Waynetown Despatch, Waynetown, Montgomery County, 13 June 1913 — Page 1

•i

VOL. 21, NUMBER 34

EARLY EDUCAJION

Ctlucaton In Its Earliest Stage* Ur a Indiana, Told In Splendid Style

j. 's By VirgH M. Hayes. is The education of Indiana, in its very earliest stage, was carried on by the Frencji priests or missionaries, at the 'French military posts. This amounted to very little, however, for the happy-go-lucky frontier Frenchman resisted mental efforts as- much or even more' than he avoided physical toil. He had no education and ail that he knew had been handed down from father to son. There were no schools until during the American occupation and then they gradually began to appear. The 'first regular

VIRGIL HAYES

school was. probably taught in Vlntjennes in 1793 "by Father Rivet. After the Americans had gained control of the territory and the settlers first began to make their way thither, the children, on account of the danger from Indians and wilJ beasts, were taught in the homes by the so-called circulating teachers. These passed from house to house and spent about one-third of the day at each home instructing the children. In this way, with only six families, they could give three lessons, each week to the children of each family. Although these teachers did a great work,

their-plan of instruction was

interferred with by the introduction of the school house. In time it became less dangerous for the children to pass through the gs__ forest, consequently they assembled •r~,|inat tfci^t-r-nnr fffrirttr f"~*"r was located near the center of the neighborhood. Here, in a lean-to, built at the end or side of the cabin, for the purpose, they were taught to read, write and cipher by either one ot the mothers or an older sister.

As soon as conditions would permit, the settlers of the community assembled and built a log cabin for the school, and hired a "master" for thre.? months of the year. If possible the school house was erected near a permanent spring, that there might be an unending supply of the cool, clear and sparkling water. They were built with special reference to the resistance of the Ravages and wild animals and were: made of hewed logs, and puncheon floors, large mud and stick chimneys and immense fire places. The benches for the scholars had neither back nor desk and above .the teacher's desk were two long wooden pins upon which the beech and hazel rods were laid. Each teacher was expected to govern on the home plan of "spare the rod and spoil the child." The rod in their estimation had a two-fold virtue, —& terror to evil doers and a remedy for stupidity.

Since the state at this, time Jiad no school revenue to distribute each voter became a builder. The peo'ple by common* consent divided themselves into bands of choppers, hewers, car penters and masons. If any person was unable to help work he might supply glass, nails or boards for the roof. If, however, any one refused to either

pay or work he was fined thirty-seven and one-half cents per day. School commenced at seven o'clock

LAURENCE R. RIVERS

in the summer and at half past seven in the winter. At noon there was one hour intermission and there were two

the forenoon and one in the afternoon. "Loud schools" were universally esteemed at this time. That is, the pupils studied aloud, the theory being that sound intensified the memory. Younger pupils listened to the recitations of the older ones and each scholar stepped from one class to another 'is rapidly as he was able to progress. The geography lessons, however, were taught to the whole school at the same time. Manual labor was also part of the school life since the large open fire place must be kept renlenished.

who rather enjoyed this rest from study. 'j$,_ I The teachers hired were many times adventurers, from the east or from fen gland. Scotland, Ireland, or some I other European country, seeking temporary employment. Some were first I Class men while others were not. Instructors were not very plentiful, however, as the compensation was not so great as to create an over-supply. The GonimV nart price commonly paid was seventy-five preparation for the Semors part cents, yet in some places the price in this edition of the Despatch, veiy ranged from one dollar to two little special work has been done. Indollars per scholar. Some teach-

ers eked out their living by chop.',

mg wood at mght _nd on Saturdays. '.

They

were

structors

in most cases obliged ro

™,{oL.Q,r

.,_fl.

the visits of travelers were few and

NELLIE E. BUNNELL

its of hard drink had turned pedagogue, and the teacher who got drunk

school

John Malone, a Jackson county school-master, was given to tippling to such excess that he could not restrain himself from drinking ardent spirits during school hours. He had enough self respect, however, to leave his bottle outside the school house

Owen Davis, a Spencer county teacher, thought much of his trusty fiddle and while he was conducting the so-called "loud school" and his scholars were roaring at the top of their voices he would draw forth his old favorite companion and play such inspiring tunes as "Old Zip Coon," and "The Devil's Dream." .Thomas Ayers, a Switzerland county teacher, and a Revolutionary veteran, regularly took his afternoon nap during school hours while his pupils were supposed to be getting their lessons but in reality were amusing

LUCY G. SWITZER

themselves by catching flies. Another early school-master who taught in Orange county, was an old sailor. Under his encouragement the children spent most of their time roasting potatoes.

Thus we see that an odd character who had a little "learnin,' or a lame soldier who had seen some "schoolin' in his mother country, or a Yankee tinker who could combine some useful trade with "a few months' teaching the three R's to the frontier children, were generally the teachers found in the cabin schools.

