History, Winnebago County, Wisconsin: Its cities, towns, resources, people

              SCHOOL  HOUSES   PAST   AND   PEESENT. 469
seven and one-half months, 115. Newell De Merritt taught four months, for $100.00, Mrs. E. M. P. Lindsley three and one-half months, for $56.00; Mrs. Emiline Brewster, four months for $64.00; Miss Louise Jones, three and one-half months, for $42. "The school house, built of logs not worth one red cent, for the use made of it."' It has "one chair, one table." The next year there is evidence of two school buildings, one a room two doors west of the post office, which was then in the Kimberly store on Wisconsin street, and another school building also in use, prob¬ ably on Doiy avenue, as one town meeting, adjourned from a school house where school was in session, to the other, which seemed not to be in use that clay. The report of the school superintendent of Winnebago Eapids for 1851 shows 139 chil¬ dren of school age, and 102 attending school. Edgar M. Pad¬ dock taught four months at $25.00 per month, and Miss Frances Ward four months at $18.00 per month. Under the village, w^ard schools were established in the third, fourth and first wards,, mostly frame buildings. After the coming of the city charter and by the centennial year a sentiment had grown up for a higher and more efficient education, and a vote was orclered to be taken February, 1876, on the question of instituting a pub¬ lic high school system, which was favorable and the first class graduated from the new high school, held their commencement exercises in Schuetzen Hall on Cedar street, June 29, 1876. The class was composed of Jessie Cooke, Nellie Herrick, Minnie Gittins, Delia Brown, Mamie Ford, Fanny Wheeler and Jackson Fuller.
Mr. T. T. Moulton was elected first superintendent of schools,, under the new law, and Eobert Shiells, Edward Smith, Jacob Bell, and Ephraim Giddings commissioners, composing the school board. The first meeting of the board was held July 10, 1875, at the council room and Mr. L. J. Dunn was elected clerk. At that time there were six school houses, two of them built of brick. Three of them were devoted to diff'erent grades of the high school department in the absence of a high school build¬ ing. Mr. H. A. Hobart was principal, with twelve assistant teachers in the grades and primaries. There were 1,279 chil¬ dren of school age and 660 of them attended school. Within a few years a new brick school building was built in the fourth ward, and in 1898 this was replaced by the large commodious modern school building erected under Mr. Henry J. Van Eyne,