Perry County, Indiana - Chapter 16: Churches and Schools at Cannelton, 1916

While the Methodists were the earliest religious body organized in Cannelton, the first edifice erected for public worship was by the Unitarians about 1845, and the New England type of Colonial meeting-house was faithfully reproduced in the rectangular frame building, with severely square belfry, which still stands after seventy years of use, at the southeast corner of Third and Washington streets, one of the few original landmarks of pioneer Cannelton. Its actual history, however, is as St. Luke's Episcopal Church, which it became in the middle 'fifties, as Unitarianism was but short lived in Perry County.

James Boyd, whose liberality had provided the first schoolhouse for the village, was also one prime mover in this pioneer church work, being the chief contributor and a trustee, together with Messrs. Fairbanks and Frothingham, of Boston, in its ownership. The site was a donation from the Coal Company, who also gave for parsonage purposes a corresponding lot on the corner of Washington and Fourth streets, which was never thus used, though the ground was held by the church for over fifty years.

The Rev. John Fisher was the first and only resident pastor of the Unitarian belief, as the denomination was not of rapid growth among the incoming settlers. With a commendably broad-minded spirit, the deed of gift provided for the use of the building by any Christian minister for Divine Worship, and many various services were held from time to time within its walls, besides different public meetings, lectures,

Captain John James may be regarded as father of the Presbyterian society, which was organized early in the 'fifties, though the congregation endured as such for only a few years. He was born December 28, 1808, in South Wales, the eldest son of James and Catherine (Howell) James, of old Welsh stock, and received a liberal education in that language as well as English, his father being a prosperous woolen manufacturer. He married Margaret Jones, also of Wales, who bore him ten children, several of whom lived with their parents in Cannelton until the family removed about 1869 to "Corn Island," near Grandview, and the line is now one of extensive connections in Spencer County.

The American Cannel Coal Company gave to the Presbyterians a lot at the northeast corner of Fourth and Adams streets, on which a frame church thirtysix by forty feet was built, and an adjoining lot running to Fifth street became the manse. The frame residence is yet standing and is the present home of Mr. and Mrs. Oscar Curtis Minor (Marguerite Conway). The Rev. George F. Whitworth was the first pastor, serving as such for several years, but the organization lapsed four or five years afterwards and has never been renewed. The church edifice was used as a grammar department of the public schools in 1861-62, and following the War Between the States the building and lot were granted to the African Methodists, who maintained regular services there for some thirty years, until an exchange of property was made in 1907, and their buildings were removed to Fourth near Congress street.

Mrs. Whitworth, the Presbyterian dominie's wife, was a woman of superior culture, and in 1849-50 taught a select school giving excellent satisfaction. For a term of eleven weeks the rates were: Primary, $3 ; Junior, $5 ; Senior, $6 ; Piano Music, $10 ; Use of Instrument, $2 ; Needlework, as arranged. By degrees

The Rev. David Boyer, who succeeded Mr. Whitworth as pastor, continued the school for a time, with Miss Julia Boyer as his assistant. In 1851 they taught the first session in the new stone public school building erected on the hillside east of Eighth street. The Coal Company gave the lot and the Cotton Mill a subscription of $600. This location was unsuitable and inconvenient, and it was used for only four years, then sold to private parties and for fifty years occupied as a residence, with surrounding vineyards, owned by Conrad Damm. In 1908 it became the property of Mr. and Mrs. Charles T. Miller (Lulu Gregory), whose modern residence "Hill Crest" utilizes as a foundation part of the original structure's massive rock walls.

The Baptists, elsewhere in Perry County, notable for their continuity of organized existence, seem to have met with little success in forming a society in Cannelton, and the small congregation among v/hose most active members were Willard Claflin, Terence Wood and W. H. Bicknell disbanded after only a few years of life in the 'fifties. Not until a generation later was any distinct effort made to resume the work, and the society now existing as "The First Baptist Church of Cannelton" was independently organized about 1893, when its present church was built with the Rev. J. B. Solomon, of Hawesville, as its first pastor; Henderson W. Huff and Lewis Yates, the first trustees, chosen June 11, 1893.

