Allegan County, Michigan - Chapter 8: Education, 1907

"Schools and the mtans of education ^H.'all forever be encouraged." These words are found in the famous ordinUhtie of 1787 for the government of the Northwest Territory, including' what is now Michigan. A congressional act of 1804, also with reference to what is now Michigan, reserved from sale section 16 of each township "for the support of schools." These acts of the national government were passed before the Territory of Michigan was organized and years before the surveys were made and the boundaries defined for Allegan county. But in so far as the state has undertaken to controlthe scheme and machinery of education, the educational system which the people of this county have used has been provided by Michigan as a state and not as a territory. A brief glance at the history of education in Michigan will be a proper introduction to a more detailed account of the educational affairs of the county.

Michigan was under the government of France from 1634 until 1760. Settlements were made at various places around the Great Lakes by the Jesuit missionaries, but the most important Frencii settlement was the founding of Detroit by Cadillac in 1701.

Under the French control centralization was the fundamental principle in all affairs. The military commandant was supreme in the state and the priest or bishop in the church. Education was a function of the church. The initiative in everything was in the officials, not in the people. There were no semi -independent local organizations like the New England towns to provide for the manageinent and support of schools.

Two years after the founding of Detroit, Cadillac recommended the establishment of a seminary at that place for the instruction of children of the savages with those of the French. It is doubtful if this recommendation produced any immediate results, as it is stated that no indication of , schools or teachers can be found until 1755, a half century later. Private schools of varying degrees of excellence are reported to have existed frohi 1755. Most of these were short-lived and 6'f inferior character.

Under English control educational affairs remained the same as under the French. The land reserved for school purposes was the first step taken by the American general government. The sixteenth section of each township granted for the support of the schools became, through the efforts of Gen. Isaac E. Crary, Michigan's first congressman, a principal source of the State Primary Fund, which is now a matter of pride to every citizen of the state. It was a wise provision, based on the experience of other states, that turned the proceeds from the sale of school lands into a state fund instead of giving them to the township in which the section was located. Where the latter practice prevailed serious inequalities resulted from the fact that the designated section was often inferior land and when sold brought little or nothing to the township treasury. And, also, the management of one large central fund was more economical and subject to less risks than if the money had been left in the many township treasuries. The Primary School Fund has increased from year to year, so that the per capita annual distribution of interest therefrom has more than kept pace with the increase of school population.

The primary money in 1845 was twenty-eight cents a scholar. There was a slow increase per capita until 1880, when it was forty-seven cents a scholar. After 1880 a portion of all specific state taxes, except those received from the mining companies of the upper peninsula, were applied to the primary school fund distribution. Since then there has been a notable increase. In 1881 the per capita amount was $r.o6; in 1890, $1.33; in 1900, $2.15 : in 1905, $3.30. On account of the back taxes on railroads paid during the year igo6 the primary money for the November semiannual apportionment was $1 1 for each child of school age in the county. The per capita distribution for the entire year 1906 was $12.

If efficiency of instruction is measured by money expended, the children of today are many times better off than those of fifty years ago. In 1850 there were 1,196 pupils in Allegan county. The total school income for the year was $4,431, of which $2,781 was raised by direct local taxation, and $1,650, or about one-third, came from public funds. In 1906 there were 11,768 school children entitled to share in the school funds. That is almost exactly ten times the number in 1850. And in this time the interest on the Primary School Fund alone is ten times greater than the income from all the public funds in 1850.

The moneys used for the support of the common schools are the interest from the Primary School Fund, the one-mill tax, the unappropriated dog tax, library moneys which are appropriated by the township board for school purposes,* the tuition of non-resident pupils and the voted tax in the district. The primary money can be used for no other purpose than the payment of the wages of legally qualified teachers and only by districts in which five months of school were maintained during the last preceding year.

The supervisor usually assesses upon the taxable property in his township one mill upon each dollar of valuation. This tax is paid over to the treasurers of the several school districts. But by a law passed at the session of 1905 the supervisor does not assess this tax if the surplus in the school fund, exclusive of money for building purposes, is equal to or in excess of teachers' wages paid the preceding year, A large number of districts in the countv will not assess this tax this year.

The qualified voters may levy a tax for general school purposes. When a tax is voted, it is reported to the supervisor, who assesses it on the taxable

.property of the district. Whenever the unappropriated dog tax in any township is over and above the sum of one hundred dollars, it is apportioned among the several school districts of such township or city in proportion to the number of children of school age.

