USA > Wisconsin > Milwaukee County > Memoirs of Milwaukee County : from the earliest historical times down to the present, including a genealogical and biographical record of representative families in Milwaukee County, Volume I > Part 44
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In 1906 the board appropriated $480,000 for new buildings, $250,000 of which was raised by an issue of bonds. In his address in 1907 President Lindemann said: "The board is to be congratulated on its success in having a class for the instruction of the blind estab- lished. The legislature has acceded to our request for state aid for the education of these unfortunates, so that they may receive proper train- ing at home without being obliged to be sent to a state institution located at a distance and necessitating separation from their parents. We shall soon be in a position to provide adequate instruction for the children of defection of our city and I trust the inauguration of the work will proceed without delay."
The supervising force in 1907 was composed of the superintend- ent, two assistants for general duty, one assistant for directing the study of German, one supervisor of music, one supervisor of manual train- ing. and one director of physical education who began his duties in September, 1907. Three truancy officers reported about 4,300 cases, most of which were due to parental negligence or willfulness. The total
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school population of the city was 109,658, of whom 47,069 were en- rolled in the public schools. The number of teachers employed was 1,081, and the amount paid in salaries, including the compensation of teachers in the evening schools, was $884,200. The value of the city's school property, as reported by the secretary, was as follows : grounds, $968,405 ; buildings, $2.895,750; furniture, $139,686; books, $46,224; general supplies, $81,090, making a total valuation of $4,131,155.
The school of trades, located at 156-158 Clinton street, and con- ducted under the auspices and patronage of the Merchants' and Manu- facturers' Association of Milwaukee, became a part of the public school system by act of the legislature of 1907. The law not only authorized the school board to take charge of the school, but also directed that a tax be levied for the school's support. This is the first instance in the history of education in America where such an institution has been operated as part of the public school system. The school teaches me- chanical drawing, machine designing, plumbing and pattern-making.
HIGH SCHOOLS.
In October, 1846, Increase A. Lapham presented to the city of Milwaukee thirteen acres of land "to be used forever for the purposes of a high school." The council accepted the gift and appointed trus- tees, but never did anything toward the establishment of the school, and the land finally reverted to the donor. The first action toward the establishment of a high school was on April 5, 1852, when Commis- sioner Day offered a resolution at a meeting of the school board to that effect. A committee was appointed, but nothing was done at the time, and in April, 1854, a second committee was appointed with the same result. In August, 1857, the board adopted a resolution directing the executive committee to organize three union high schools in the city ; one for the Seventh and Third wards; one for the Second, Fourth, Sixth and Ninth wards, and the third for the Fifth and Eighth wards. The first high school was opened in the Seventh ward school building late in 1857, with J. G. McKindley as principal, and the school in the Second ward (High School No. 2) was opened in the fall of 1858, with E. P. Larkin as principal. When the high schools were closed in 1860 the principals were allowed the free use of the rooms, furniture, etc., and they continued the schools as private institutions, the scholars paying a tuition fee.
In 1867 General Hobart secured the passage of an act by the state legislature for the establishment of a "central high school" in Mil- waukee and authorizing the board to erect the necessary building,
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employ teachers, etc. This school was opened on the first Wednesday in January, 1868, in the Seventh district school building on Jefferson street between Juneau avenue and Martin street. In 1869 it was removed to Juneau avenue and Van Buren street, where it opened with 172 pupils. In 1872 the school occupied rented quarters, but in 1877 the city bought Markham's academy and the school was removed there. In 1886 the council appropriated $75,000 "for the erection and equipment of a suitable building" on the present site at Cass and Knapp streets, the school now being known as the East Division high school. The new building was soon comfortably filled with students and agitation was commenced for high schools on the south and west sides. On June 3, 1890, in response to a resolution introduced by Mr. Bruce, the school board ordered the erection of a high school building at Eighth avenue and Lapham street for the accommodation of the south side. This is now known as the South Division high school. On July 3, 1893, the board ordered the establishment of a high school on the west side. It was opened at the beginning of the school year in 1895 in the Plankinton library block, but now occupies its own build- ing at Prairie and Twenty-second streets and is designated the West Division high school. In his report for the year ending June 30, 1905, Superintendent Pearse announced that work had been commenced on the North Division high school building, located at Twelfth and Center streets, but the building was not occupied until the following year. According to the last official report of the state superintendent of public instruction the four Milwaukee high schools employed 91. teachers and had 2.407 pupils enrolled. All are on the accredited high school list of the University of Wisconsin.