On a more permanently successful basis, however, was the St. John's German Evangelical Association formed December 7, 1854, among its charter membership appearing family names still represented in the third generation upon its register. William Lehmann, and others had been holding irregular meetings before this for some time, and the organization was effected by the members themselves who held to the faith, without the leadership of a minister. At the northwest corner of Taylor and Seventh streets a lot was secured and a frame church built in 1855, something like a year before the first resident pastor, the Rev. Ebling, took charge. The work has been prosecuted from the first with unflagging energy and now represents what is perhaps Cannelton's most united and vigourous parochial organization. The high measure of material success attained is shown in the present handsome brick church, with pipe organ and other complete equipment, and the adjoining modern parsonage. Both men and women have spared nothing of personal sacrifice or active labour which could possibly contribute to the result which has been attained.

About the same time a German Methodist society v/as organized in co-operation with the missionary work which the Rev. Conrad Muth had inaugurated at German Ridge. Among its earliest class members were the families of Henry Vogel, Bennett Wippach, John Johann and Philip Rau, Jr. The latter's father, Philip Rau, Sr., who afterwards joined the son in Perry County, was also an active supporter of the congregation during his unusually long life, and was beyond question the county's oldest citizen when he died in March, 1893, at the age of 103 years, five months and twenty-seven days. He was born at Wuesseck, in the Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt, and his great-grandsons keep his memory alive in Cannelton.

in 1855 a frame church was erected on the southeast corner of Taylor and Seventh streets, adjoining which a parsonage was afterward built. The work was maintained continuously until 1914, when the decreased number of members familiar with the German language led to an experimental consolidation with the English-speaking Methodists, who had built their own frame church in Fifth street, between Taylor and Congress, during the middle 'fifties, the decade of Cannelton's greatest activity in every line, spiritual no less than temporal.

It is the intention, as developments materialize, in due time to effect a formal union and erect a new house of worship befitting the importance of the Methodism as a factor in the community.

Among the numerous English families whom the Cotton Mill and other commercial interests had brought into Cannelton it might naturally be expected that a large proportion were members of the Established Church, and in their adopted land would wish the same sacred offices - kept up through lineal descent in its American branch, the Episcopal Church, whose Book of Common Prayer distinctly declares that "this Church is far from intending to depart from the Church of England in any essential point of doctrine, discipline or worship; or further than local circumstances require." Samuel T. Piatt, Edward Dale, James Lees, John Sanderson, John Gordon, Thomas Hay, Robert Payne and Edmund Sharpies were among the immigrant churchmen and the Episcopalians of American birth included the Carlile, Huckeby, Smith, Talbot, Brazee, Hubbs, Wilber and Wales families.

The earliest service of the historic Church of Washington, Franklin and so many other distinguished Colonial Americans recorded as held in Cannelton was on August 3, 1851, when the Right Reverend Benjamin Bosworth Smith, Bishop of Kentucky, officiated in the Unitarian Church. The Prayer Book offices set forth for the Seventh Sunday after Trinity were then heard for the first time within the walls v/here they have since been read for well nigh three-score years.

Bishop Smith, a man of apostolic fervour and scholarly erudition, who lived to attain patriarchal age and was for many years Primate (Presiding Bishop) of the American Church, possessed the broadest mis- sionary spirit yet could not continue regular work outside the canonical bounds of his own diocese, so through the efforts of Judge Ballard Smith, who represented Perry County in the Legislature of 1855, Cannelton as a field for labour was brought before the notice of the Right Reverend George Upfold, D. D., First Bishop of the Diocese of Indiana (Indianapolis). He visited the place June 17, 1855, and again in the Unitarian Church led Divine Worship as first actual shepherd of the little Episcopalian flock in Cannelton.

