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         When the settlers came to the wilds of the “Forty Mile Strip,” they brought with them that love of education which seems to be a part of every true American; and as early as the Fall of 1837, they made arrangements for a school for the Winter of that year. There was no school house, as a matter of course, nor school districts, nor school money. Educational affairs were in chaos—without form or organization—and the pioneer fathers were left to their own resources and management. Col. Hardman, with that liberality that has always made him conspicuous in public affairs, tendered the use of a part of his house for a school house, as he had previously given it for the use of religious meetings, . . .

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. . . and as he afterwards gave it for other public uses. A subscription paper was started in the neighborhood, and liberally signed. Moses B. Church was employed as teacher, and the school was commenced. Mr. Church possessed a classical education, being a graduate of one of the Eastern colleges, and, in an educational point of view, well qualified for the duties of teacher.

         The school was attended by about twenty scholars, and was continued three months. The teacher was not very particular about the kinds of books, other than as to the character of their contents; and, perhaps, even if he had been somewhat imperious and exacting in this regard, it would have been a waste of desire to arrange his scholars in classes to economize time and labor, for there is a probability that the parents had not the means to buy such books as were necessary to the formation of classes. They used such books as they had, teachers, pupils and parents bowing in submission to circumstances and exigencies that surrounded them, and glad to have a school if every individual scholar had a different book. The principal books used in that first school were the English Reader (the best reader ever used in American schools), Daboll’s arithmetic, Kirkham’s grammar (the author of which fell a victim to intemperance and died in a state of intoxication in a Cincinnati still house) and Webster’s elementary spelling book; hence, the course of study was orthography, reading, writing, arithmetic, English grammar and geography.

         Orthography was the first great principle of education, for the people in those days were of opinion that no one could ever become a good reader or a good scholar unless he were a good speller, and, as a consequence, children who were ambitious to become goodspellers; and no higher honor could be bestowed upon a girl or boy than to say there were the best spellers in the neighborhood. Spelling schools, or spelling matches—who of us don’t remember them?—were frequent. But why distress old fogy minds by recalling those happy days, when they used to meet at the old log school houses, choose their captains (the best spellers), who would toss up the “master’s ruler” for “first choice,” and then “choose up” their lieutenants, commencing with the ones they regarded as the best spellers, and so on till all the boys and girls were arranged on benches on opposite sides of the house? Then the fun commenced. The “master” “gave out” the words from side to side. How quick a “missed” word would be caught up! Those were happy days, and days that are sacred in the memory of the gray-haired fathers and mothers who took part in their exercises. It would be a pleasing reflection to them if their children, their children’s children and the children of their neighbors were permitted by the modern system of education to indulge in the same kind of old-fashioned orthographical exercises.

         The school system of the spelling school period, and even up until within a few years ago, in many localities, was fully described in the backwoods vernacular of “Pete Jones,” in Eggleston’s Hoosier School Master, “lickin’ and larning’”—the “lickin’” being the indispensable requisite. The perfect or ideal teacher of those days was a man of strong muscular development, with an imperious frown, a sonorous voice charged with terror, punctual in bringing “hickories” into the school room, and endowed with a liberal disposition to frequently use them as back applications.

         The first house erected for the exclusive use of school purposes was built by the people of the Hardman neighborhood, about half a mile a little north of west of Col. Hardman’s residence. In the same district of country that the rude structure accommodated as a school house, there are, probably, in 1878, half a dozen neat, tasty, white frame school houses.