NAMING A SCHOOL AFTER S.L. HOWE - 1941

HOWE, ROGERS, SAUNDERS

Posted By: Pat Ryan White (email)
Date: 6/10/2015 at 20:19:36

“The Bystander’s Notes”, by Charles S. Rogers, Publisher
Mt. Pleasant Daily News, Monday, September 15, 1941

NAMING A SCHOOL AFTER S.L. HOWE
And while we are mentioning the honoring of important names connected with this county and community, may we suggest a most unusual opportunity to honor a name which will long live in Iowa history. Saunders School is named to honor the founder of this community. The Adams street school and the new high school are unnamed. The Adams street school, originally built as a high school, is labeled “Junior High School.” We no longer have a junior high school. It is a grade school like Saunders. The new High School is not named. It is merely a “High School.” Here are two opportunities to honor a name worthy of the distinction.
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The first name that comes to our mind is that of Samuel Luke Howe, founder of Howe’s Academy and also the founder of the first high school in this city and operated at private expense. Prof. Howe came to Iowa in 1841 and started teaching in a log cabin east of town. Then he moved to town and taught school in a log cabin on the west side of the square. Then in the Cumberland Presbyterian church, corner Adams and Madison. Then in the old Mill which he built and where he organized his famous “High School and Female Seminary” in 1849. The story of Howe as an educator, as the editor of the first anti-slavery newspaper published west of the Mississippi, and as the head of the famous academy, his name chiseled in stone on either the new High school or the Adams Street grade school, would honor Mt. Pleasant. Few names connected with the history of this town will remain undimmed longer than that of Samuel Luke Howe.
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