MANUAL TRAINING.
The first movement toward the introduction of manual training in the Milwaukee public schools was on Dec. 22, 1884, when the school board adopted a memorial asking the common council to make some provision for teaching manual training in the school budget for 1886. The council failed to make any appropriation, however, and on Feb. 5, 1889, Mr. Stirn offered a resolution at a meeting of the board instructing the high school committee to recommend "such measures as they deem proper for introducing manual training into the high school." The committee made no recommendation and on June 3, 1890, a special committee was appointed to secure the introduction of manual training. This committee made several reports to the board, with the result that in March, 1891, the committee on art and industrial
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education was authorized to employ "a suitable teacher for the pro- posed manual training school to be located in the high school build- ing." H. M. Woodward was the first director of manual training, beginning his duties in August, 1891, the first class numbering 38 students. During the winter of 1893-94 manual training was intro- duced in the seventh and eighth grades of the First district school. Prior to that time the Builders' and Traders' exchange, in a communi- cation to Superintendent Peckham, recommended the establishment of manual training schools and the extension of the work to the state normal school. At the close of the school year 1893 Mr. Woodward resigned and was succeeded by Mortimer M. Shepherd. Since then manual training has been a permanent part of the city's school system, being taught in all the upper grades and the high schools, with the addition of new apparatus and new departments as the needs have required.
NORMAL TRAINING SCHOOL.
In May, 1858, Silas Chapman introduced a resolution at a meet- ing of the school board directing the examining committee to inquire into and report on the advisability of establishing a normal department in the high schools. The following year a normal class was organized in the Second ward high school. When the high school was discon- tinued as a part of the public school system the normal class became part of the private school taught by Mr. Larkin in the same building, but after a short time it was brought to an end. By the act of the legislature, approved March 10, 1870, the school board was authorized to establish and maintain a normal department, and certificates of graduation entitled the holder to teach in the Milwaukee public schools. The normal class was organized in 1871 in the high school, but its growth was so rapid that in 1875 it was removed to the Twelfth district building to make room for the regular high school pupils. A three years' course of study was adopted and the school continued until in the fall of 1885, when the completion of the state normal school building at Milwaukee rendered the further continuance of the city training school unnecessary.
KINDERGARTENS.
In 1879 the kindergarten system of instruction was made a part of the normal school course, and the following April Miss Nellie Fisher, an experienced kindergarten teacher of St. Louis, was made a member of the faculty. In 1881, Miss Sarah Stewart was
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appointed director of kindergartens, which were at that time incor- porated as part of the public school system. Miss Stewart was to take charge of the model department of the normal shool, train the students in kindergarten work, and also to supervise the work of the kinder- gartens as soon as they should be opened. The following February Superintendent MacAlister and I. G. J. Campbell, chairman of the committee on kindergartens, visited St. Louis to study the system of instruction as it was practiced in that city. They returned fully imbued with the idea that kindergartens were feasible in Milwaukee, and in March, 1882, the first one was opened under the direction of Miss Mary J. Mccullough, who was the first person to receive a certificate as a kindergarten teacher from the normal school. This school was located in the Eighth district. It proved to be popular, and a year later three others were established in different parts of the city, under Misses Helen Warren, Kate Nichols and B. M. Levings. Six years later (1888) there were twenty-two kindergartens in operation and Superintendent Anderson recommended the extension of the system to all primary schools. Donnelly, in writing a history of the Mil- waukee public schools for the Columbian History of Education in Wisconsin, says: "Of the value of kindergarten work there exists considerable difference of opinion even among school-men and school- women. No one denies its utility as a means of making the first year of school life attractive and therefore agreeable to the pupil. Its music, games, marching, and handwork are all attractive. But when the pupil leaves the kindergarten and takes up the slate, pencil and book. he begins something which is entirely new, and not a continuation of his kindergarten experience. But free kindergartens will remain." They have remained, and now constitute an important part of Mil- waukee's public school system.
