Reading, ‘Riting and ‘Rithmetic in the Early Days

From Time to Thyme

By Paula Dunn

Now that Labor Day is behind us, I feel more comfortable writing about schools. (I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the idea of kids’ summer vacations ending in July!)

A couple of interesting letters about early schools appeared in the Noblesville Daily Ledger in 1916. The man who penned them, E. A. (Ellis Addison) Hutchens, served as Hamilton County School Superintendent for 18 years, from 1885 to 1903.

(The office of County School Superintendent was created by the state legislature in 1873. The County School Superintendent and County School Board, which was made up of the nine township trustees, supervised Hamilton County’s schools until 1964, when the school reorganization transferred that responsibility to individual school districts.)

In his letters, Hutchens tapped the memories of his grandmother and other early settlers to point out differences between the pioneers’ schools and the schools of his day.

He observed that schoolhouses built prior to 1855 wouldn’t be considered “suitable to keep Short Horn cattle in now.” Apart from the two-room brick county seminary that opened in Noblesville in 1852, the early schools were all log structures. Some weren’t even built with hewn logs. There were no desks; students sat on benches with no backs.

These first schools were subscription schools, where teachers were paid by their pupils’ parents and they boarded with their school’s patrons. Teachers earned $10 to $20 a month for two to three months of teaching, but they were also expected to perform other tasks such as chopping wood and carrying water from nearby homes.

Hutchens described the early teachers as being “as well educated as a sixth grade pupil in the district schools of today and some no farther advanced than the average third grade pupil.”

He named a few pioneer teachers: “Old Curious,” (who had “singular ideas,”) someone named Terwilliger (no first name was given,) and Sammy Hockett, who wore a long-tailed coat and high plug hat. (That’s a hat with a stiff brim, like a bowler or top hat.)

Hutchens also mentioned Nathan Mills, who “taught writing school in nearly every neighborhood of the county” and Mills’ rule for “backing a letter.” (That must have meant addressing an envelope. Hutchens described the final step as putting a stamp in the upper right corner.)

In addition to learning chirography (the art of handwriting,) pioneer students were taught spelling, reading and arithmetic.

Spelling lessons were like spelling bees. Pupils lined up and took turns spelling words. If you spelled a word the student in front of you had missed, you moved ahead in the line. The goal was to become the first one in the line. This was what Hutchens called “spelling for head.”

The spelling text was Noah Webster’s Speller (yes, the guy who wrote the dictionary.) The sentences in it that were to be spelled out did double duty by including lessons on topics such as temperance, morals and manners. (“Teachers like to see their pupils polite to each other.”)

There was no regular textbook for reading, so teachers used whatever book was handy, often the Bible.

The multiplication table was taught in rhymes. (“Two times one are two, I will teach you something new; Two times two are four, Repeat it o’er and o’er.”) 

For geography lessons, the students would recite the names of states, their capitals and the river on which the capital sat.

Hutchens ended by noting changes in the county’s schools that began around the time of the Civil War — the Friends opened Union High School, “the first real high school in the county,” in Westfield in 1861, school years expanded from 60 or 80 days to 100 days and new subjects — physiology and United States history – were added to curriculums.

I wonder what he’d think of today’s schools?

Paula Dunn’s From Time to Thyme column appears on Wednesdays in The Times. Contact her at younggardenerfriend@gmail.com