Oxford, Indiana

Sacred as an original parchment on W'hich are penned words of Holy Writ is an old record of the town meetings of Boston ' in which was written "on the thirteenth of the second month, 1635," the historic declaration : "At a general meeting upon imbliiiiie notice it was geuerallv aj;i(H'd upon that our brother, Philemon Parniost, shall be entreated to become schoolmaster for the teaching and nourtering of the children among us." On the l*;>d of Ajtrii following this declaration the first public school in America was opened. Two hundred and one years had i)assed, when, in an old log cabin which stood where the ''silent city of the dead"' just south of Oxford is now located, Samuel McConnell opened the first school taught in what is now JJenton county. In the winter of 183(5-7 he taught a three months" school, receiving as his pay two dollars for each jiu))!! that attended during the term.

Passage source: Progress of Education in Benton County, Indiana : with an Explanation of the Indiana School System and the Duties of School Officers, Patrons and Pupils, published 1906.

Joshua Dean, William Wakeman, Hiram Stove, Francis Bovnton and Benjamin F. Coffenberry lived in district five and were the fathers of twenty-five children of school age. No schoolhouse was built in this district before 1S52, but one was luiilt soon afterwards. Previous to that time the children of the district attended school at the Martin home (see Grant) or went to the house built in Oak Grove in 1844. In September, 1849, range seven was organized as a school township and the part of that range now in Oak Grove was divided into districts one and two. District one was three by four miles, containing the north two-thirds of the west half of range seven, and district two contained the six sections south of one. Oxford was laid out in district one in which, in 1850, lived H. T. Howard, John Ferguson, James McClure. Stephen Buckley, I. H. Holton, Samuel Callahan, Aaron Wood, William Higgins, Charles Wakeman, W. T. Rowe, James Crosson, Basil Justus, J. F. Parker, David Cell, James Howarth, E. McConnell and Isaac Templeton, parents or guardians of the fifty-five school children then in the district. In district two then lived Thomas Atkinson, Thomas Owen, Robert Foster, AYilliam Norton, William Cochran, Henry Bowers and Tliomas Lewis, who had thirty-one children of school age within their homes.

Passage source: Progress of Education in Benton County, Indiana : with an Explanation of the Indiana School System and the Duties of School Officers, Patrons and Pupils, published 1906.

The latter taught in the Kolb school and in this school W. Lee Bartlett of Ambia received his entire school education. Mr. Bartlett held a spelling school at which some boys became so boisterous that he said they would be whipped if they conducted themselves so badly at the next spelling. They came again and started trouble when "Uncle'' John Miller, then living in the district, arose and said : "Mr. Bartlett, I want to help you give these boys what you i)romised them the other night." It is needless to say the boys at once became anxious to behave themselves. Edgar Hibbs, Isaac S. Wade, S. H. I*ayne, Mrs. A. J. Carnahan and Alonzo D. Sleeper taught in 18()G-7. The latter taught the Runner school, enrolling sixtyseven pupils. The ])atrons subscribed two months' salary and continued his school until the last of May, 18(37. Z. M. Thomas, D. R. SeAvell, Emma Wattles, S. J. Richardson, Elizabeth Bazil and J. W. McConnell taught in 18G8-9. The first local township tuition tax was levied by John Crosson in 1873. The amount collected the first year was |341.35, a per capita of about |1.27 for each of the 209 children enumerated that year. Mattie Talmage taught the Runner school in 1881-2, and had the honor of graduating Ada Whinery, the first common school graduate in Oak Grove, and one of the first four graduates in the county. There are 890 books in the school libraries of the township, many of them purchased with funds raised at school socials. Two new schoolhouses have recently been built in the township, one of them, a fine brick at Atkinson, has just been completed by Mr. Roberts, who is taking a deep interest in the schools of his township. In late years many of the graduates of Oak Grove have entered the Oxford high school and graduated from that institution, and some of them have entered college. A fine school spirit prevails and the motto of all who live in the township where the historv of Education in Benton Countv was

Passage source: Progress of Education in Benton County, Indiana : with an Explanation of the Indiana School System and the Duties of School Officers, Patrons and Pupils, published 1906.

Machine-read from a century-old scan, so expect the errors a machine makes: misspelled names, dropped words, stray characters.

Read the whole chapter on Oak Grove Township - it names this place 2 more 2 times.