The history of educational legislation in Ohio from 1803 to 1850

Front matter

GopiglitN^_.

C.ORlKlGHT DEPOSm

SUPPLEMENTARY EDUCATIONAL MONOGRAPHS

Preface

Ohio's educational history has been an especially interesting one. Many causes have combined to make it so. It was the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory, and as such carried on the earliest experiments with the great state-wide grant of school lands that has characterized our policy since that time in the admission of new states to the Union. It was settled with unexampled rapidity, changing from a wilderness frontier to a great and prosperous commonwealth in a single generation. The settlement was a singularly heterogeneous one, coming from the East, the Middle States, and the South, with a considerable influx directly from Europe. These early settlements were being established, too, while those democratic and individualistic tendencies that marked the first decades of the nineteenth century were in progress. During these years the district school idea was at its height in Massachusetts and the East, the private academy was displacing the town grammar school, and state control of public education was at low ebb.

These causes, with others more local in nature, were instrumental in shaping the educational activities of the state in the first fifty years of its history and have left their imprint on all the later development.

It is my purpose to give a careful study and interpretation of the educational legislation of the state from territorial days down to 1850. In this legislation one finds the truest expression of the constructive educational thought and activity of the period.

In such a study there must be included not merely the laws that bear on the development of a state system of public education, but the much larger number that are concerned with private educational ventures of various kinds. To these must be added those laws that bear on higher and professional education, all that touch upon supplementary agencies of any kind, and also any provisions made for the indigent, defective, and delinquent classes.

A study of this kind is needed as a background before any adequate state or national history of education is possible. Such a study also gives the general student of history a view of one of the vi PREFACE

most important phases in the social development of a state, and a closer acquaintance with the growth of some of the most important institutions that society has discovered to aid it in its progress.

I have attempted in the following pages to present the material in such a way that it will be of service to the general student, and also in the appendixes to furnish a guide for anyone desiring further information from the source material on any particular phase of the state's educational activities.

The plan of arrangement is as follows: A discussion and interpretation of the laws passed from 1803 to 1850; Appendix A, a classified list of the titles of the more important acts; Appendix B, a complete index, page and volume, to all the legislation that in any way touches upon education, in the session laws of Ohio from 1803 to 1850, including both the general and the local laws.

In many cases I have not given the exact titles in the appendixes, for the sake of both brevity and clearness; enough of titles and content to indicate the general meaning of the act is given. In Appendix A a brief abstract of the laws is also included where it seemed necessary to give more information than the title itself conveys.

This is especially the case in the acts of incorporation of that large number of secondary and higher institutions that were so abundant in the first fifty years of Ohio's history. A complete tabulation of these acts is here given, and, as it is the only complete list of these institutions that has been made, it seemed best to preserve in a few words the chief points of historical interest that appear in the laws.

I felt this to be particularly the case with the secondary schools. These have nearly all passed out of existence, and, as they mark one of the most important stages in the development of our secondary education, a somewhat more complete abstract is given than that dealing with most of the other subjects.

The public-school laws are more easily accessible and they are usually indicated by title only. There was an exceptionally large amount of legislation, especially of a local and special character, dealing with the school lands. The more important of these acts are included by title in the first appendix with a mere tabulation of those that had only local significance.

The laws in Appendix A are grouped under the following headings:

PREFACE vii

I. The public-school system.

1. General legislation.

a) Acts to incorporate the original surveyed townships including

provisions for districting, establishing schools, apportioning money, etc.

b) General school laws.

c) Special acts concerning public schools.

d) Fines, fees, etc., applied to the support of public schools.

2. City and town school charters.

a) Laws concerning common schools in cities and towns.

b) Acts concerning local school funds.

c) Acts concerning schools for poor children.

II. Laws concerning school lands.

1. General laws concerning school lands.

2. Special acts concerning school lands.

III. Secondary and higher education.

1. Acts incorporating secondary institutions.

2. Acts incorporating school associations.

3. Acts concerning higher institutions.

a) Colleges, universities, and theological seminaries.

