; 3. How to procure the best knowledge of the art of teaching ; 4. School books; 5. Duties of teachers; 6. Authority of teachers in school government. The institute recommended Page's Theory and Practice of Teaching and the following textbooks: Webster's spellers, McGuffey's readers, Emerson's arithmetics, Smith's ele- mentary grammar and Parker & Fox's advanced grammar, and Mitchell's geographies and maps.
Then the further meetings seem to be confusing. Prof. Silas Wright recorded that on October 26th of the same year an insti- tute was held in Landisburg, and that on January 12, 1855, another was held at New Bloomfield, at which the name the "Perry County Teachers' Institute" was adopted. That would place three meet- ings very close together. The files of the county press place the second meeting on March 20, 1855, with A. R. Height, presi- dent, and Albert Owen, secretary, and continuing over Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday. It also places the next at Landisburg, September 7, 1855, with Daniel Gantt, president ; Henry D. Woodruff, vice-president ; Noble Meredith, secretary ; F. M. McKeehan, treasurer, and an executive committee consisting of Rev. George S. Rea, R. I. Heim, and D. Kistler. In the mean- time a Perry County Teachers' Association had been formed in April, 1855, with the following officers: Daniel Gantt, president ; D. Kistler, vice-president ; Noble Meredith, secretary; F. M. Mc- Keehan, treasurer, and an executive committee consisting of R. I. Hleim, Henry Titzel, and C. S. Toomey. As the officers of the Landisburg session, in the main, were the same as the officers of this association, it is presumed that the meeting of April was merely to form the permanent organization.
Until 1869 the institute was held at various places, but since then regularly at the county seat. State Supt. Thomas H. Burrowes was the first instructor from without the county. At the session of 1856 Chas. A. Barnett (later judge) presented the subject of English Grammar. Among the early instructors were Professors Wickersham, Brooks, and Ranb. At the session of 1869 H. C. Magee and G. C. Palm tied on a spelling contest for first place.
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At the session of 1870 Henry Honck, later to become famous in educational circles, and Silas Wright were among the instructors. Shortly afterwards local institutes were started in the various towns, covering two evenings and the intervening Saturday, and they are continued to this day, community centres for educational thought. Their usefulness and value are attested by the large number of educators who have been connected with them and have gone abroad to serve other communities. The custom of issuing the proceedings of the Teachers' Institute in pamphlet form was begun in 1877.
The curriculum of the grade public schools at this time includes spelling, reading, writing, arithmetic, geography, English grammar, United States history, and physiology. History was not required until 1867, and physiology was added in 1885.
An act of the Pennsylvania Legislature, dated April 12, 1866, extended to Perry and Indiana Counties the provisions which had been granted to the counties of Lancaster and York the previous year. This was the legislation which authorized the county to ap- propriate $200 annually to get instructors for the annual institute of one week. Another act was passed relating to the Perry County Teachers' Institute. It is dated March 19, 1872, and authorized the payment of the salaries of the teachers while attending institute.
Mr. John S. Campbell, long connected with educational work in Perry County, during 1920, compiled for the Newport News a historical sketch of the actions of early Newport school boards, taken from the minutes. At a meeting November 26, 1855, it was resolved "that all the teachers within the district of Newport are hereby required to personally attend the meeting of the Perry County Teachers' Institute, to be held in New Bloomfield, and be- ginning on December 17, 1855, and that during the sessions of the same they shall all be allowed their pay for the time thus spent as fully as if they were actually engaged in teaching in town district," and "that Messrs. Alfred M. Gantt and W. S. Marshall, our teach- ers, be requested to meet the board each on an evening on their return from attendance at the institute and in a lecture give an account of the doings and action of said institute with the advan- tage it may be to the teachers and children under their care, which lectures at the option of Messrs. Gannt and Marshall shall or may be public." That may have been the first or one of the first boards to pay teachers for attending institute. Mr. Gannt's salary then was $26 per month, and Mr. Marshall's, $25. There were then two single room buildings. In 1860 a night school was conducted by G. McKey. During that year the borough had two schools, paying the teachers $25 and $28 per month.