The school legislation of Michigan while a territory had little bearing on the schools of Allegan county, nor, in fact, on those in any other part of the territory. But the legislature in 1827 provided that "every township containing fifty inhabitants or householders should employ a schoolmaster of good morals to teach children to read and write and to instruct them in the English language as well as in arithmetic, orthography and decent behavior." A department of education was also established, at whose head was to be a superintendent of common schools appointed by the governor.

But very little was actually done in the way of public schools previous to the state organization. The first schools in Allegan county were ihe result of voluntary effort on the part of the pioneers. The first settlers came, as we know, largely from New York and the New England states, where education was fundamental and thoroughly a part of everyday life. It was natural, therefore, that whenever half a dozen families within a circle of two or three miles had secured a comfortable home shelter, the next business in order was to organize a school. A site was selected, a log building erected, and some person in the community who had had exceptional advantages in the east or who professed ability as a pedagogue was employed to conduct the school. And from each home a path was blazed through the forest trees by which the children could find their way to and from the schoolhouse.

The building of this first log schoolhonse marked a stage in the history of the community. Almost without exception in this part of the middle west the school was the first institution. It preceded the church, and sometimes the first town meeting was held there. It was the central point of the community life. There the settlers met to vote and perform the civil business; there the questions that confront a new social organization were discussed and solved ; there the people met for social enjoyment, and there they came together for religious worship. The schoolhonse was the focal point of pioneer life, and its importance cannot be too strongly emphasized.

The early schoolhouses have often been described. Many were built of logs, some of sawed lumber, while a few were made of stone or brick. That the log schoolhouse is something more than tradition to men and women of Allegan county who are still in the prime of life, may be inferred from the fact that less than thirty years ago there was at least one such school building in use in the county.

While the exterior of the building varied, the interior furnishings were about the same. Built at one end of the room was the mud and stick chimney, with the broad fire-place. To keep the fire blazing briskly by a plentiful supply of logs was the task of the older boys, while in the summer some of the girls would often fill the hearth space with flowering plants. The rough walls of the rooms were unadorned except as the individual taste of the teacher might seek to relieve its dreariness ; the floors were often of broad roughly hewn puncheons laid on the ground, or, if the building was of frame, thick boards were spiked to ground sills, with wide cracks between the boards affording an easy escape for pencils, jackknives and other schoolboy impedimenta.

The seats were indeed primitive. They were nothing more than a spht 1<^ with the flat surface up, and resting on legs driven into holes on the under side ; or the timber for the seat might be a plank with some attempt at smoothing the top surface. There were no back to these benches, and the tired bodies of pioneer chiidreu got no rest except by leaning forward. There were no desks in the modern sense of the term. Around two or three sides of the room was fixed a broad board, with a slant con- veiiieiit for the writer, and on this the pupils, or as many of them as this rough form of desk would accommodate, did their writing; and figuring. A piece of slate was used for all calculations, and paper was only used for penmanship exercises.

Of school apparatus there was none. As late as 1866 the inspector for Otsego, one of the most advanced townships, reported: "There- is no apparatus in the school houses." A blackboard, which was the extent of equipment in many schools during the sixties, was introduced many years after the pioneers' children had gone from tlie schools into actual life. Graphite pencils were also unknown. A "pen knife" was then a necessary part of the teacher's equipment, for he used that instrument in a way to suggest the name, that is, to fashion for each scholar a pen from a selected goosequill. Paper was coarse and expensive, and the era of cheap woodpulp paper tablets did not begin until comparatively recently.

When the settlers came from the east many of them brought along a few school books such as the parents had used. Coming from every one of the New England and middle Atlantic states, these books when brought into the school by individual pupils formed a heterogeneous collection. Yet from these the teacher was supposed to assign the lessons, and from a chaos of texts to reduce uniformity. The difficulty was not so great as might be imagined. For the curriculum consisted of the three r's - "reading, 'riting and 'rithmetic," and so far as the instructions in these branches went it might be obtained from almost any set of books. The one book that seems to have an abiding place in every memory was the old bluebacked Webster's Elementary Speller. This was the backbone of every school, and far from being cast aside when school days were over it continued as the basis for spelling schools which young and old attended until within the memory of men and women who are still in the prime of life.

A school report from Newark township in 1838 mentions Webster's Spelling Book among the books used for instruction. A similar report of 1840 names the speller and also "Elementary English Readers" and the "Woodbridge Geography." DaboH's Arithmetic was long used as a textbook, and occasionally the Testament is classed among the text-books. Murray's and Kirkham's grammars were favorites.