4. Acts concerning professional education, o) Medical education.

b) Legal education.

IV. Acts concerning the education of defectives, dependents, and delin-

quents.

1. Education of defectives.

2. Education of dependents.

3. Education of delinquents.

V. Acts concerning the education of teachers.

VI. Acts concerning supplementary educational agencies.

Appendix B furnishes a page and volume index to all laws, resolutions, and memorials that have any educational significance in either the general or the local laws from 1803 to 1850. The indexes in the volumes of the session laws themselves are sometimes defective, and they are, too, an unreliable guide, as many important items are found in laws the titles to which give no hint that they contain material that relates in any way to education.

The primary source material has been the session laws of the state of Ohio. The Revised Statutes for this period have also been consulted.

It was found necessary to examine all the laws of the period, special and general, as the titles and indexes were not dependable. A considerable quantity of material was also found in the resolutions and memorials.

viii PREFACE

The United States Statutes at Large were used to secure federal legislation concerning school lands in Ohio. Nashee's A Compilation of Laws, Treaties and Ordinances Which Relate to Lands in the State of Ohio was relied upon especially for acts passed during the territorial period.

The earliest congressional legislation was secured from the Journals of the American Congress, reprinted by Way and Gideon, in 1823, under the title as given.

The chief secondary sources consulted are indicated in the bibliography.

Contents

CHAPTER

General Introduction

PAGE

Chapter I The Sources Of Ohio's Public-school System

INTRODUCTORY

Ohio was admitted into the Union as a state February 19, 1803.^ It was the first state admitted from the Northwest Territory and the first state to which the grant of Section 16 for school purposes was made. The legislation concerning school lands was intimately connected with the development of the public-school system, and in the method to be adopted to make this great grant productive of the desired results Ohio had no precedents or warnings for her guidance.^

The constitution adopted when Ohio became a state remained in force until 1851. It made no specific provisions for education, but stated that means of education^ should be encouraged by legislative enactments; that all institutions of all grades, endowed in whole or in part from revenues derived from the donations of the United States, should be open without distinction to all scholars; and that associations of persons might receive letters of incorporation from the legislature to enable them to hold estates for the support of their schools, academies, colleges, and universities.

No provision for public schools was made by any general law during the first eighteen years after Ohio's admission, the first school law being passed in 1821.^ From this period until 1850 eight general school codes were enacted with numerous amendments and supplementary acts and a mass of special legislation concerning particular districts or territories.

The traditions of Ohio were from the first against centralization.^ The first constitution was formed soon after the bitter political struggle between Jefferson and Adams, and at a time when the arbitrary domination of the territorial governor, Arthur

' Statistical Abstract of U.S., 1910, p. 21.

^ Land set aside for individual towns had been common in New England and elsewhere, but there was no precedent to direct action in the case of a state-wide grant intended for the use of the individual townships.

* Orth, TIte Centralization of Administration in Ohio, p. 11.

St. Clair, had prejudiced the people against centralized executive power. Nowhere is this prejudice against centralized administration better illustrated than in the various phases of educational legislation. The tendency throughout the period under discussion was to depend largely upon local initiative and control. The encouragement of education by legislative provision specified in the constitution was interpreted by the legislature to mean the passing of a larger number of local acts to meet the special needs or desires of particular districts, or even, in the case of school lands, the desires of individuals, while the general laws may be said to have pointed out methods of organization and control rather than to have devised any efficient system of supervision or penalties actually to bring about specific educational results.

The general laws are largely permissive in character, with the initiative left in many cases to the discretion of the local community. There are doubtless other reasons for this than the prejudice against the acts of Arthur St. Clair and the general political state of mind in the West during the early period of Ohio's history.

