History of Linn County Iowa Part 41

P. Coulter, and J. M. Chambers appear. In 1860, S. C.

Koontz, Henry Church, William Stewart, J. H. Camburn, and William Richmond served. In 1861, W. W. Smith, George M.

Howlett, Henry Church, William H. Merritt, A. C. Churchill, and S. L. Pollock directed affairs. In 1862 E. G. Brown, A.

C. Churchill, J. F. Ely, George M. Howlett elected Mr.

Humphrey superintendent of schools. His reputation seems to have been that of a man of great strength and the bad big boys stood in awe of him accordingly. C. W. Burton, the superintendent of 1865, was noted for his cleverness in mathematics, and his deep interest in horticulture.

"All of these early directors, superintendents, and teachers were hard workers and great optimists. History has confirmed that optimism, and from the services of these men developed a race of ambitious, energetic, moral citizens to whom the present Cedar Rapids owes a great debt of grat.i.tude."

Through the courtesy of County Superintendent Alderman we are enabled to give below some interesting data regarding our schools:

In 1873 the number of school corporations in the county was 42, increased to 87 in 1909. The number of ungraded schools in the former year was 178, and 166 in the latter year. The average number of months the schools were in session has increased from 6.6 in 1873 to 8.9 in 1909, and the average compensation from $39.78 to $73.50 for males, and from $26.33 to $50.85 for females. The number of female teachers employed in 1873 was 244, and in 1909, 503. The number of male teachers was 90 and 40 respectively.

In the matter of attendance there has been a vast betterment. In 1873 there were 460 boys and 544 girls between the ages of seven and fourteen not in school. In 1909 these numbers were 29 and 17.

The value of school property in 1873 was $240,105; in 1909, $814,300.

The value of school apparatus was $2,309.50 in 1873, and in 1909, $20,035.25. There were in 1873 in the school libraries 482 volumes, which was increased to 17,079 in 1909.

There are now between twenty-five and thirty fine school buildings in the country districts. They are modern in all respects, being supplied with slate blackboards, hardwood floors, ventilators, cloak rooms, bookcases and cupboards. Several have furnaces and cloak rooms in the bas.e.m.e.nts. Some of the buildings are supplied with telephones, making it possible for the county superintendent and patrons to communicate direct with the school.

The plans and specifications for these buildings are owned by the county, and are furnished gratis to the school districts wis.h.i.+ng to build. All of these school-houses except two or three are not only provided with libraries, cloak rooms, etc., but are also provided with a good organ.

This year there is being installed a hot air ventilating system which keeps the warm air pure, the cold air being taken directly from the outside and pa.s.sed through the hot air radiators before being allowed to enter the school room.

[Ill.u.s.tration: CORNELL COLLEGE IN 1865]

CHAPTER XXIII

_Historical Sketch of Cornell College_

BY WILLIAM HARMON NORTON, ALUMNI PROFESSOR OF GEOLOGY, CORNELL COLLEGE

Linn county may well take pride in the history of her oldest school of higher education, founded in 1853, when the county held but 6,000 people. But the beginnings of Cornell College are of more than local interest; they are thoroughly typical of America and of the West.

Cornell was founded in much the same way as were hundreds of American colleges along the ever advancing frontier of civilization from Ma.s.sachusetts to California--a way which the world had never seen before and will never see again.

THE FOUNDATION AND THE FOUNDER

Cornell owes its inception to a Methodist circuit rider, the Rev.

George B. Bowman, a North Carolinian by birth, who came to Iowa from Missouri in 1841, three years after the territorial organization of the commonwealth. This heroic pioneer, resourceful, far seeing, and sanguine of the future, eminent in initiative and in the power of compelling others to his plans, was one of those rare men to whom the task of building states is intrusted. He was not himself a college man, but with him education was a pa.s.sion. To found inst.i.tutions of higher education he considered his special mission. Hardly had he been appointed as pastor of the church at Iowa City in 1841 when he undertook the building of a church school, called Iowa City College. In 1845 Rev. James Harlan, a local preacher of Indiana, was chosen president, and with one a.s.sistant opened the school in 1846. The next year Mr. Harlan was elected state superintendent of public instruction, and the college was closed never to be re-opened. It had at least served to bring to the state one of its most distinguished citizens, afterward to be honored with the United States senators.h.i.+p and the secretarys.h.i.+p of the interior. Meanwhile Mr. Bowman had been appointed presiding elder of the Dubuque district, which then included much of east-central Iowa. The failure of the premature attempt at Iowa City had not discouraged him; he awaited the favorable opportunity he still looked for--suitable local conditions for a Christian college in the state. It is a long-told legend, even if it be nothing more than legend, that when Elder Bowman came riding on horseback to the Linn Grove circuit, he stopped on the crest of the lonely hill on which Mount Vernon now stands. From its commanding summit vistas of virgin prairie and primeval forest stretched for ten and twenty miles away.

