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In response to a
request for personal and reliable information as to the early schools she
attended, an interesting letter has been received from Mrs. Desdemona H. Johnson
(nee Kirkpatrick), formerly a resident of Canton vicinity, but now of
Burlingame, Kansas. She writes:
“In answer to your question, I will first say that the
recollections of my childhood days, are not, I think, very vivid, but I have
been digging down into the debris that covers those long-ago days, and if I can
unearth anything that can be of use to you, I shall be pleased to give you the
benefit of my researches.
In the days to which I shall go back, I
can give no statistics, or any idea of the discipline or mode of teaching as I
was too young to take those things into consideration, but shall merely tell
where the earliest schools I attended were taught, and, so far as I can, by
whom. The first school I attended in Canton was taught in 1835, in a bare
looking building on the square. I think it was the Presbyterian meeting house.
Of the teacher I have no recollection whatever, not even her name. The only
incident I recall is, that I once pinched my seat-mate, and for which offense I
had to stand on the floor and hold up the naughty hand till my arm ached.
However, being naturally a shy child, that one punishment was sufficient to
serve me all my school days, as I recollect no other. The next I recall was
taught in a small house, in which Dr. A. L. Davison afterward lived, situated on
West Elm street, and where now stands Rafferty’s cigar factory, by an old
gray-haired widow, a sister of Dr. L. W. Curtis, who died a few years since at
his house near Norris Station. She lived and taught in this house, which was
her own, with a dozen or so pupils. A dear, good woman was ‘Auntie Moseley,’ as
we all called her.
The furniture of this room was of
the crudest kind. A wide board against the wall served as writing desk,
and the seats in those days were usually slabs of puncheons, with holes bored
in them, into which wooden pins were inserted for their support. [From
the description it is almost certain that the furniture was the same that had
been used in the old log school house, and the writer used it when occupying
Mrs. Moseley’s house in the summer of 1840. It looked as if it had long
been in service.]
Auntie Moseley
left me in charge of this school one afternoon while she attended the infair
party of John M. Wright, who had been married the day previous. Rather a
youthful teacher, was I not, only seven or eight years old?
Auntie Moseley had been a missionary
among the Choctaw Indians, and was one of the saints of the earth. During a
season of great excitement in Canton, her mind became unbalanced and she died
insane in 1837.
The next school, I recollect, was
taught in one room of a house owned by a Mrs. Foster, and which stood on the
ground now occupied by Mr. Salisbury’s brick residence, just east of the old
Omega Mill, and on the corner of West Elm and Avenue B. The teacher was a Miss
Grant, but all I recollect of her is, that she prevented my ever having my ears
pierced so that I could wear earrings. The youngest Miss Foster had procured a
ball of cotton and a darning needle, and was just in the act of putting the
needle through my ears during school hours, when we were discovered, and
that little performance was nipped in the bud. Following this was a school
taught in 1837 or ’38, in a one-room house on the north end of the lot, corner
of West Elm and Avenue A, now the property of C. C. Dewey, by a Miss Mary Waters
of Galesburg. I recollect her as a very lovely girl, and that she died a few
years afterwards.
The next school was taught in the same
building by Nelson Jones. He was a very kind teacher, and though he had a great
hickory gad about six feet long, with which to enforce discipline, his up
strokes were very heavy, but his down strokes very light. Then we had a
school in the old Protestant Methodist church, on Van Buren Court, nearly
opposite the Amos Smith property, taught by Austin J. Barber, who also taught
afterward in the Canton College.
Then Miss Sarah A. Jacobs taught in a
building belonging to her father, just south of H. H. Wyman’s drug store, on
White Court, and which was used for some years afterwards by Peter L. Snyder &
Sons as a furniture shop. She also had a school in the room on C. C. Dewey’s
lot, where Miss Waters and Nelson Jones had taught at other times.
I do not know that these items will be
of any use to you, but perhaps they may serve as chinking, while others
supply the more substantial parts of the building.
To a note, making the same request of the late Mrs.
Maria Johnson Hill, she replied:
My father, Ira
Johnson, and family came to Canton in the fall of 1838, and the following winter
I went to school to Miss S. A. Jacobs in the room south of H. H. Wyman’s store,
and in the summer of 1839 to my sister Lydia, now Mrs. Sheridan of Omaha, Neb.,
who taught in a room near the Baptist church. I also went to Miss Electa
Fairchild, whose school was in a room of the house now occupied by the Misses
Keefer.
In the winter of 1840, I attended
Nelson Jones’ school, then taught in a room just east of the three-story Bell
building, and now owned by Mrs. M. S. McDowell. Then in the summer of that year
I attended a school in Mrs. Moseley’s house, taught by Miss Mary J. Freeman. Be
sure and give her a good send off. She gave me my first introduction to
old Kirkham’s grammar. I hate it to this day. I am sure I spent one
term trying to commit to memory the answer to the question: ‘What is Prosody
‘? And I am equally sure that I never succeeded, and I am glad that I did not.
It was a waste of time.
But if I did not learn the definition
of Prosody, I was not backward in the practice of mischievous pranks, one of
which I must relate. By some means I had obtained a sprig of prickly ash, and I
persuaded little Mary Davison to take a bite of it. The pain produced,
made the child cry bitterly, and you proceeded to investigate the cause. This
was soon made plain and then you tried to make me feel sorry and to
say so, but though I really was sorry, I wouldn’t say so, and had to
stand on the floor exposed to the school as a cruel girl. A well merited
punishment, which only lacked in not being severe enough. But I will come soon
and tell you more.