In the chapters of this book relating to the various townships and boroughs the locations of the earliest schools are given, as it was
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considered to be more appropriate there than in this general chap- ter. It will be noted that the first schoolhouses, established almost coincident with the settlement of the pioneers, were invariably built of logs, being "chunked and daubed," with few windows, and in some a log being omitted from the regular order so as to let in light. The reader should not consider this fact as disparaging, as the homes of that pioneer period were practically all built in the same manner. These first schoolhouses in many cases were built by the communities by voluntary contributions and labor. They usually occupied as much ground as their dimensions, playgrounds being then unthought of. They had long desks built along the out- side walls, the benches upon which the children sat being the same heighth for all ages. A large wood stove occupied the centre of each of these primitive buildings. The teachers were either the early ministers or men who merely taught long enough to amass enough to pay their way to other fields, using the profession as a "stepping-stone"-an unfortunate condition which has to this day followed in its wake. The schools were conducted for pay at a stated price per quarter.
The old Monterey schoolhouse in Toboyne Township, which burned about five years ago, still had the oldest type of furniture which ever graced a schoolroom in the county. The site of this building is now surrounded by state forest lands of the Tuscarora Forest. The East Horse Valley school, in the same township, also has homemade furniture, but of a somewhat later type. The oldest schoolhouse still standing in the county is in Blain Borough, but is no longer in use as such.
According to an announcement in the Perry Forester of Novem- ber 15, 1827, the new county had a night school in its very early years. It follows :
Night School.
The Subscriber will commence a Night School on Monday, the 26th instant. Persons desiring of improving themselves in the common rudi- ments of learning, and cannot well spare the daylight, will please make immediate application.
Landisburg, November 15, 1827. JAMES B. COOPER.
During the period from 1851 to 1853 there was a night school at Millerstown, among the students being the late William Kipp, later a justice of the peace in that town for many years.
Dr. J. R. Flickinger, once county superintendent of Perry County Schools and for many years prior to his death principal of the State Normal School at Lock Haven, Pennsylvania, related an carly incident in connection with a schoolhouse which stood as late as 1808 in what is now Jackson Township, on the farm later known as the Wentz place. It follows :
"A wedding party was expected to pass the schoolhouse on a certain day, and when they were reported to be coming by a boy stationed on the out-
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side, the teacher took all his pupils to the roadside and stationed them in rows on both sides of the road, and when the wedding party passed through the ranks the teacher had instructed them to make a profound obeisance to the bride and groom. The result happened as the shrewd teacher expected, the happy groom treating him to the contents of his flask."
Pupils from the west end of Liberty Valley traveled to Sandy Ilill, where an early schoolhouse stood near a spring at the foot of the hill south of the Sandy Hill store. They traveled across the foot of Conococheagne Mountain over a path trod by bears as late as 1870. During the shortest days of the year these pupils had to take their breakfasts before daylight and start for school, and it was long after nightfall that they returned to warm firesides and supper. At Loysville, in Tyrone Township, the teacher and family occupied one end of the schoolhouse. In some counties that was the general custom. By neighborhood or community spirit some- times a schoolhouse, save the roof, was on the stump at the rising of the sun, and when the sun went down, the building was finished.
On March 28, 1814, a bill passed the Pennsylvania Legislature authorizing the land office to make a clear title to lands for a school in Toboyne Township, Cumberland County-now Perry. In the Perry Forester there was a notice published for a school meeting to be hell May 7. 1825, the call being signed by William B. Miller, Jesse Miller, and Jacob Fritz. This was doubtless for the purpose of carrying out the provisions of the Act of 1825.
The Peoples' Advocate ran an educational department as early as April 11, 1855, being the first paper in the county to run such a department. Others soon followed. The same paper, beginning August 1, 1877, published a series of articles on "History of Edu- cation in Perry County."
During the carlier years of the existence of the public schools many experiments naturally were made, a notable one being in Newport Borough in 1854, when the school board decided to have eight months' school, divided into the following terms: First term, May, June, August, and September ; second term, November, De- cember, January, and February. That system left a two months' vacation during March and April, and the other vacations, one in July and one in October.
During the period of the War Between the States many teachers who were most efficient and who had the most experience were called to the colors, with the attending result that inexperienced boys and girls were requisitioned to fill their places, thus lowering the educational standard for a time. That condition had its coun- terpart in the recent World War when salaries became so high in other lines that many left the profession and others were called to the colors.
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SCHOOL HOUSES OF TWO PERIODS AT MT. PLEASANT, JACKSON TOWNSHIP.
The first school in this vicinity was at the mouth of Brown's Run, along Sherman's Creek. The next was a log house built shortly after 1820. It stood a few feet north of the Stone School Building, to the right of the picture, which replaced it. The frame building to the left took the place of the Stone School Building and is still in use. Many of the pupils held responsible positions-two, S. S. Bloom and John B. Stambaugh, having been members of the Ohio Legislature, and Clark M. Bower, Perry County's present representative in the Pennsylvania Legislature. This school was selected for illustration, as to the author's knowledge it was the only instance where two of the buildings still stand. The buildings were typical of many over the county.