Verily the "Mother Church" for Christians of every creed in Cannelton is the time-worn structure once known by no other name than "The Church," and just where the Roman Catholics had organized their local society several years earlier. Bishop Upfold organized in 1857 St. Luke's Parish of the Protestant Episcopal Church. On the First Sunday in Advent, December 2, 1860, he administered the apostolic rite of Confirmation to ten candidates, prepared by the Rev. William Louis Githens, who had become the first resident rector during that year. Of this original class Mrs. Christina (Piatt) Tichenor is the only survivor (1915), having remained a communicant of the parish for fifty-four years.

The insufficient school facilities of Cannelton in 1855 were painfully evident from the average attendance recorded of only 240 pupils out of 720 enumerated as of school age, a distressing lack of interest largely due to the scattered buildings and the poor sidewalks leading toward them. A lot was given, however, in 1854, by the Coal Company, the half-block now the City Park, between Sixth, Seventh, Clay and Lawrence streets. Its value was $1,000, and the School Board appropriated $800 toward a new building, which William P. Beacon took the contract to erect, at $8 per thousand bricks and $2.75 per perch for the stone work. His contract failed, but the building was completed in 1856 by contractors Leonard and Johnson.

Hart, Jerome Spillman, Misses Sarah Cotton, Mary- Anne James, Sarah Kolb and Anna Dow, utilizing such rooms as were here and there available. Henry N. Wales, with Misses Anna Dow and Isabelle McKinley took charge of the town schools during the session of 1856-57, with an enrollment of 235, but an average attendance of only 110. The new brick was finished but unfurnished at this time, yet despite the want of equipment, Sumner Clark and Miss Sarah J. Mason conducted an excellent school in its upper rooms in 1857-58, Allen Milton Ferguson teaching the spring term with them. The Rev. Mr. Laverty, Mr. Wales, Misses Kolb, Gest and Dow were then teaching for the town.

The same year witnessed the founding of the most distinctively high-class educational movement ever undertaken in Cannelton, Franklin Institute, of collegiate character, whose influence was perceptible for many years although the breaking out of the War Between the States caused its career to be unexpectedly brief.

As principal, the Institute was fortunate in having Professor Paul Schuster, A.M., born March 20, 1825, in the historic city of Strasburg, Alsace-Lorraine. He was educated in Belgium at one of the Jesuit colleges, and - with neither criticism nor comment upon the ethical system of that body - it was through the training there received during his novitiate that he came to America at the age of twenty-four, a fluent master of seven languages, Greek, Latin, French, English, Spanish, Italian and German.

Soon after reaching Bardstown, Kentucky, where the Jesuits maintained a school noted in its day, he decided that America offered a wide field for individual liberty of development, and in 1849 was released from the temporary vows of a postulant to enter upon his personal career as an educator.

cosmopolitanism, and his linguistic attainments quickly gained for the young scholar that position he was best qualified to fill, the chair of Ancient and Modern Languages in some of the leading seminaries, both male and female. From thence the impetus of the Swiss Colonization Society in 1858 brought him into Perry County and to Cannelton.

But few if any among institutions of Indiana at the time offered a higher standard of instruction than Franklin Institute, whose object - as set forth in its original prospectus - was "to prepare and enable students to enter the Senior department of Harvard or Yale, or of any of the prominent Southern Universities."

"While the Ancient and Modern Tongues, Mathematics, Philosophy and the Natural Sciences are efficiently taught," the prospectus read, "more than ordinary attention is paid to the English, French and German Languages and Literature, Elocution and the Art of Composition. The most ample provision is made in the younger classes for laying the foundations of knowledge sound and strong; while, it is confidently believed, few institutions afford to the higher order of students greater facilities for thorough acquaintance with the finished Models of Literature - ^the sources of History - the principles of writing and speaking the English and also the French and German languages - the nature and rules of legitimate argument - the proofs of Revelation - the life springs of good taste and good conduct.

