The record also shows that the commissioner received of the County Treasurer February 15, 1854, the sum of $37.23 as county school tax collected for the previous year; that Jeremiah Marks, Secretary of his district, reported twenty-two names of persons over five and under twenty-one years old; F. Thompson reported fifteen names, and N. Webb forty-three. Upon this the commissioner portioned respectively to these districts $5.25, $3.75 and $10.75 "reserving the sum of $17.47 for part of salary out of the amount received."
From an examination of the contracts it is seen that O'Brien contracted sales of lands as late as April 12, 1851, and that Alderman made sales June 24, 1854, indicating that the office was transferred about April 15th, the date of transfer of the books above noted.
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 Utterbacks, 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, 20x26 feet, and with a lobby of six feet, leaving a 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 horse, which was 20x30, 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 school houses built, some of which were seated with walnut desks, that being then considered a great advance.
After the completion of the first court house the Nevada district rented the court room for school purposes, which it mostly occupied until the erection of the two story brick recently demolished, and the material of which now lies ready for use in a dwelling proposed to be built on the same site. One or more terms were also taught in the second story of Alderman's block. William Margason taught the first school in the old Nevada log school house; Dr. Fuller and Miss Mary Moore the first in the old brick house, while Prof. Payee has principal charge of the first school taught in the school building erected in 1875, the cost of which completed and furnished approximated $16,000.
In this centennial year there were one hundred and twenty-two school buildings within the county, and others in course of construction, while the number of teachers employed is one hundred and thirty-three.
And this brings us naturally to a short account of the inception and location in Story County of the