There are four cities in Iowa that pay the superintendent of schools two thousand dollars a year. Davenport is one of these, and J. B. Young is its scholarly and able school superintendent. Mr. Young is now serving his twenty-first year in the Davenport schools, and his eleventh as superintendent. He is a native of New York State, having been born in Franklin County, July 15, 1834. Like many other Iowa school men, his boyhood years were passed on a farm, where he became accustomed to all the "prose and poetry" of farm life. He was, how ever, early possessed with a desire to obtain a better education than the common schools of the day and place afforded opportunities for. But he was without the means. Nevertheless he determined to venture forward. By teaching school winters and working on a farm during summer vacations he earned the money needed to enable him to reach the goal of his educational ambition. He fitted himself for college at Franklin Academy, Malone, New York, and entered Middlebury College, Vermont, graduating therefrom in the full classical course in 1861. Immediately after graduation he was chosen principal of Lawrenceville Academy, St. Lawrence County, New York. He occupied this position until 1864, when he was invited to the principalship of Fort Covington Academy and the supervision of the Union schools of that town. He remained in that work for four years. In the fall of 1868 he came to Davenport, Iowa, having been elected principal of the high school of that city, which position he held for ten years. In 1878, when Miss Sudlow, the superintendent, was appointed to a professorsHip in the Iowa State University, Mr. Young, on account of his long and acceptable service in the high school and his recognized qualifications for the place, became her successor.
The Davenport schools rank with the very first in the State. Ten schools besides the high school compose the system. Each one of these has a principal who coöperates with the superintendent in the supervision of the work thereof. In connection with one of these schools there is maintained a training school in which graduates of the high school receive a year's thorough instruction in methods of school management and in the theory and practice of teaching before entering upon service in the school room. The general efficiency of the city schools is due in no small degree to the work and influence of this school.
The high school had, in January, 1889, an enrollment of two hundred and seventy pupils. It employs seven teachers including the principal. The total enrollment of the schools for the year 1887-88 was four thousand five hundred and six, and the number of teachers ninety, besides ten special teachers of German.
Last fall the school board established in connection with the public schools a cooking school, and equipped it with all the necessary apparatus and appliances. Girls of the high school and of the ninth grade of the grammar schools are admitted. Two hundred and eight girls have availed themselves of its advantages. It is in contemplation to institute, next year, a department of manual training for boys.
Mr. Young is a quiet but faithful and successful worker in the position he occupies. He keeps himself and his schools abreast of the times in all the best means and methods known to the profession. He enjoys the confidence and esteem of his teachers and of the community which he has so long served . He has been for many years an influential member of the State Teachers' Association, and is now a member of its educational council.
*For the above sketch of Mr. Young we are indebted to a historical souvenir issued under the auspices of the Iowa “Normal Monthly,” in 1889.
BIOGRAPHIES