Here there fell upon him, the circuit preacher, the trance and vision of the prophet. He saw the far-off future; he heard the tramp of the mult.i.tudes to come. Dismounting, he kneeled down in the rank prairie gra.s.s and in prayer to Almighty G.o.d consecrated this hill for all time to the cause of Christian education. And it is a matter of authentic history that in the spring of 1851 Elder Bowman and Rev. Dr. A. J.

Kynett, in the parsonage at Mount Vernon, planned together for the early founding and upbuilding of a Christian college on this site.

With the characteristic initiative of the Iowa pioneer, Bowman did not wait for authority to be given him by anybody, for articles of incorporation to be drawn up, or even for a t.i.tle deed to the land on which the college was to stand. Early in 1852 he laid his plans for the launching of the school. On the Fourth of July of this year an educational celebration was held at Mount Vernon, which drew the farmers for miles about the town, and other friends of the new enterprise from Marion and Cedar Rapids, Anamosa, Dubuque, and Burlington. The oration of the day was delivered by State Superintendent Harlan on the theme of Education, and at its close ground was broken formally for the first building of the college. A month later a deed was obtained for the land and the following September the guardians.h.i.+p of the infant school was accepted under the name of the Iowa Conference Seminary, by the Methodist Episcopal church.

In this highly democratic manner Cornell College was founded by the people as an inst.i.tution of higher learning, which should ever be of the people and for the people. It was born on the anniversary of the nation's natal day, and was to remain one of the highest expressions of patriotism and civic life. Christened by the head of the educational interests of the young commonwealth, supported by its citizens, protected by a charter from the state, and exempt as a beneficent inst.i.tution of the state from contributing by taxation to the support of other inst.i.tutions, the college was thus begun as a state school in a very real sense.

One can not read the early archives of the college without the profoundest admiration for the pioneers, its founders. Avid of education to a degree pathetic, they depended on no beaurocracy of church or state; they waited for no foreign philanthropy to supply their educational needs. They laid the foundations of their colleges with the same free, independent, self-sufficing spirit with which they laid their hearthstones, and they laid both at the same time.

THE IOWA CONFERENCE SEMINARY

In January, 1853, the first meeting of the board of trustees was held, and in the fall of the same year the school was opened in the old Methodist church at Mount Vernon. Before the end of the term a new edifice on the campus was so far completed that it was available for school purposes and "on the morning of November 14, 1853, the school met for the last time in the old church and after singing and prayer the students were formed in line and walked in procession with banners flying, led by the teachers, through the village, and took formal possession of what was then declared to be a large and commodious building."[J]

The first catalog--a little time-stained pamphlet of fifteen pages--lists the following faculty:

Rev. Samuel M. Fellows, A. M., professor of mental and moral science and belle lettres.

Rev. David H. Wheeler, professor of languages.

Miss Catherine A. Fortner, preceptress.

Miss Sarah L. Matson, a.s.sistant.

Mrs. Olive P. Fellows, teacher of painting and embroidery.

Mrs. Sophia E. Wheeler, teacher of instrumental music.

The first board of trustees is also noteworthy:

Rev. George B. Bowman, president, Mount Vernon; E. D. Waln, Esq., secretary, Mount Vernon; Rev. H. W. Reed, Centerville; Rev. E. W.

Twining, Iowa City; Rev. J. B. Taylor, Mount Vernon; Jesse Holman, North Sugar Grove; Henry Kepler, North Sugar Grove; William Hayzlett, Mount Vernon; A. I. Willits, Mount Vernon.

The roster of students enrolls 104 gentlemen, and 57 ladies. Among them are familiar and honored names, some of which are to reappear in all later catalogs of the school, either as students of the second and third generation, or as trustees and members of faculty. Four Rigbys, for example, were students in 1853. In 1910 the catalog lists three Rigbys, one a student and two members of the faculty. The first catalog contains the names of no less than nine Keplers as students, six stalwart young men from North Sugar Grove and their three sisters. Four Walns are enrolled from Mount Vernon, two Farleys from Dubuque and two Reeders from Red Oak.