PUBLIC LIBRARY.
This institution, now a valuable adjunct to the public schools, was the outgrowth of the Young Men's Association and was started in 1848. On Dec. 8, 1847, the first meeting of the association-or rather a meeting called for the purposes of organizing the association-was held at the old United States hotel. S. O. Putnam presiding and E. P. Allis acting as secretary. At another meeting on Dec. 20 the asso- ciation was formed, a constitution adopted, and the following officers were elected: S. O. Putnam, president; J. K. Bartlett, vice- president ; C. F. Ilsley, secretary : Samuel Marshall, treasurer ; Edward Hopkins, Benjamin McVicker, I. A. Lapham, H. W. Tenney, Francis
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MILWAUKEE PUBLIC LIBRARY AND MUSEUM
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Randall, Hans B. Crocker and A. F. Clark, trustees. By the close of 1849 the library of the association contained 810 volumes. In the annual report of that year occurs the following: "It is the desire of the directors to raise, previous to the opening of navigation, $1,000 to be laid out in the purchase of useful and valuable books," and col- lectors were appointed to solicit contributions and subscriptions to the fund.
"Opening of navigation" may have a peculiar sound to the people of Milwaukee at the present day, but in 1849 there were no railroads and in order to obtain goods from the East it was necessary to wait until the ice was out of the straits in the spring, so that boats could make the trip by water. The association was incorporated on March 8, 1852, and continued in existence with uninterrupted prosperity for fifteen years. But in 1867, through the decline of the proceeds of the lecture platform and some other causes, the association got in debt. The membership fees were not sufficient to meet the running expenses and the members became discouraged. In 1876 a congress of libra- rians, held at Philadelphia during the Centennial exposition, gave an impetus to the free library movement all over the country. This was the association's opportunity to clear itself from debt and at the same time confer a favor on the city. In the fall of 1877 the proposition was made to transfer the books of the library to the city as a nucleus for a free library, and in March, 1878, the Wisconsin legislature passed an act making the library "a branch of the educational department of Milwaukee." At that time the library was quartered in the old Academy of Music, having occupied various domiciles during the thirty years of its existence. The first board of trustees was composed of Matthew Keenan, John Johnston, Gustave C. Trumpff, William Frankfurth, G. E. Weiss, W. E. Kittredge, and Thomas H. Brown, the president of the school board, Joshua Stark, and Supt. James MacAlister being also members. An inventory showed 9,958 bound volumes, which thus became the property of the city. In May, 1880, the trustees secured rooms in the library block on Grand avenue, where the library remained until it moved into its present quarters-the magnificent building on Grand avenue, between Eighth and Ninth streets. It now contains about 180,000 volumes, 9,000 of which are in the chil- dren's room, where the little ones have free access to them. Through the influence of the teachers many parents have been inducd to take out cards for their children. In 1889 the circulation among the pupils of the public schools was 6,728 volumes, but fifteen years later the annual circulation reached over 150,000 volumes.
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PUBLIC MUSEUM.
Pursuant to an act of the legislature, the city council in 1882 estab- lished the public museum as part of the educational system of the city. It is located in the library building mentioned above, which was occupied by the library and museum in 1898. Here over 38,000 feet of floor space are occupied by exhibits of natural history, archaeology, ethnology, Indian and historic relics, etc. The museum had its origin in 1857, when Peter Engelmann and a few other educated Germans organized the Naturhistorichen Verein von Wisconsin. Mr. Engel- mann, during the six years preceding, had accumulated quite a collec- tion of natural history specimens, and this collection was the basis of the present one. On Dec. 6, 1887, the school board directed the super- intendent to arrange a program of visits to the museum by pupils of the eighth grade, for the purpose of receiving instruction in geog- raphy, geology, the formation of coral islands, animals and people of different countries, etc., through lectures by the custodian. A schedule of such visits was prepared, in which the subject of each lecture and the time of the visit was announced in advance. When the time arrived, the class, accompanied by the teacher, set out for the museum, where they spent one hour in listening to the custodian's description of the exhibit bearing on the subject under consideration. As one class goes out another enters and the lecture is repeated until all the pupils of a certain grade have had an opportunity of hearing it. This plan is still pursued, with some modification, thus making the collections in the museum potent influences in educational work.