But she did not,
and died a few days after writing the letter.
A third letter is from Mrs. Margaret F. Mitchell (nee
Freeman), now of Newton, Iowa, and contains much that is mentioned by others,
but in copying only that which is new is introduced. She says:
When we came to
Canton in May, 1839, Miss Eliza Foster and Miss Mary Waters, the latter having
just left the place, were both considered good teachers, and were qualified to
instruct pupils of all grades and ages, without the use of blocks or
blackboards, and with only text books, slates and writing materials. My sister
and I attended the school taught by Mr. Ralph Perry, in the old College, and he
was one of the best instructors we ever had. His school was always large,
numbering from 60 to 90 or a 100 pupils, who
were of all ages; and all branches were taught from spelling to Latin and Greek,
with but few of the now common school supplies and helps. And I must add, that
the lessons were learned and recited in such a way that they were never
forgotten.
In 1842 Miss Elizabeth D. Rogers,
afterward Mrs. Franklin P. Offield, opened a school for girls in one room of a
building on the northeast corner of the square. This building, with five
others, all long used as stores, offices, etc., was burned in the fire which
destroyed the north end of the east side of the public square, May 23d, 1868,
and now replaced by the Michael & Barber block.
Miss Rogers was succeeded the next year
by her sister Harriet, who taught in the building on East Chestnut street, now
Mrs. McDowell’s property. Both were excellent teachers, as was also Miss
Sarepta C. Jones, the late Mrs. Jacob H. Bass, who taught in the old Protestant
Methodist church in 1844; and in 1845-’46, in a house where the marble yard now
is, on White Court. Miss Jones also taught in a room on the west side of Van
Buren Court, and her pupils have ever held her in grateful remembrance.
Mr. Olney, whose school we attended,
taught in a room on the ground on which now stands J. Barney’s grocery store,
but he was not generally liked, as were most other Canton teachers.
Canton has always had, from its
beginning, unusually good schools, and this, with the intelligence and high
moral standard of the people, has been one of the great attractions of the
place, till from a town of a few hundred inhabitants, it has become an
incorporated city of seven or eight thousand. And yet, strange as it may seem,
during all the years prior to 1845, there were no buildings put up expressly for
school purposes, except the old log house in 1825 and the unfinished college,
and teachers had to get rooms for schools wherever they could. Often a dozen or
more were being carried on at the same time, in as many different places.
A fourth letter
is from Gen. Leonard F. Ross, then of Iowa City, Iowa, but now of Lewistown,
Ill., in which he says:
“It will
afford me great pleasure to aid you in your undertaking in any way I can,
because the very happiest days of my life were spent in the schools of Canton.
My mother moved there in 1837, and I attended Mrs. Moseley’s school for a short
time, then the school of Austin J. Barber, who taught that summer in a one-story
frame building, one block northeast of the square, near the place on East Locust
street where the late A. S. Steele afterward built his brick residence, but in
the winter of 1837 and ’38, he taught in the Presbyterian church.
During a vacation of this school in the summer
of 1838, I attended, by kindly invitation of the teacher, the Canton High School
for Young Ladies, taught by a Miss Smith of Casanovia, N. Y., in the south room
of the College building. She had previously taught in a room of Isaac P.
Taylor’s house on North Avenue A, and which, until recently, has long been the
residence of B. P. Ruble and family. About that time Miss Smith married Ptolemy
Stone, a newspaper man, and after her marriage she assisted her husband for
awhile in editing his paper, or, rather, she did most of the editing, and Mr.
Stone did the printing.
Then in the winter of 1838 and ’39, I attended
a school in the old Methodist Episcopal church, northwest of the square, taught
by an old gentlemen named Brock, assisted by his son Jordan.
The next and last school I
attended in Canton was that of Mr. Ralph Perry, one of the very best teachers
and men I ever knew.
In the spring of 1841, I was considered pretty
well prepared to enter college, having construed the requisite quantity of Latin
and Greek, and was thought to be fairly proficient in the three R’s, and Mr.
Perry proposed that I should go with him to Jacksonville and become acquainted.
I had a horse, and Mr. Perry, or some one else furnished the buggy, and we
started. All went well till we reached the Sangamon river, 15 miles southeast
of Havana. The river was high, the ferry boat on the opposite shore, and we
could by no means make the ferryman, who lived some distance from the river,
hear our calls. There was no way to get over, except to turn back and take
another road, or swim across and get the boat. We decided on the later course,
and I swam for the boat, getting it over to our side all right. The horse and
buggy were put on board, the horse being unhitched and tied by the head, so that
Mr. Perry could help manage the boat. But the boat had considerable water in
it, and we had no means of bailing it out. The added weight of the horse and
buggy made it difficult to manage the boat, as the current was unusually swift,
and with all we could do, we were carried down the stream and under an
overhanging limb that struck the horse and wept him into the river. He swam
back and started for Havana. Having landed the buggy, we returned for the
horse, and after a good long chase he was secured, taken to the other side, and
we were soon on the road again to Jacksonville. This is one of the ways by
which boys got to college in 1841.
Three years ago, when in California, I met a
teacher from Oregon, who was called Prof. Adams. He had attended Mr. Barber’s
school in the Presbyterian church, and when I informed him that I, too, had been
a student in the same school, he remarked in substance: ‘It is now over fifty
years since I left Canton, spending most of the time in the West, and you are
the first man I have met who ever lived in that town. The Cantonians must like
their city and seldom leave it."
Other letters
in relation to the Canton schools will appear in their proper connection.
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