Ohio in its early statehood was a frontier community, settled by a class of people that in the very nature of the case were compelled largely to be self-reliant and to solve their own problems, educational as well as other. It was a heavily timbered area. Means of communication were difficult. It would have been a hard matter to establish any general system of control or supervision in the early period, and when means of communication had become simplified, through a system of state roads and canals,^ the people had become habituated to attending to their own educational needs.

The settlers in Ohio, too, had no common educational background. They came from New England, from Virginia, Maryland, and Kentucky, and, in fact, from nearly all the older states.^

A glance at the map on page 55 shows that the state was divided into a number of separate districts such as the Western Reserve, the Ohio Company's Purchase, the Symmes Purchase, the Virginia Military Lands, and the United States Military Lands. The early settlements in these sections were usually made up of people who came into the wilderness together from one or another of the older states of the Union.

* A large part of the early legislation of Ohio is concerned with state roads, turnpike companies, plank roads, canals, etc.

2 .\t\vater, A History oj the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil, p. 351.

Each of these districts, in its customs and ideals, reflected the current thought and practice of that part of the country from which its settlers came, and in no field was this more evident than in that of education. The Ohio Company's Purchase and the Western Reserve were at first largely settled by colonists from New England. Marietta, dating from 1787, and Cleveland, from 1796, were the respective centers of influence in these two districts.

Three colonies were planted in the Symmes Purchase in 1788; the one at Losantiville, later rechristened Cincinnati by Governor St. Clair, was destined to be in many ways a leader for the entire state as well as for the Miami country. The early settlers here, as at Marietta, had many of them seen service in the Revolutionary War. They came from no single locality, but New Jersey men seemed most prominent in the early settlement, aided by the other Middle States.^ Later there were many settlers from Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, and the New England states.

The Virginia Military Lands,^ located between the Little Miami and the Scioto rivers, received its first settlers from Virginia and the South. General Nathaniel Massie and Duncan McArthur founded Chillicothe, on the Scioto River, in 1796, the first colony in this district.

On the eastern edge of the state, south of the Western Reserve, are the so-called Seven Ranges, the name given to the ranges of townships first surveyed in Ohio. While there was no such colonization here as in the districts already named, the first settlers were largely from Pennsylvania, and of German stock, with a considerable number of Irish, Scotch, and Scotch-Irish.

The United States Military Lands seem to have had no early homogeneous group, but drew settlers from all the older states.

There was also a considerable French settlement at Gallipolis and a sprinkling of French all along the Ohio River.

From 1830 on there was a very considerable German influence from the influx of German immigrants that began at that time.'

The population increased with astonishing rapidity after Ohio was admitted as a state, constant accessions from the older states were added to the early settlements, and in the years from 1810 to

• Charles Cist, Cincinnati in 1841 — Its Early Annals and Future Prospects, p. 38; Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, pp. 288-89.

^ Ibid., p. 290; Western Reserve Historical Society, II, pp. 153-54.

'Orth, The Centralization of Administration in Ohio, p. 164; Chaddock, Ohio Before 1850. A Study of the Early Influence of Pennsylvania and Southern Populations in Ohio, p. 30.

1840 tlic transformation from a thickly wooded frontier to a settled farming; community had largely taken place. The census figures from 1800 to 1850 give some idea of this transformation. At the beginning of the century the population was 45,365; fifty years later it had increased to 1,980,329. The record of increase by decades which follows gives an even better picture of the sudden changes that must have occurred :

1800 45,365

1810 230,760

1820 580,434

1830 937,903

1840 1,519,467

1850 1,980,329'

The census figures for the last decade of this period show a foreign-born population of 218,193. In 1850 there were almost as many people of foreign birth in the state as its entire population had amoimted to only forty years earlier in 1810. These people of foreign birth were largely of German stock.

It was no easy problem to develop a system of education to meet the needs of this surprising growth, coming as it did from all the older states and from foreign shores.

