The Wisconsin magazine of history: Volume 9, number 1, September 1925

              32 joseph s chafer tion as it affected the country as a whole we are now pre pared to study the manner in which that question was set tled for wisconsin the pioneers of our territory and state like frontiers men everywhere through the west met the first insistent demand for educational facilities in the only practicable way namely by hiring some one to teach a school either in a church a dwelling-house or a log cabin erected as a com munity enterprise for the purpose there being at first no school district organization and no school fund nor any authority to levy local taxes for the support of the school the only thing left to do for those who had children to edu cate was to band together to pay the teacher his cash pittance on a private basis and to furnish board on the same prin ciple for example if there were twenty pupils and the school ran for twenty weeks the parents furnished one week's board for each child enrolled perhaps they might pay 2.50 for each child instructed the first territorial legislature 1836 made no special provision for common schools though it chartered a wis consin university to be located on paper at belmont possibly with some reference to improving the speculative value of the belmont town site but the laws of michigan territory were permitted to extend to wisconsin and under those laws school districts could be formed and supervising officers chosen it is believed that the first public school in wisconsin was the one which edward west conducted at milwaukee in the winter of 1836-37 milwaukee in 1836 became a flourishing yankee village and that fall a school district was organized byron kilbourn being one of the officers the teacher was a youth of eighteen years who had just gradu ated from washington and jefferson college pennsyl vania he was a success from the start and managed well even when the school grew to have as many as seventy pupils mr west also taught writing to adults in evening classes although a promising young teacher he did not continue in