The pupils learned to read from the Bible, Pilgrim's

order

in®'

smce

receive for the?.r services, produce, ing of a new regime in school affairs consisting of wheat, corn, bacon, ven-' of Wayne Township, it was thought towns, ison hams, dried pumpkins, flour, buck-1

fitting an(i

rpv,er' ?u°n

flatboat. Many of the unmarried in-1

''boarded around" and thus

and

those

took part of their pay in board. The presence of the teacher in the famiiy

acy and

Progress, Gulliver's

Travels, or whatever book the family happened to possess. Sometimes parents were compelled to cut up a book

recesses of five minutes each—one ih and paste the leaves on boards in peared.

to accommodate

all the children.

A pointed goose quill was used for a pen and ink was made .by saturating oak ball in vinegar.

Tl^e children were obliged to walk miles through the forest in order gain the meagre knowledge that the eccentric master was able to impart to them. They 'arose early, did the chores about the farm, chopped the wood for the cavernous fireplace and then after their early breakfast trudged through the woods to school. "In imagination I

can

Btili hear the

This was done by the larger pupils 'squish,* squish' cf water-soaked shoes pograghy is an ancient lake^ which

i§p§i iWfe-.-v'

WAYNETOWN, FRIDAY |lORNING, JUNE 13, 1913.

The Past, The present and Fufire.

asmuch ,as this year witnesses the

nsefaIness

„f the old school build-

.. .....

this year

mar

proper that a bit of local With

mogt appropriate h.ive

^or

use in

was, in most cases, highly acceptable they will prove of sufficient accurfor, since there were few books and

historical work be undertaken in con- "numbers, however, there has not been

either Muled to" the "Sosest^arkw' neetion with the changes. This was ^corresponding lowering ot scholar-1 a. "Jail house- wasbuilt in U»year or floated down to New Orleans on a taken up in the regular Senior English s!hip in fact, if uny difference is to a a cos^

papers

on"

interest as to make our ef-

{ort ROt

entirely in vain.

far between, the conversation of an intelligent teacher was a luxury. J, SENIORS OP-1913, In some localities all sorts of te-ch-1 The present Senior class of ten ers were employed, as for instance, members is by no means the same the one-leged' teacher, the lame teacher, the teacher who had been educated for the ministry, but owing to his hab-

group of students which enrolled in Waynetown High School in the au-

master of "Vander- to and from school in the late spring- John Lopp eirvterejl^the first bu rg^cottB^y-d^ j*hermly an a ped gain a subsistence by trapping and trading in furs.

as th'eir wearers crossed the punch- ence covered a large part of the ceneon floors, to repeat their lessons," tral region of the country. This ancient writes a historian. I lake, named by Prof. Collett, 'Ancient

The school children studied their Lake Harney," was principally within lessons at night and "worked their a circle drawn through CrawfordsBums" by the fire light or the meagre light of the "tallow dip." The children of early Indiana spent their lives not only under these, but many more

The tributaries of Sugar creek are Lye and Black creeks from the north and Walnut Fork, Oflield and Indian creeks from the southeast. The south and southeastern parts of the county are drained by Big and Little Raccoon creeks and the northwestern part by Coal creek, which flows into the Wabash. The water power of Sugar creek it utilized by some flour mills. The Yount's celebrated woolen factory was run by its power. There was an abundance of fish in this creek in early days but llaost of them have disap-

The land in the western part of the county, near the streams and along Sugar creek is hilly, and in the north rolling, dotted here and there with f3rtile prairies. The central areas are comparatively level and the southeastern part is flat.

Most of the county has* a fertile Soil, being composed largely of the drift of the glacial epoch and is therefore abundant in mineral elements which are necessary for the most productive fields. Another interesting feature of the to-

A A I

vllle, Brown's Valley and Ladoga, and pobably was drained by Indian and Oifield creeks into Sugar creek.

disadvantages and privations. Yet I county as late as 1800. Ihey had been they were the ones who laid the found-! driven from their homes and had setation for the better conditions of in-, tied in the county temporarily. They struction which exist to-day. Nor did moved westward about 180G. these men and women at a later day look back and say that their early years were a time of woe with no.

pleasures. The privations and dan-, tie mouth of Oflield creek on gers were forgotten and they thought' Siugiar creek. He entered the 1-2 only of the pleasures of a vigorous q£ ne 1-4, sec 4, 18 n, 5 w, July 4,

on Saturday and whipped the entire childhood spent amid the beauties of ij822, and he and wife, Jane, sold it to school on Monday, are spoken of. nature. They recalled the long walkes ibnas Majv\. December 31, 1823. July The first

LESLIE W. HAYS

time or remembered the happy hours spent rambling along streams or hunting the May apple, pawpaw, and blackberry. Thus they chirished fond memories and the "good old times" became 'also a term of reproach to modern degeneracy.