There was in these early years no agreement as to the means of financing any general system of education, nor any real agreement as to the needs of such a system. The educational traditions were quite different in different portions of the state. Samuel Lewis in his second annual report in 1838 says: "The people have not heretofore followed any particular system. The directors of each district have done that which was right in their own eyes, and generally adopted, as far as they could, the particular system of the state from whence they came."^ Those from the South brought traditions of the private school and parental responsibility for education. The New F^ngland settlers brought with them the idea of a public-school system, with taxation and public control, but unfortunately for Ohio's subsequent educational history the New England migration came at a period when the public-school sentiment in Massachusetts and the East was at a comparatively low ebb, and when the decentralizing tendency that gave Massachusetts the districtschool legislation of 1789 was at its time of greatest influence.

' Statistical Abstract of U.S., Washington, 1911, p. 40. 2 Ohio Documents, 1838, Doc. 32, p. 30.

From this time for nearly forty years the process of decentralization went on. Martin says the year 1827 is "the high-water mark of modern democracy and the low-water mark of the Massachusetts school system."^ The New England influence in Ohio began with the Marietta colony in 1787. By 1830 the population of the state had reached nearly a million, and it was during just these years that the school sentiment in Massachusetts was lowest.

It was at this time, too, that the academy was supplanting the Latin grammar school of the colonial period as the typical secondary school.

The New England settlers favored the public-school idea, but it was the highly decentralized district system with which they were familiar. The academy idea was the common possession of settlers from all the states.

The common school as a district school, the secondary school as an academy, were two fundamental conceptions in the minds of all those who were active in securing Ohio's early school legislation. While many influences were thus instrumental in shaping Ohio's early educational history, her debt to New England for the men and ideas most significant in determining her early public-school system is so large that a brief sketch of a few of these men and of the forces that worked through them is a necessary prerequisite to an intelligent study of the development of that system.

The most important of these forces were, first, the school lands ;^ secondly, the conception of a state system of schools; and, thirdly, the idea of state-wide taxation for the benefit of such a system.

The use of public lands for the aid and support of schools had its origin in New England. The men most instrumental in urging Ohio's first law, giving a legal basis to the conception of a state system of schools, were born in New England. The men most active in legalizing the idea of state-wide taxation to support this system were also New England born, and the man who did most to make these ideas, incorporated into law, actually operative in the establishment of schools and to give a real organization to the system legally created was a man of New England birth.

When Ohio was admitted as a state. Section 16 in each township, or an equivalent amount of land in those districts not belong-

' Martin, The Evolution oj the Massachusetts School System: A Historical Sketch, p. 92. ^ A discussion of the school lands, with maps, methods of survey, etc., is given in chapter iii.

ing to the United States, was permanently set aside for the use of schools.

This grant gave for the use of schools an amount of land equal to one square mile, or 640 acres, for each surveyed township of 36 square miles.

The practice of using public lands for the support of schools had been from early colonial times a common New England device, and by 1647 certain towns had "assumed responsibility for the support of schools out of public property, partly through gifts of land to schoolmasters, partly by setting aside tracts of land as a permanent endowment."^

This New England practice first found state-wide expression when Ohio was admitted to the Union, and from that time on became an established policy in the admission of all later states. The Ordinance of 1785 "for ascertaining the mode of disposing of lands in the Western territory "^ reserved Section 16 in each township "for the maintenance of public schools within the said township." This provision, according to Donaldson,^ was the inception of the rule of the reservation of certain sections of land for school purposes. The first action in accord with this provision occurred within the next two years, when Manasseh Cutler, as agent for the Ohio Company, completed the bargain for the lands acquired by the company at the mouth of the Muskingum.^ Not only did Mr. Cutler obtain a reaffirmation of the provision for the grant of Section 16 for school purposes, but a grant of Section 29 in each township for the support of religion, and also an added grant of two townships for the support of a university. It was this bargain of the Ohio Company, engineered by Manasseh Cutler, that put into actual operation the provisions of the Ordinance of 1785 concerning school lands. This was followed immediately by the Symmes Purchase, between the Miami rivers, and Sections 16 and 29 were similarly reserved.