SCHOOL FOR THE DEAF.
The year 1877 witnessed the first movement toward the intro- duction into Milwaukee of the oral method of instructing the deaf. Messrs. Bossart, Trieschmann and Dohmen rented a building at the corner of National and Seventh avenues, in which Prof. Adam Stettner opened a boarding school on Jan. 14, 1878, with only four pupils, the first instruction being in German. On Jan. 20, 1879. the school was incorporated as The Wisconsin Phonological Institute for Deaf Mutes. Efforts to obtain state aid had been made prior to the incorporation. but nothing was accomplished at that time. In 1880 a census of deaf mutes was taken, by which it was learned that there were sixty of school age in the city. Six of the twenty pupils were that year taken to Madison to show the legislature what could be done. Mr. Hyde, in a minority report on a proposed bill to appropriate money for the
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education of the deaf, said: "The six pupils brought to Madison were presented not so much for the purpose of showing what had been accomplished, as of exemplifying the nature and probabilities of the method. If all the facts are taken into consideration, the exhibition is deserving of more praise than blame. It is to be noted that when these pupils entered the school, their minds were almost a perfect blank. They had to begin with the first rudiments of knowledge. The average time they had been under training was but a few months. And yet all of them could articulate to some extent." In January, 1882, and again in January, 1883, the Milwaukee school board sent memorials to the legislature asking for the passage of an act authoriz- ing school boards in incorporated cities or villages to assume the man- agement of schools for the instruction of the deaf. In the latter year Paul Binner, a teacher of German in the Seventh district, was granted leave of absence to visit other cities and enlist the co-operation of the school boards, but again the legislature declined to act.
In September, 1883, the Phonological Society asked permission to occupy a room in the normal school building at the corner of Seventh and Prairie streets, and also asked the school authorities to investigate the workings of the school. The request was granted, Paul Binner was installed as principal and Miss Wettstein as assistant, and the school opened with eleven pupils. In 1885 the legislature passed a law by which day schools for the deaf might be established in the incor- porated cities and villages of the state as a part of the public school system, with limited state aid. At first this aid was $100 for each pupil enrolled in such schools, though it was afterward increased to $150. At the time the law was passed the Milwaukee school numbered twenty pupils, and the first appropriation was therefore $2,000. Under this law the city adopted as a public charge the school established by the Phonological Society and since that time it has been a part of the public school system. In 1903 the school moved into a new building with eight class rooms, recitation and drawing room, principal's office, children's lunch room, which is also used as an assembly hall, library, teacher's rest room, etc. In the instruction of these unfortunates the oral method is used entirely, the manual alphabet being discarded.
UNIVERSITY OF MILWAUKEE.
This institution, long since dead, grew out of the school founded by Wallace C. Wilcox in 1849, and carried on in the basement of the old First church at the corner of Mason and Milwaukee streets. It next occupied rooms in Young's block at the corner of Wisconsin and
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Main streets in 1851, and when this block was burned in February, 1852, the school was divided into three departments, each occupying such quarters as could be obtained. By act of the legislature, approved March 4, 1852, the school was incorporated as the University of Mil- waukee. Section I of the act of incorporation named the persons filing the articles of association, among whom were a number of the promi- nent citizens of the city; Section 2 provided that "the university shall be located at or near the city of Milwaukee," to afford instruction in the sciences and arts, literature, the theory and practice of elementary instruction, and in any or all of the liberal professions; Section 3 regulated the number of trustees and the manner of their election; Section 4 defined the powers of the board; Section 5 governed the disposition of the funds; Section 6 provided that the property of the institution should be exempt from taxation as long as it was used for educational purposes; and Section 7 prescribed that no political or religious opinion should be required for admission to the university, and that no student should be required to attend any particular church.
