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Catalog of 1879-80, New Building

N.D.

CHAPTER 76.

Catalog No. 9 was printed in Ada by Millar & Thompson, editors of the Ada Record. E.L. Millar had been one of our popular and strong students. It was a fine catalog.

The Faculty remained the same, Lehr, Park, Maglott and Rutledge, but for the first time the name of H.S. Lehr appeared as treasurer.

We still published the names of the instructors of the past year. They were Lehr, Park, Maglott, M.J. Ewing, Eva Sisson, W.D. Woodard, Hattie Towley, Annie M. Nation, E. Eugene Davis and F.C. Fryett. Miss Nation, Mr. Davis and Mr. Fryett were employed during the school year. The new Board of Instructors showed a great change. There was a change in the arrangement of classes. In the early days of the school I had charge of all the large classes, reading, grammar, analysis and geography and the class in Ray's Practical Arithmetic. That class was now assigned to a new instructor, Prof. L.M. Sniff, of whom I will speak later. The class in rhetoric was also taken from my column and given to Mollie Schoonover.

BOARD OF INSTRUCTORS FOR THE SCHOOL YEAR 1879-80.

H.S. Lehr, A.M., Elocution, English Literature, Political Economy, Ethics, Intellectual Philosophy and School Government.

J.G. Park, A.M., English Grammar and Analysis, Logic and Surveying and Engineering.

Fred Maglott, A.B., Geography, Astronomy, German, Greek and Latin.

M.J. Ewing, B.S. Natural Sciences.

L.M. Sniff, Mathematics and Botany.

Mrs. L.M. Sniff, Instructor in Primary Teaching.

Mollie Schoonover, A.B., Rhetoric, Letter Writing, Algebra, Latin and French.

W.D. Woodard, Plain and Ornamental Penmanship and Bookkeeping.

E. Eugene Davis, Director of Music Department and Teacher of Cornet, Violin, Guitar, Harmony and V(oice) Culture.

Mrs. Hattie Rowley, Piano and Organ.

Mrs. Mary M. Lehman, Painting.

F.C. Fryette, Drawing.

We changed the calendar again. We announced five terms for the next school year. We now named the terms the First Fall, Second Fall, Winter, Spring and Short term. The First Fall, Second Fall and Winter terms each consisted of ten weeks, the Spring term of eleven, and the Normal term, six weeks.

Commencement was announced for May 27th, 1880. The school year now contained 47 weeks. This was a poor arrangement as far as the Normal term was concerned, for nearly all the old students wanted rest and went home. We had a vacation of one week at the holidays and four weeks after the short term. Many students had come from a distance and we were compelled to organize classes to accommodate them to keep them for the next year. We managed the Vacation term as we styled it, in various ways. At first we employed teachers paying them salaries. Later we gave those who taught all they made. Some terms the pay was fair; sometimes it was very little.

The reader will remember that the Board of Education of Ada by authority of the citizens had agreed to erect a school building for our use on certain conditions. The time came to begin the First Fall term, August 13, 1879, but the building was not nearly completed. There were no seats in the society halls, the cloak rooms were not completed and some of the other rooms were not finished, nor was the campus graded nor any walk put down from the street to the building. On Saturday evening, August 10, I called on H.S. Shamun who was then president or secretary of the board of Education and asked for the keys. He replied that we could not have the keys until we would hand over the mortgage for $4000. I replied by asking whether the house was completed and whether they had $500 ready to pay us to do the grading and $1500 for apparatus. The money voted had all been put into the building and more and there were neither stoves nor furnaces for heating; no bookcases for the text-book library nor cases for apparatus, geological specimens, etc. I enumerated what all was wanting. He hesitated a little and replied, "We have done our best, Lehr, and I'll trust you fellows that you will do the fair thing by the district," and then handed me the keys.

It was several years before we got the money for the apparatus and we never got it for the library cases and the cases for the museums, and we never gave the mortgage.

When I contracted with the town for the first building, some of the leading superintendents of the public schools in the state, predicted that I would fail. They said, "The town will let you stick. That is the general experience in such efforts." Now they said, "Lehr, you fellows will never get along with such a combination. You will have a law-suit in less than two years. Your contract is too complicated." I had explained it to several of my friends. We got along without a law-suit. I tried to keep in touch with the public schoolmen of the state. I felt that Prof. Holbrook of Lebanon had failed in that line.

I have frequently been asked why we put those large glass windows facing the hall in the south room on the lower floor where there should have been black-boards. The fault was mine. I expected that in a few years, when the school would be very large the township, or possibly some rich man, would up another large building and then we would use the entire lower half of the building for a museum and for apparatus. We were told that the west wall for room No. 12, now the school office, could be arched and the floor above well supported. I firmly believe that a school could be built up that would average at least 2000 students and possibly 2500 with an annual enrollment of at least 5000 different students. But the "best laid plans of mice and men" sometimes fail. Later on I will relate other schemes I tried to what shall I say?--float--; I'll say float, but like the celebrated flying machine of Darius Green they did neither fly nor float.

What is now the museum, at first were the cloak rooms. Rooms soon became too scarce to have cloak and hat rooms. No. 6 was to be the general office and what was later used as the office was to be the private office of the president of the school; but for want of room No. 6 was used as a recitation room, the room below the belfry for the office, and the president's private office was the hall-way and the stair balustrade served as office chairs.

There was also at first a movable partition that could be raised in Chapel Hall west of the rear door. It was placed there that Chapel Hall might be made to serve for two recitation rooms by lowering the partition. The plan proved a failure and when we built the frame house we pulled out the partition.