History of Montgomery County. BY LAURENCE R. RIVPRS. Montgomery county occupies a pa/t of the great and fertile valley of the Wabash river. It is bounded on the north by Tippecanoe east by Clinton, Boone and Hendricks south by Putnam and Parke, and west by Fountain and Parke counties. The county is 24 miles north and south, 21 miles east and west, and has an area of 501 square miles of 322,500 acres. The main stream of Montgomery county is Sugar creek, formerly called Rock river. It enters the county a little south of the northeast corner and meandering through the central area passes out six miles north of the southwest corner. Much of the grand scenery along Sugar creek has been rendered famous by the genius of a former Crawfordsville artist, Walter Sies.

There were Indians in Montgomery

Thei first settler, William Oflield. came to 'Montgomery county in February, 1821. He settled rt

PAUL HARVEY

tract of land ever sold by the government in Montgomery county. This land was in what is now Scott township (e 1J2 of se 1-4, sec 14, tl7n, 4w). On December 21, 1882, the legislature passed a bill defining the boundaries of Montgomery county and providing for the organization of civil government. therein. William Oflield, James Blevins and John McCullough were elected the first board of county commissioners on March 1, 1823.

The first murder in the county was commited about one-half mile north of. the mouth of Black creek and some, three or four miles northwest of Crawfordsville. One Mayfield had suspicions and perhaps proof that one Noggle had been interferring with his domestic affairs. He, meeting Noggle in the woods one day, fired at him and hit him in the knee. Mayfield reloaded his gun and shot the begging man through the heart., Mayfield fled the country.

The first court of Montgomery county- was organized at the house of William Miller in Crawfordsville on May 29, 1823. Jacob Call, of Vincennes, was the presiding officer. The other officers of the court were John Wilson, clerk Samuel D. Maxwell, sheriff and Jacob J. Ford, presecuting attorney. After ordering summons for a grand jury for the ensuing term to be held in August and adopting a sea', for the court, the court adjourned. The court convened the second time August 28, (1823) and tradition says at the tavern kept by (Henry Ristine. The first grand jury was composed of James Dungan, Richard M. McCafferty, James Scott, James Stitt, William Miller, Robert Craig, Samuel Brown, Elias Moore, Wilson Claypool, George Miller, Joseph Hahn, Samuel McClung, William B. Mitchell and John Farlow, with Samuel McClung as foreman.

The first indictment of the Montgomery county court was returned against John Toliver for assault and battery. Toliver fled fr6m the county and although warrants for his arrest were issued repeatedly he was never captured. 'At the May term of the court, 1825, one Jesse Keyton was sentenced to the penitentiary for two years for re ceiving stolen goods. This trial was held in the new court house which had been byilt, This house, the first of the

county

II 3 I ^*5

was

The

tumn of 1909. The class at that time

sbme have moved away, while others sociate judges, William

which seeihed noted, the standard has been raised.

been chosWe trust

Now as these students leave the old building as its last graduates, they s^e convincing evidence that wisiom may come from a building old and worn if the students but have the staying qualities. They have been hanJigapped, they have had discouragements, but they have succeeded. They are a class of which the school is proud.

loSs

hig,h-

and

two

Jt was 26 feet

building was erected by

was the largest in the history of the Miller and Isaac Miller. The i^e.was school and its number of thirty-six prosecuted by Hon. John LwWi^hile is yet unsurpassed. Some of the

former members have left school,

JosePh

Eliakam

giding judge nQt being present as.

are graduating from schools in neigli- James Stitt, ruled over the court. The population of the county at this time was sparse but the public land

this constant lessening of

brought

Burbridge and

sale December 24, 1824, and following

many settlers, however, here.

Considerable boating'' waljffdone on Sugar creek in the early days. In 1824 a keelboat of ten tons burden as brought to Crawfordsville by William Nicholson from Maysville, Ken-

WANETA E. STOCKDALE

tucky. When the first settlers came to Montgomery county it was almost wholly forested. The pioneers had to contend with bear, wolves and other wild animals. They found an~abunci ance of deer in the forest and fish in

the pathway of a most des^!rucliye tornado which in some places had ,Pros_ trated the entire forest. It passed jbout two miles south /tt where "the city of Crawfordsville now-stands, at times rising above the trees and ai others descending to its work of devastation. The precise time of this tornado will probably never be known but from observations it is thought to have been about the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The jiouses of the early settlers were built of round logs. The logs were beveled on top and notched underneath so as to fit close together and prevent their slipping apart. The cracks between the logs were filled with mud. The floor was laid with puncheons and the roof was of clapboards weighted down with small poles. The house usually had only one room. The one door was fastea-

WANETA L. BARD

ed by means of a wooden latch on the inside, to which a long buckskin throng was attached and put through a small hole a few inches above. Anyone wishing to enter had to pull the string and thus raise the latch. At night the string was pulled inside -30 that the door could be opened only from within. The fireplace was buili of stone and the chimney of mud and sticks.

