By the beginning of the twentieth century, the county of Beaver, Pennsylvania, had a well-established system of public education operating in its towns and rural areas. In the early histories of A. Warner and Joseph Bausman can be found a record of the founding of public schools in this pioneer county of southwest Pennsylvania, a record of the character of those schools and their successes and weaknesses.
Originally, in southwest Pennsylvania, schools for the children of early settlers were neighborhood schools, the one-room buildings described by Bausman as bleakly constructed of "logs, frequently without clapboards or even shingles, with perhaps two or more four-pane windows with greased paper for lights."' These roughly furnished cabins gave way to frame buildings offering somewhat better heating and lighting facilities and even, eventually, instead of roughhewed slabs and benches, individual desks and seats for the students. Itinerant schoolmasters were followed by local schoolmasters and school mistresses employed by neighborhood organizations or by town or township officials. The curriculum stressed the tools of learning: reading, writing, and arithmetic. Indispensable to reading and writing, spelling was enthusiastically taught - and learned. The historians of the early nineteenth century are agreed on this limited curriculum, and in mentioning the most favored texts, the New Testament and perhaps the Catechism are on the list along with the primers. The sessions were brief, adding up to three or four months of the year, scheduled so as not to interfere with spring planting or harvest.
The Free School Act of 1834 did not change these spartan conditions immediately. But as a result of the earnest leadership of governors, especially Gov. George Wolf, state congressmen and senators, and again especially Senator Samuel Breck, and the Pennsylvania Society for the Promotion of Public Schools, after years of struggle for a system of free common schools in Pennsylvania, the legislation was enacted into law in April, 1834.1
From then on free public education was assured in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania in spite of some efforts to rescind the legislation and some reluctance in particular places to acknowledge it. In Beaver County, public meetings called to contest the Act ended in near-unanimous support .3
Twenty years after the Free School Act, the educational system was strengthened and improved by the Act of 1854, which provided for county superintendents of education and better supervision of county schools.
The establishment of institutes for teacher training and educational training courses in the local academies, such as Frankfort Springs, Greersburg, Hookstown, Peirsol's, and, late in the century, the local and nearby colleges, improved the quality of instruction and made a profession of teaching. Finally, the decline of local academies led to the establishment of high schools in the older river communities of the county.
As local historians of education point out, the high school developed gradually over a period of years, consisting first of a one-grade extension beyond the common school eighth grade; then a second year was added, a third, and finally a fourth year. Beaver Falls claims the distinction of being the first district in the county to have a high school. The Board of Education voted to establish a high school in 1877. Miss Alice Abel served as the teacher of the high school until 1886, when Miss Agnes Mackay was elected to take her place. New Brighton also claims 1877 as the historic beginning of their high school, although the need of establishing a high school had been discussed at school board meetings since 1869. The high school began as an extension of the existing common grade school. Miss A. E. McConnell was elected to teach room 10, and her classroom was called the high school. In the borough of Beaver, the year 1877 was a historic date, for the Beaver Academy was sold on February 27 of that year for $1,800, "and this, with the other funds of the institution, was turned over to the public school fund."' On June 2, 1890, the Rochester Board of Education established a high school and named Wilber F. Bliss principal of the new school. Mary J. Stone was named teacher and assistant to the principal. Both Freedom and Monaca established high schools in 1896. Freedom remodeled the old Presbyterian Church beside the former Concord-Freedom Academy on Fourth Avenue, and it became the first Freedom High School. In Monaca, the school board voted to establish a "Rudimentary High School" at the beginning of the next school term after July 7, 1896. In the school histories that follow, we will look more closely at these early high schools.
In 1904, Bausman found almost incredible the great progress in public education as he compared the "improved construction of modern school buildings ... and ... the extent, variety, and perfection of all the furniture ... of the schoolroom" with the log cabin schoolhouse of the early nineteenth century.
The principals heading the five high schools in the county in 1900-1901 were C. S. Wheaton, Beaver; W. S. Hertzog, Beaver Falls; J. C. Hillman, Freedom; J. B. Richey, New Brighton; and Rufus Barr, Rochester. Superintendent of the county was Chester A. Moore, who served in that office from 1896 to 1905.1
Moore's report to the state superintendent of public instruction in 1900 tells us a great deal about the county schools at the beginning of the century. There were then 50 school districts in the county, including 20 boroughs, 24 townships, and 6 independent districts. The length of school terms varied from seven months to nine, the average length being 7.81 months. There were 234 women and 84 men employed as teachers in county schools. It was cheaper to hire women: their average salary was $35.56 per month, while the men's salary averaged $44.54. The scholars were almost equally divided - 5,973 boys and 5,954 girls. Attendance ranged from 75 percent to 98 percent, the latter being the average at the Logstown (Independent) School.