In 1853 the population of the entire state was only about 300,000. Not a railway had been projected west of the Mississippi river. And yet the scattered settlements sent across the unbroken prairie and the unbridged rivers no less than 161 students to the young school on this the first year of its existence. The most important route to Mount Vernon was the military road extending from Dubuque to Iowa City. Both towns contributed their quota of students, Dubuque sending no less than twelve, although the entire population of Dubuque county was then, less than 16,000. Considering the difficulty of communications, the poverty of the pioneers, the wide extent of the sphere of influence of the school is remarkable. Students were drawn this first year from as far to the northeast as Elkader and Garnavillo. They came from Dyersville and Independence, from Quasqueton and Vinton, from Marengo, Columbus City, West Liberty, and Burlington. Muscatine alone sent seven students. This town was at the time the point of supply for Mount Vernon, and the materials for the first building of the college except such as local saw mills and brick kilns could supply were hauled from that river port.[K] Students came also from Davenport, Le Claire, Princeton, and Blue Gra.s.s in Scott county, from Comanche, and from the pioneer settlements of La Motte and Canton in Jackson county. The eight hundred students of Cornell today reach the school from all parts of the state and the adjacent portions of our neighboring states by a few hours swift and comfortable ride by rail. But who shall picture in detail the long and adventurous journeys in ox cart and pioneer wagon and perchance often on foot of the boys and girls of 1853--the climbing of steep hills, the fording of rivers, the miring in abysmal sloughs, the succession of mile after mile of undulating treeless prairie carpeted with gorgeous flowers stretching unbroken to the horizon, the camp at night illuminated by distant prairie fires, until at last a boat shaped hill surmounted by a lonely red brick building lifts itself above the horizon, and the goal of the long journey is in view!

No doubt there were other hards.h.i.+ps awaiting these students after their arrival. Rule No. 1 of the new school compelled their rising at five o'clock in the morning. They were expected to furnish their own beds, lights, mirrors, etc., when boarding in Seminary Hall. It is interesting to note that they paid for tuition $4.00 and $5.00 per quarter, and for board from $1.50 to $1.75 per week. The next year the steward's pet.i.tion to the board of trustees that he be allowed to put three students in each of the little rooms was granted with the proviso "that he furnish suitable bunks for the same." The catalog's statement regarding apparatus is a guarded one: "The Inst.i.tution is furnished with apparatus for ill.u.s.trating some of the most important principles of Natural Science. As the wants of school demand, additions will be made to this apparatus." And that regarding the library is wholly prophetic: "It is intended to procure a good selection of _readable_ and _instructive_ books, by the commencement of the next academic year, to which the students will have access at a trifling expense. With these books as a nucleus, a good library will be acc.u.mulated as rapidly as possible. Donations of _good_ books are solicited from friends of the inst.i.tution." In the next catalog it is stated that "a small but good selection of _readable_ and _instructive_ books has been procured," the remainder of the statement being the same as that of the first year. This statement appeared without change in all succeeding catalogs during the remainder of the first decade.

THE FIRST DECADE

As early as 1855 the articles of incorporation were amended changing the name of the inst.i.tution to Cornell College, in honor of W. W.

Cornell and his brother J. B. Cornell, of New York City, men prominent in business and widely known for their benevolences to various enterprises of the church. It will be noted that Cornell College was thus named several years before the founding by Ezra Cornell, of Cornell University at Ithaca, N. Y.

The first year of the school under the new collegiate regime was that of 1857-1858. Rev. R. W. Keeler of the Upper Iowa Conference was made president, Princ.i.p.al Fellows of the Seminary taking the professors.h.i.+p of Latin. Two years later President Keeler reentered the more congenial work of the ministry, and Princ.i.p.al Fellows was elected president of the college, a position which he held most acceptably until his death on the day after commencement June 26, 1863, thus completing a full decade of years of service in the school.

President Fellows had come to Cornell from the Rock River Seminary at Mount Morris. His character and the quality of his work left lasting impressions on his pupils at both inst.i.tutions. Thus Hon. Robert R.

Hitt, of Illinois, writes of him as follows: "He was a diligent, acute, and active student, and his personal character was admirable. It is the fortune of few men to exercise so wide and prominent an influence from a position which, to the ambitious, is not considered eminent." And Senator Shelby M. Cullom has written: "I regard Professor Fellows as one of the best men I ever knew. I said it when I was under him at school, and now that I am over seventy years of age, I say it now. He was strong, honest-hearted, full of kindness, and a splendid teacher."

His colleague at Cornell, Dr. David H. Wheeler, described him as "a man sweet-spirited, pure-minded, of fine executive ability, a rarely qualified teacher, a patient sufferer, a tireless worker, a model friend."

A word may be said as to the members of President Fellows's faculty:

Miss Catharine A. Fortner, a graduate of Cazenovia Seminary, N. Y., was sent out in 1851 by Governor Slade, of Vermont, as a missionary teacher to Iowa. Her success near Tipton was so marked that she was chosen as the first preceptress of the inst.i.tution. In 1857 she resigned to marry Rev. Rufus Ricker, of the Upper Iowa Conference.

Wm. H. Barnes, professor of languages in 1854-1855, resigned to accept a professors.h.i.+p in Baldwin University, Ohio, and is known as author of several works in history and politics.