St. Clair County Schools

More About Schools

(By: Rev. B.F. Lawler)

About the year 1846 Uriel L. Sutherland taught school at Union school house, a little west of the cemetery where Bert Gardner now lived on Coon Creek in St. Clair county.

Sutherland was son-in-law to Major Harris both then living on the large farm now owned by Mr. Adamson. He rode a stout horse named “Sawney” and took behind him on same horse his son Sam, and a cousin of Sam’s named Sam Rickey both small boys.

Mr. Sutherland was the only man of wealth I knew who was able and willing to teach school.

The house was built of hewn logs and a large porch to accommodate the overflow of people when religious meetings were held there which was frequent.

A few classes in school, as such, recited, but many pursued theirs separately as if they were the only one in school, taxing the teacher in and out of school hours to give personal attention to them.

Robert and James Boswell rode six miles every morning and evening and Albert and Martha Culbertson walked three miles every morning and evening to attend that school. Little John Gash came from Sac River and many others came from greater or less distances went there and it was a great school.

The discipline was strict, even severe, but the school was excellent and most pupils came there for business and the noon hour was a mere incident, there being little time for play, “town ball” was common for boys, but I do not remember the girls to have had any play.

Tables of weights and measures had to be memorized; bushels, pecks, quarts, pints, grains, scruples and drams; ounces and pounds, Avoirdupoise and troy; seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and three hundred sixty-five days, five hours, forty-eight minutes and forty-eight seconds had to be given to every solar year.

“Spelling by heart” was one of the fine arts with us and writing with a quill pen was a leading accomplishment.

There seemed to be no jealousy in regard to dress as all wore home-made clothing to the best of my recollection.

I had just begun to find a place close to the head of my class and feel my mental feet as being on the path of learning.

Convenient writing desks were put up and glass let in the light, but benches with backs held the right of way for seats. Dinners were plain food but there was a difference in the appearance of the baskets or vessels in which victuals came to school and a few vessels had much better food than others – would not that be so now?

Only a few studied grammar, but they had to recite every word, each one, and few questions were asked and no lecture given. Parsing was common, but the structure of a sentence was not mentioned and to this day there is no great improvement in some of the descendants of some of those ancient peoples.

I have been asked to write some of these things for comparison and encouragement for our schools now.

Suppose that great school, for it was great, could have had our High School orchestra and a literary programme introduced suddenly, what do you think would have been their impression: What of our black-boards? What of our lecture and question methods of teaching?

What if they could have heard the president of the school board say a few words of encouragement at the opening of school saying at the close of his speech that the teacher was put in control of the school and that the board was behind the teacher and that the law was behind the school board.

Suppose these pupils from far and near could have felt the force of such a statement as that? They hardly knew there was a school board. They scarcely knew the law had anything to do with education. Could they have known that the school board and the law were their friends as well as the friends of the teacher do you know they would have “felt good”?

I have written account of a leading country school sixty-seven years ago in St. Clair county and the reader can compare. I highly appreciate the great advancement we have now, but I have happy day dreams of the mellow light of those days as our young minds opened to the possibilities of great things in the providence of God.