Mills were few and very far be tween in the early days. When the first people came to the county the nearest mill was at Terre Haute. After the settler had gone to the mill, a trip taking two or three weeks, he would Spend many evenings around the fireside relating to his wife and children the incidents of the journey and the news heard at the mill.

The first mill in the county war built at the mouth of the stream flowing into Sugar creek from Whitlock springs. It was fitted

with

wheel through an

an over

shot wheel. The water was

led

ONE DOLLAR PER YEAR

stories

long, 20 feet wide ...

—i •_

each

and there was a partition in floor making four rooms in all.

Ask-

ton at a cost of $295. It stood on Main street. The jury of the Keyton

case

was composed of Joshua Baxter, Reginald Butt, Samuel D. Maxwell. Wllliam Miller, George Miller, Samuel Wilhite, John Stitt, William Mount,

John RamseP( Edward Nutt

Abraham

C°x and Nathan Huntington

appeared for the defendant. The pre-

duced to ashes three years later by Peter Smith, He was an inmate of the jail under a charge of larceny, and while trying to burn the lock from his cell, set fire to the building. It stood only a few yards from the northeast corner of the present court house.

to the

aqueduct

made of

hollow poplar logs. The millstones were roughly dressed out of huge boulders. It was a crude affair from beginning to end. This mill ground meal and cracked hdminy for all the early inhabitants of

Crawfordsville.

In 1836 there occurred a most singular murder on Sugar

creek

at a point

just below where Deer's mill now stands. Mose Rush, an outlaw, and CONTINUED ON SECOND PAGE

WAYNETOWN HISTORY

The A Brief History of Waynetown as Told By Charles L. Zuck Makes fljst Interesting Reading.

Waynetown, or rather Middletown, was laid out in 1829. The first church in the town was built in 1829 or '30 by the Old School Baptists. It was not really inside the village at that time, but barely outside, being locate^, immediately south of the "old grave yard" at the extreme end of the present town. A school building was built near this shortly afterwards but being outside the limits of the town it was a township school.

The first school in the town, therefore, was not built until in 1852. Jt

RAY D. THOMPSON

was a frame structure and the money for its construction was raised by private subscription as was the custom at that time. It was a two-story building, the lower floor being used for school purposes and the upper story belonging to the Sons of Temperance, being afterwards bought by the Masonic lodge, after it was founded in 1863. It was located at the extrems south of the town as it was then, and on the south side of what is now Church street and in the middle of what is now Vine street.. Edmund W. Berry was the first teacher in this building.

We then see the town growing and prospering until at the beginning of the Civil War it was no longer a village of a few grocery stores and a blacksmith shop but a thriving little inland town.

Then vthen President Lincoln's call For volunteers cams-jrizrgsr&i* of the able bodmen of the town ind even m.i*ny that were yet boys, left koine and families to fight for their country. -Nearly, all of Company of the Sixty-third Regiment, Infantry, was made up of men of MiddletOwn and vicinity and their captain, Jim York, w-as a citizen of that place. Besides this many served in other companies and other regiments. Nor were any of these inactive troopers, but all were in the thick of the fighting, Company being with Sherman in his famous march to the sea and others being in the battle of Gettysburg and other engagements almost c.s bloody.

After the war, however, the town continued to prosper until in 1869 when it received a great "boost" by way of a railroad. Up to this time the townspeople had had no communication with the outside world except by a stage line between' Crawfordsville and Middletown, run by "Uncle Billy" Philips, who also owned and operated a tavern in the town at that imei In 1868, however, the Tniianapolis, -Bloomington & West3rn Railway was formed by the consolidation of two other companies and work was begun on a road from Indianapolis to Danville. It was not completed until in 1869, however, and the first train was run to Indianapolis in May of the following year. Of course this was of almost inestimable value to the town as they now had good accommodations for both passenger and freight traffic.

About this time several lodges were organized in the town. The first wa.i the Odd 'Fellows, it being organized in 1809 and shortly after this they built a lodge home which was destroyed in

CHARLES E. ZUCK

the fire of 1894, and then they erected their present building. Soon after the Odd Fellows organized in 1871 or '72, jf- "C the Good Templars lodge, an organiza- N.jytion for both men and women, was started and they used the Odd Fellows' building for their meetings. This lodge was very strong in membership for »a time but after about six years- it died out entirely. The Knights of Pythias was the next, it fbeing organized in 1887, but their 'J? present lodge home was not built until in 1893. *The Red Men, the young-

CONTINUED ON SEVENTH PAGE

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