The university was not the success that the projectors had hoped for, and on July 28, 1857, the trustees were authorized "to sell all real and personal property on such terms and at such prices as may seem right and proper." The real property owned by the institution was purchased on Aug. 1, 1852, and was described in the deed as lot eleven, block eleven, First ward, the consideration being $1,500. This lot, with the building that had been erected upon it, was sold to the city on Sept. 8, 1857, for $10,000, which sum was sufficient to clear up the indebtedness and leave a balance of $1,200 to be distributed to the subscribers to the fund for the establishment of the university.
COUNTRY SCHOOLS.
The history of the rural schools of Milwaukee county during the territorial period is veiled in obscurity. It is known that Rev. Enoch G. Underwood, a native of Virginia, settled on a farm in Wauwatosa in 1835, and that he taught school there several winters during the early years of his residence, afterward becoming pastor of the Wauwa- tosa Baptist church. It is also known that William W. Johnson, who was born in Franklin county, Mass., Nov. 29, 1813, and received a good education in his native state, came to Wisconsin in the spring of 1842; that he settled in the town of Greenfield, where he taught for a num- ber of years, and from 1842 to 1848 was a member of the town board of school commissioners. In every neighborhood, as soon as a sufficient number of settlers located therein, a school was established,
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but anything like a complete history of these early institutions of learn- ing seems to be unobtainable.
The constitution of 1848, under which Wisconsin was admitted as a state, provided for a superintendent of public instruction. In 1849 that official made his first report, in which he gave a statistical abstract concerning the schools in each county. In Milwaukee county 66 dis- tricts reported, and from 17 no report was received, hence it seems that at about the time the state was admitted there were 83 school districts in the county. Thirty-two districts reported log schoolhouses, 14 frame, and 20 made no report. The value of school buildings was estimated at $3.925, the best schoolhouse in the county being valued at $300, and the poorest at $10. In 37 schoolhouses there were no black- boards, and in 38 no maps of any description. The school population was 3,736, and the length of the school term was a little less than five months. In 1850 there were 7 brick schoolhouses reported, 5 new frame houses had been erected, and the average length of the term was nearly six months.
In 1854 the state superintendent, for the first time, included in his report a detailed statement of the school population, to wit: town of Franklin, 570; Granville, 875; Greenfield, 747; Lake, 608; Mil- waukee (town), 679; Milwaukee (city), 7,808; Oak Creek, 608; Wauwatosa, 784; total, 12, 679. The apportionment of the state fund was 72 cents for each child of school age, giving to the town of Frank- lin, $410.40; Granville, $630; Greenfield, $537.84; Lake, $437.76; Milwaukee (town), $488.88; Milwaukee (city), $5,621.76; Oak Creek, $437.76; Wauwatosa, $564.88.
Prior to 1861 each town had its own superintendent of schools. The legislature of 1861 passed an act abolishing the office of town super- intendent and creating that of county superintendent, the first incum- bents of which were to be elected in November of that year and to assume the duties of the office on Jan. 1, 1862. Under the law the counties were given the privilege of creating two districts and electing a superintendent for each. Milwaukee county did this, the first district embracing the towns of Franklin, Greenfield, Lake, Oak Creek and Wauwatosa, in which William Lawler was elected superintendent, and in the second district, composed of the towns of Granville and Milwau- kee, the first superintendent was William Swain. In 1862 Mr. Lawler reported schools in the several towns of his district as follows : Franklin, 7; Greenfield, 14; Lake, 7; Oak Creek, II ; Wauwatosa, 12. Of the teachers employed 37 were men, receiving an average monthly salary of $24.48, and 14 were women, whose average monthly salary was $18.26. Mr. Swain reported 8 schools in the town of Milwaukee
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