statistics, showing the growth from year to year in schools, buildings, enumeration, enrollment, teachers, funds, salaries, districts, etc., from the earliest reports to the present. To illustrate this, the most reliable matter is found in the earlier records of the county and the county superintendent's reports to the State superintendent, which show some striking features, and are here made use of.
The first record, that of January 13, 1854, describes "District No. 1, in Township 82, Range 22," as containing sixteen square miles, with the center at the corner uniting Sections 4, 3, 9 and 10, of Indian Creek Township, just west of the site of Iowa Center. That dated January 18 is District No. 1, Town 82, Range 24, at the corner uniting Grant, Union, Washington and Palestine Townships, the notice being issued to George W. Thomas. District 3, Town 84, Range 24, was formed January 23, and the notice issued to John J. Zenor; it centered at New Philadelphia site. Another district centered in Section 26, of the present Milford Township, and notice was issued to Evan C. Evans on the same date. Still another was formed, July 3, south of the Iowa Center site. On January 20, 1855; Jonah Griffith received notice of a district formed in the north part of the county, and on the following May 5 a twenty-five square-mile district was formed, with Nevada as its center, and E. C. Evans also received this notice. The old Mullen District, the Squire M. Cory and the W. W. Utterback Districts were formed in the fall and winter of 1854-55.
The first school fund commissioner was J. H. Keigley, in 1853, and S. P. O'Brien served two years after him. His records show the fabulous sum of $37.23 received from the county treasurer on February 15, 1854, as county school tax collected for the previous year, but the entire population of the county was not as large as is the single town of Ames now. The secretaries of the three districts reported enumerations as follows: Jeremiah Marks, twenty-two persons of school age in his district; F. Thompson, fifteen in his, and N. Webb, forty-three in his, whereupon the commissioner, after "reserving the sum of $17.47 for part of salary out of the amount received, "apportioned the remainder among the three districts as follows: $5.25, $3.75 and $10.75. Says a local historian:* "From this time until the summer of 1857 the accommodations of the schools were of the most humble character. The citizens of the year 1856 will remember the various log school-houses, situated mostly in the timber, of which one was in the north part of Nevada, one at the west end and one at the east end of Walnut Grove, one at McCartney's, near Utterback's, one at New Philadelphia, and one at Cameron's. In the Advocate of October 20, 1857, John H. Keigley boasts of the finest school-house in the county. It was a frame, 20x20 feet, and a lobby of six feet, leaving school-room twenty feet square. In the same paper of date December 9, 1857, some one writes of the school-house in the John P. Pool District generally known as Murphy's school-house, which was 20x30 feet, or four feet- longer than the other. S. E. Briggs taught the first school in the last-named house. About this time there were quite a number of very comfortable frame schoolhouses built, some of which were seated with walnut desks, that being then considered a great advance."
The earliest records of the Department of Education show that, for the year ending October 31, 1854, there was but one school in a frame house in Story County, while the children of school age numbered but 80, but 30 of whom were enrolled in the school for
*Col. Scott's address of 1876.