Such were, in general, the first schools in Allegan county. Very little substantial school work was done in the county during territorial days, and that little was accomplished by the voluntary association of the settlers, as already noted.

For the foundation of its general system of education Michigan owes a large debt of gratitude to Isaac E. Crary and Rev. John D. Pierce. More than any other two men they were instrumental in laying the foundations of education and giving direction to its early development. Under the first state constitution Mr. Pierce was appointed the first superintendent of public instruction. In accordance with a vote of the legislature he reported to that body in January, 1837, a code of school laws, which was adopted with but little change.

The township was the unit. Each township had three school inspectors, whose duty it was to organize school districts, to apportion the school moneys to the districts ; to examine teachers and grant certificates ; and to appoint one of their number to visit the schools twice a year and make an annual report to the county clerk. These boards of inspectors continued to exercise control over the schools of their respective townships until the county siiperintendency was established in 1867.

Each district, however, had the control of its own school. A district could vote a tax for buildings, not to exceed $500 in any one year. Each district was required to hold school at least three months each year. Each district had to assess a tax in addition to the primary school fund apportioned to the district, and if the teacher's wages exceeded the funds, the board could assess a tax to meet the deficiency, but not to exceed $90, the limit fixed by law. Also, the district could vote ten dollars a year for a library.

One of the provisions with which the early settlers became unwillingly familiar was the famous "rate bill" law, passed in 1843, which provided that the patrons of each school might raise the funds necessary to continue the school through the term. The parents or guardians of the children were assessed a tax in proportion to the time such children attended school. This rate bill was made out by the teacher at the close of each term, and the amount distributed among the patrons. The law did not work well, for the poor parents or those indifferent to education would send to school as long as the public funds lasted, and when the rate bill set in would take their children out. Primary education thus became a question of ability to pay for it, and the fundamental principle of popular education was threatened. Nevertheless, despite the inequality, the rate hill law was not repealed until 1869.

The original plan, as above outlined, contemplated only single districts, with a single house, and but one teacher. No provision was made for the union of districts or for the grading of schools. The report for 1850 shows there were just as many schools as there were teachers - forty-four of each. But as the population increased it was seen that expediency often demanded more than one teacher for a single school, and sometimes more than one schoolhouse in the same district. The township board under these conditions would have had no option but to subdivide the district and provide for two or more separate schools in the original district. To maintain several adjacent district schools, co-ordinate in 'work and rank, was evidently at the expense of efficiency and economy. The laws were therefore amended so as to permit a union of adjoining districts wherever the population was sufficiently dense to admit of bringing a large number of children into one system of graded schools, without embracing too much territory to be thus well accommodated.

This was the origin of the "union school" in Michigan. The true significance of the term had reference not so much to the uniting of the districts as to the system of grading which was permitted by the same act of the legislature. The real meaning of a "union school" was therefore a graded school, located in the more populous communities, with one central schoolhouse, and usually separate quarters for the different grades. The first graded school was established at Flint in 1846. From 1846 to i860 there were twenty-seven graded schools established in the state. No such school was established in Allegan county until 1867. The organization of a union or graded school marked an important stage in the development of educational institutions in each of the villages. The graded schools in

Allegan county at the present time are located at Allegan, Otsego, Plainwell, Saugatuck, Douglas, Fennville, Wayland, Martin, Hopkins, Burnip's Corners, Hamilton, and Graafschap.

The first constitution of the state provided for the establishment of branches of the University. These branches were to serve a three-fold purpose, provide for local needs, fit students for the University, and prepare teachers for the primary schools. Branches were established at Pontiac, Monroe, Niles, Tecumseh, Detroit, Kalamazoo, Romeo and White Pigeon. These branches were supported by appropriations made by the regents of the University. After graded schools began to be established in 1846, the University branches fell into disfavor, and they ceased to exist after 1849. High schools then became the connecting link between the University and the ordinary common schools.

As early as 1868 the state superintendent of public instruction called attention to the need of uniting rather than dividing districts. He showed the waste and inefificiency of small districts, which condition continued because the people desired to have a schoolhouse "near by," a false estimate being placed upon the value of a "home school." Since then conditions have materially changed. Roads are better, and with increased facilities of transportation the bounds of community life have been widened. The interests of the whole people are more closely knit together, and old forms of individualism are disappearing.