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During the period of educational development, from prior to the War Between the States to almost the end of the century the public schools of the county, especially the country districts, were attended by many scholars who had reached young manhood and womanhood, a condition which no longer exists. With the years the average age of the pupils has decreased, and in few country schools can any pupils over fifteen years of age be found, and in the borough schools few over seventeen. During the sessions of 1873-74 there were 185 pupils in private schools, and 6,198 under sixteen years of age, and 1,606 beyond that age in the public schools. Yet it should be remembered that, in so far as the edu- cators of note from the county are concerned, to a very great ex- tent they were products of that period, and largely of the country schools.
Ex-County Supt. Silas Wright, in a report to the state and later in various historical articles in speaking of the visitation of schools by the board of directors, said: "From 1874 to 1878 the directors of Buffalo Township visited the schools as a whole board a number of times during the term and carefully inspected the con- dition of the schools. This was the period of most marked prog- ress." The fact that Mr. Wright made the statement and singled out Buffalo Township infers that that was the initial proceeding of that kind in the Perry County schools. The records at New Bloomfield show the election of the following men who composed the boards there during the years of that period, who instituted that method: John C. McGinnes and Ezra Patton, 1872; George W. Potter and Robert B. Fritz, 1873; Samuel Bair and Jacob Mc- Connell, 1874; Henry Hain and Michael Seiler, 1875; Jacob Charles and Josiah Bair, 1876.
In 1836 Wheatfield Township paid its teachers $14.25 a month. In 1838 there were eighty schools in the county, with terms rang- ing from three to seven months. The salaries were from $15.00 to $23.00 per month. In 1840 Buffalo Township dispensed with schools altogether in order to use the funds to build schoolhouses. "There were fifty-five schools in the remainder of the county, with male teachers getting from $15.00 to $22.00, and females $12.00 per month.
When the law creating the office of county superintendent of schools came into effect, in 1854. there were in Perry County 108 schools in session with an attendance of 5,984 pupils. The male teachers received an average salary of $18.50, $11.40 being paid females. In 1855. the law being effective for the first time, the number of schools had increased to 138, and the salaries for males averaged $22.75, and that of females, $18.72 per month. The highest salary paid that year was $30.00. In 1876 salaries had ad- vanced to an average of $30.57 for males, and $28.51 for females.
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Later on, during the period around 1890, salaries had become very low in many of the country districts, Tuscarora Township one year paying as little as $15.00 a month, and Carroll Township paying $17.00 to some of its teachers.
By 1877 there were 181 schools in the county, conducted in 160 schoolhouses, of which I19 were frame buildings, thirty-six brick and stone, and five of logs. The grounds of 118 were reported as of sufficient size, and of five as suitably improved. Of the build- ings five had been built that year, twenty-four were unfit for use, 119 had suitable furniture, and twenty-eight injurious furniture. Of the teachers five held permanent certificates, five professional, and the remainder were chosen from among 222 who held provi- sional certificates. Their average age was twenty-seven years, thirty-eight had no experience, seventy-seven had over five years, three intended to make teaching a permanent business, five had attended a state normal school, two had graduated there, three were reported as failures, and the average grade of provisional certificates was 1.9, with ten applicants rejected. The estimated number of children of school age not in school was 634. There were thirty-four graded schools, 169 well classified, twenty-three examinations held by the superintendent, and 115 directors pres- ent. The higher branches were taught in eight schools and the Bible read in all of them. There were five academies in the county, with 270 pupils attending, and ten teachers employed. There were 4.056 males and 3,472 females in attendance in the public schools. The teaching staff was composed of 142 males and thirty-nine fe- males. The average salaries of males was $28.08 and of females, $28.05. The mill rate averaged 4.14 mills and the state appropria- tion to the county was $6,870.66. Carroll Township paid the smallest salaries, $18 per month. The Duncannon Borough prin- cipal got the highest salary, $60 per month.
The Perry County schools were represented at the Philadelphia Centennial in 1776 by an exhibit containing :
A .- A History of Perry County, by Prof. Silas Wright, once county su- perintendent of schools.
B .- A map of Perry County, showing the division of townships, location of towns and villages, mountains, streams, and iron ore deposits. It was a pen and ink sketch by L. E. McGinnes, later superintendent of the Steel- ton schools.
C .- Specimens of the work of pupils in the common branches, examina- tion questions, and a table of school statistics of the county.
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