"Yet the leading and prominent object of the Tuitionary System is to impart the general intellectual culture and activity which alone deserves the name of Education and enable the possessor to secure that higher inprovement which no school can bestow. With a view to this aim at a thorough education, manners and personal habits shall be the objects of unceasing vigilance and care."

partiality distinctly ahead of a generation that had not yet come to recognize woman's rightful place in a complete scheme of civilization, since the pamphlet continued : "The experience of several years passed in learning and teaching has convinced the Principal that the meeting of both girls and boys in the same schoolroom while contributing, on the one side, to soften and refine the buoyant spirits of ardent youths, to stimulate their noblest ambition to the utmost exertion of all their mental faculties, and to restrain them continually within the strictest limits of gentlemanly deportment; has, on the other side, a no less effective tendency to promote and exalt in young girls those delicate feelings and enlightened sentiments which develop so spontaneously their natural graces and virtues; qualifying both sexes at the same time to move with ease, propriety and a benignant influence in any sphere of life which it may be their destiny to occupy."

"The teaching of the Gospel," a concluding paragraph declared, "will be respected and predicated as the only rule of conduct for members of either Christian Society or the Human Family at large; but all Sectarian bias, all spirit of proselytism is emphatically repudiated."

For each five months term the tuition rates ranged from $20 in the collegiate department, through $15 in the academic, down to $12.50 in the primary. Ancient Languages were included in the highest grade, but an extra $5 was the charge for French, German, Spanish or Italian. Nonresident pupils were offered board "in some of the most respectable families of Cannelton at a cost not to exceed, under any circumstances, $3 per week."

A promise was made that within a year the Principal would receive boarders in his own family at cheaper rates, Professor Schuster having married, September 8, 1858, Amanda, daughter of Henry P. and Mary (Aikens) Brazee, whose homestead "Mulberry

This wedding was one among many functions of elegant hospitality which the old mansion witnessed in its prime, and was especially remembered because a supposed supernatural apparition, that for years afterward was reputed to haunt the Cannelton and Tell City river road, had been seen for the first time by some of the reception guests driving from Cannelton. The imaginary spectre was attributed to some phosphorescent gaseous vapour overhanging a lowlying stretch of road. What ever its nature, it was seen by too many responsible parties for its existence to be flatly denied.

The plan for a boarding school, however, was not carried out. Professor Schuster returning some two years later to Cincinnati where in elevating pursuits was spent the remainder of his earthly life, ending October 9, 1905. While national circumstances forbade the anticipated destiny of Franklin Institute, the lofty ideals of its founder find fulfilment today in one of Cincinnati's noblest institutions, the Schuster School of Expression, in Kemper Lane, Walnut Hills, where stands an edifice whose classic beauty but reflects the inspiring personality of its head, Helen Merci Schuster (Mrs. William Warren Martin), the youngest child of Paul and Amanda (Brazee) Schuster. Ranking among the Queen City's most gifted dramatic readers, Mrs. Schuster-Martin's temperamental enthusiasm gives to her instruction a magnetic quality whose value to pupils is truly inestimable.

Professor Paul Schuster's assistant during the first year of Franklin Institute was J. W. Chaddock, and in the summer of 1859 he obtained the services of a young man just graduated from Genesee College (now Syracuse University) , Thomas James de la Hunt, valedictorian of his class and also the winner of first honours in oratory.

ary, Ireland, though of French parentage, the de la Hunt lineage showing a Huguenot family traced back to the city of Nancy in Lorraine in the Sixteenth Century. On the maternal line, however, appear such typically Irish names as FitzGerald and Plunkett, so the two strains of blood combined in an ardently vivacious temperament which adopted with patriotic enthusiasm America, Indiana and Perry County as a chosen home for the remainder of his too-brief life.