The movement which fifty years ago resulted in the formation of the first "union schools" is now being extended to the rural schools. In line with this direction of progress, the state legislature enacted a law which became effective September 17, 1903, permitting the transportation of pupils to and from school at the expense of the districts concerned. This important piece of legislation supplements and perfects the act of 1901 permitting the organization of township high schools and the law of 1903 for the consolidation of rural school districts, with the consent of a majority of tlie resident taxpayers of each district. The consolidated district may levy taxes for the transportation of scholars and may use the funds arising from the one-mill tax for the same purpose. As yet no districts have been consolidated in this county, but in both the adjacent counties of Kent and Kalamazoo the plan is being tried, and it seems only a matter of time when this system will work almost a revolution in rural schools.

In 1903 the legislature passed a law authorizing the establishment of County Normal Training Classes for teachers of rural schools. The graduates of these classes are granted three-year certificates which may be renewed in the county where received, or they may be transferred to other - counties. In accordance with the law, an Allegan county class was organized in October, 1905, and has been conducted in connection with the Allegan village schools, being housed in the Dawson. There are nineteen pupils taking the course. The state appropriates $1,000 for its support. The cost this year will be $1,500, the excess $500 being divided equally between Allegan village and the county.

Another subject that should be mentioned in a history of the Allegan county schools is "compulsory education." Until 1905 the law vested the power to compel attendance with the township board, the chairman of which was the executive officer to carry the law into effect. Practically, it was optional with this board whether the law should be enforced, and at best the board could require the child to attend school only four months of sixteen days each, or sixty-four days in the entire year.

Beginning with the year 1905-06 a new law became operative. Instead of the enforcement of the law being left with each township, it is the duty of the county commissioner of schools to see that its provisions are cifective in all districts throughout the entire school year. The executive or truant officer is a deputy sheriff appointed by the sheriff and acting under the supervision of the county commissioner. All children between and including the ages of seven and fifteen years are compelled to attend school so long as schools are in session in their district, in other words, for the entire school' year. The only exceptions to this rule are children excused by physician's certificate ; or those in attendance at a private or parochial school in which the same grade of work is done as in the public schools ; or in case of children over fourteen years of age whose labor is necessary to the support of the family, who may be excused from attendance by the unanimous consent of the district school board and the recommendation of the county commissioner.

In the opinion of Mr. Thorpe, the present commissioner, the new law has had remarkable results, in proof of which he adduces the following comparisons: In 1903-04, his first year as commissioner, when the old law was still in force, the average attendance in the schools of the county was 65 per cent of the school population, and that proportion would hold for most of the previous years; and in the second year of his administrahe was able to raise the per cent of attendance only to 66. But last year, 1905-06, under the new law, the average of attendance was above 80 per cent of the total, showing a notable increase of 15 per cent. Or numericaiiy, about 1,500 children were returned to the schools who had in previous years been habitually absent. So far this year the average of attendance has been well upward of go per cent. There is little difficulty in enforcing the law. In certain parts of the county where the foreign population predominates or where the conditions of agriculture demand all possible help in the fields at a certain time of year, there is some variance with the law, but on the whole its effect has been most salutary.

The general supervision and control of the schools of the county has been vested by the legislature in different bodies at various times. The township board of inspectors established by the original laws was changed by an act of March 13, 1867, which created the office of county superintendent of schools. The first to hold this office in Allegan county was James M. Ballou of Otsego, elected April i, 1867. Patroelus A. Latta, now superintendent of schools at Saugatuck, succeeded him in i86g, and was re-elected in 1871. Isaac H. Lamoreaux, of Manlius, was the last incumbent of the office, serving from 1873 to 1875, when the office was abolished.

March 31, 1875, the law took effect transferring the control once more to the township, and requiring the election in each township of one superintendent and one school inspector. The township superintendent, with

In 1881 the legislature provided for a county board of school examiners. This board consisted of three members, and were elected for three years by the chairmen of the township boards of school inspectors.

In 1887 the constituency of the board of examiners was changed. Two county examiners were chosen for two years by the chairmen of township boards of inspectors. These two examiners, with the judge of probate, appointed and employed a secretary for a term of one year, who became ex-officio a member of the county board and its executive officer. The secretary visited schools and received a salary of $800 per annum. The following are the boards of county examiners under this act: 1887-S8 - P. A. Latta, Sec, J. W. Humphrey, Mr, Taylor. 1888-8? - P. A. Latta, J. W. Humphrey, Mr. Taylor. 1889-90 - P. A. Latta, J. W. Humphrey, Mr. Taylor. 1890-91 - P. A. Latta.