With the admission of Ohio as a state the same provision for schools. Section 16 or its equivalent for each township, was extended to the remainder of the state except the portion still held by the Indian tribes. Ultimately the reservation was extended to all territory within the state.

* Jemegan, "The Beginnings of Public Education in New England," School Review, XXUI, 379. 2 Laws of U.S., 1789-181S, Vol. I, chap, xxxii.

^ T. Donaldson, The Public Domain, chap. xiii.

* Hinsdale, The Old Northwest, p. 268.

In this state-wide grant was found an interest that directed the attention of settlers in all parts of the state, and from all parts of the United States, to the purpose for which the grants were made, the schools. The first legislation concerning schools is found in efforts made to work out a method of handling the school lands, and they remain during Ohio's early statehood one of the persistent incentives to educational legislation and a constant suggestion of a state school system.

The first general school act for Ohio was passed January 22, 1821.^ It is a significant fact that the four men most instrumental in putting on the statute books of Ohio laws providing for a tax-supported system of common schools were all born in Massachusetts. These men were Ephraim Cutler, Caleb Atwater, Nathan Guilford, and Samuel Lewis.

Ephraim Cutler, of Ames, Washington County, near Marietta, was the son of Manasseh Cutler, the inspired lobbyist of the Ohio Company. He was born in Edgartown, Massachusetts, but spent his boyhood in Killingly, Connecticut, with his grandparents and came to Ohio in his early manhood. He was one of the drafters of the state constitution, and it was due to his efforts that there were incorporated the clauses providing that "religion, morality and knowledge, as essentially necessary to good government," were to be supported by the General Assembly and "that schools and the means of instruction shall forever be encouraged by legislative provision."^

Judge Cutler in December, 1819, introduced a bill in the House of Representatives providing for a system of common schools. The bill as introduced was passed by the House, but was allowed to die without action in the Senate. It was this bill, however, that led to the law of 1821, a substitute measure that did little more than outline a method of school organization and in so doing recognized the state's responsibility of legislating for schools.

Caleb Atwater was born in North Adams, Massachusetts.^ He was appointed one of a committee of seven, in December, 1821, to consider the subject of schools and school lands and report to the House of Representatives. As a result of the deliberations of this committee a commission of five was appointed, January, 1822,

^ Cutler, Life and Times of Ephraim Culler, pp. 8, 1 14.

' History of Franklin and Pickawy Counties, Ohio, p. 98.

to report to the next General Assembly on a system of common schools.

This commission collected much valuable material, which was presented to the Assembly in 1823, but the friends of education were in a minority, and no legislative action was taken during that session. One of the members of this commission was Nathan Guilford, a book-dealer and publisher of Cincinnati, the editor of The Freeman's Almanack, a western counterpart of Poor Richard, popularly known as Solomon Thrifty s Almanack.

Mr. Guilford was born in Spencer, Massachusetts,^ and was (educated at Yale. He was a constant advocate of popular education and of taxation for schools in Ohio.

Samuel Lewis, Ohio's first and greatest state superintendent of schools, was born in Falmouth, Massachusetts,^ but came to Ohio as a boy. He was the author of, and prime mover for, the school law of 1838, which gave to Ohio its first completely organized school system.

The act of 1821 had done little more than legalize means by which the settlers in the townships could move to lay off districts and establish schools. It made no provision for taxation and organized no definite system. It was, however, important as the first state recognition of a system of common schools. It was evident to friends of public education that the law of 1821 was inadequate and ineffective, and there began at once a campaign for a more effective law.