In 1891 the law still in force was passed. This required that the board of supervisors should appoint a county commissioner of schools who should hold office until July i, 1893, at which time the commissioner regularly elected by the people the preceding April should begin his duties. At the same meeting the supervisors should appoint two school examiners, for one and two year terms respectively, and the board should thereafter appoint one examiner at each annual meeting. The county commissioner and the two examiners constitute the board of school examiners. By a law passed in 1903, the county commissioner holds office four years.

At the end of 1898 Mr. Humphrey resigned to enter the legislature, and for the existing vacancy to the following July the county board of school inspectors chose O. S. Flanagan.

February, 1897. Benjamin Neerken was examiner from 1893 to 1899. Mary Bassett succeeded Mrs. Pursell and served two terms, C. F~. Bacon served from 1898 till his resignation in May, 1902. Ralph Sprague, appointed in his stead, has since been on the board. Mrs. Wilder followed Mary Bassett and was in turn succeeded, in October, 1903, by Volney Stuck, present examiner.

Following the passage of the general school laws in 1837, the organized townships chose their school inspectors, who proceeded to divide the territory under their control into convenient districts and organize schools in each. There were at the time only four townships in Allegan county. The total population was less than 1,500 persons, distributed mainly about the four settlements along the Kalamazoo - at Saugatuck, Allegan, Otsego and Gun Plains. It is hardly to be expected, therefore, that a complete school system would spring into existence at once. Unfortunately complete data is not at hand to describe the organization of the various districts, though the reports for Allegan are better preserved than in many counties of the state. From the meagre reports filed with the county clerk in the fall of 1837, the schools organized in the county the first year were as follows:

In Plainfield township, comprising the east tier of townships, nine and one fractional districts had been organized - extending partly into the present Martin township, but for the most part in the present Gun Plains township. Only two districts reported. No. 2 gave 17 children in attendance, $25 raised for support of the school, while district No. 4 reported 29 scholars, a nine months' school, and $90 raised for support of the school.

Otsego township in 1837 reported four districts organized, two making reports to the inspectors. In No. i there were 30 children of school age, and a six months' school. In No. 2 were 35 scholars and a six months' school.

Coming to Allegan township, in reality Allegan village, where the population was concentrated at the time, we find but one district, that being the village school elsewhere described. There were 96 of school age in the district, 60 of whom attended school, a five months' term was taught, and $500 had been raised for a schoolhouse and $200 for the pay of the teacher.

This is al! the information the reports of 1837 give us. It is probable that in Newark township no district was legally organized the first year, though the children at the mouth of the river must have been provided with some private-school instruction. In 1838, however, one district is reported in that township. District No. i contained 42 children of school ^gc, 30 of whom attended school some part of the three months' term. Ninety dollars was raised for building a schoolhouse. By the following year three districts had been formed, and No. i had voted a tax of $500 for a schoolhouse.

In 1840 the report made to the state superintendent of public instruction names the six townships of which the county was then composed- - Martin and Manlius having been organized, though no districts had as yet been formed in Manlius. Plainfield (Gun Plains) had ten districts, Otsego- 5, Allegan 5, Martin 4, and Newark 3. Of these only ten districts.

As population increased and was distributed over the townships, new districts were fonned. Often an entire township contained but a single district, and then as settlement proceeded new district areas were formed and the old lines changed. Even if the records were complete, it would be impossible to follow in detail the formation of these various districts. During the last fifteen years the number of districts in the county, as also .in the state, has remained substantially the same, and the tendency henceforth will be, as we have stated, to a decrease rather than increase in the number of districts.

Thirty years ago, Mr. P. A. Latta, then superintendent of Allegan township, published some statistics regarding the schools of the county that form a good basis for comparisons. The important items in his summary - for the school year ending September, 1877 - were:

Since then six districts have been added to the total. The number of school population remains ahnost the same. The log buildings have all disappeared. The amount of the primary interest has increased more than seven-fold. Altogether, educational resources make a much better showing now than thirty years ago.

A school district is often more than a mere township subdivision. As above stated, a school is a central point of a community. Children grow to adtilt life with the old schoolhouse as the most common meeting place, not only for purposes of instruction, but for social and religious gatherings. These associations around a school are strong ties in binding a community together, and very often we find the people's social life defined quite distinctly by the same limits as the school district in which they live. With greater facility of communication, brought about by better roads, telephones and other improvements, this will become less apparent as the years go by. Eiit the instances are many in which a neighborhood i6 best known by the name of its schoolhouse - as the "Prouty school" neighborhood in Trowbridge, or the "Sand Hill school" in Salem. For purposes of permanent reference it has been considered advisable to tabulate the school districts of the various townships and designate each by its popular name as far as that is possible.