Nathan Guilford used the sayings of Solomon Thrifty to arouse the people of the state to the need of a free common school education. In 1824 he says: "The Legislatures of Ohio and Kentucky have taken the subject of free schools into consideration. It is hoped that their zealous endeavors to establish a system of common education will be crowned with success. Millions unborn would rise and bless them."^

Caleb Atwater and his committee , after careful study and much correspondence, had recommended a commission of seven to report on the subject of the school lands and a school system. This commission^ consisted of Caleb Atwater, Rev. John Collins, Rev. James Hoge, Nathan Guilford, Ephraim Cutler, Josiah Barber, and

1 Randall and Ryan, History of Ohio, III, 374.

^ William G. W. Lewis, Biography of Samuel Lewis, p. 13.

s "Maxims and Advice of Solomon Thrifty," The Freeman's Almanack, 1824.

* Atwater, A History of the State of Ohio, Natural and Civil, p. 259.

James Bell. The number corresponded with the total number of different grants of school lands, and each man was to study and report upon the condition of the lands in the territory assigned him. Caleb Atwater was assigned the Congress Lands; John CoUins, the Virginia Military Lands; James Hoge, the Refugee Lands; James Bell, the United States Military Lands; Ephraim Cutler, the Ohio Company Lands; Nathan Guilford, the Symmes Purchase Lands; and Josiah Barber, the Connecticut Western Reserve Lands.

It was evidently the original opinion of many of the settlers in Ohio, and perhaps the design of Congress, that these land grants, if properly managed, would support public schools without a tax upon the citizens. There was a growing belief, however, that this one source of income would continue to prove inadequate. Nathan Guilford, who strongly advocated taxation, did not serve upon the commission, evidently believing that he could aid the cause of education better as a free lance. He addressed a public letter to the chairman of the board arguing for a school tax upon property and insisting that an adequate school fund could not be raised from the school lands alone.

The commission had been directed to report upon three topics: the actual condition of the school lands; a bill proposing a system of school law; a report on the necessity and value of the system proposed. Pamphlets were issued on these topics and widely circulated, and they served to awaken an interest throughout the state in public education.

The system proposed was modeled on the New York state system.^ It provided for an economical management of the school lands, but made no provision for taxation. The legislature of 1823 was, however, opposed to any liberal action for public education. Atwater says: "In this legislature were many influential men who were opposed to a school system, to a sale of

school lands and to internal improvements This session

had a majority of both houses opposed to a school system and the sale of school lands, and all that was done by them was to quarrel about these subjects. They finally broke up in a row and went home."2

In the campaign for the state election of 1824 the subjects of internal improvements, the public-school system, and the taxation

' Lewis, Biography of Samuel Lewis, p. 101.

2 Atwater, A History of the Slate of Ohio, Natural and Civil, p. 261.

system of the state were the main issues before the people. A majority favorable to the public schools and internal improvements was chosen, among them Nathan Guilford, elected to represent Cincinnati. When the legislature assembled, Governor Morrow presented the necessity for adequate legislation on all these questions. His message recognizes the difficulty of bringing people of divergent educational views, with no common educational inheritance, to united action for public schools. In discussing the subject he says:^ "In this state there are causes, extensive in their nature, for difference of opinion on the subject. The population is composed principally of emigrants from the different States of the Union, with habits and modes of thinking on the subject, as different as are the regulations of the States from whence they came. . . . . The act of the 22nd of January, 1821," he declares, is ineffective because the establishment of schools and school districts was made optional for the voters in each township. "Was this act made positive, and in some respects modified, we should have a system in force — perhaps not perfect — for the regulation of common schools, which could be further improved, as experience under it should point out its defects." A joint committee^ was at once appointed in the General Assembly to study the subject and report an adequate bill. Mr. Guilford was made chairman of this committee and drafted the report and bill, which finally passed both houses without amendment and became the law of 1825. There was a widespread feeling in the state against imposing a tax for general school purposes, but Mr. Guilford and Mr. Cutler stood firm for this measure, and, with the assistance of the supporters of the public-school idea, insured its passage by forming an active coalition with those legislators who were working in the interests of internal improvements, especially the advocates of state canals. In this work Mr. Guilford showed himself a skilled lobbyist and shrewd judge of men in his personal campaign among the members of both houses.'