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Beaver County was settled by people who set a premium upon education, by a "class of men who, if they had not themselves always enjoyed its benefits, knew its value," according to th6 county historian, Joseph H. Bausman.
Records of the nineteenth century feature crude log schoolhouses open only during a few months of the year. The furniture was mere benches, the course of study mainly the "three r's" and the teachers very poorly compensated. Even by the 1850's some district schools were open for only a few months in the winter and for as brief a time in summer.
Training and examining common school graduates to become teachers was one of the chief duties of the county superintendent. According to Superintendent T. C. Carothers, in the spring of 1859 a county institute, held in Beaver, was attended by sixty to seventy teachers. The professors from Beaver Academy assisted in the program. He noted also in his report that, because of an increase in pupils, the average cost of teaching each pupil per month had decreased from fifty-three and two-thirds cents in 1855 to forty-eight cents in 1858-1859. By then, the majority of schoolhouses in the county were of frame construction. Teachers of less than one year's experience numbered ninety-one. The Union school building of New Brighton was the pride of the county, built at a cost of from eight to ten thousand dollars.
The vast expansion and development of educational institutions and programs in Beaver County is the subject of research for a committee of men and women sponsored by the Historical Research and Landmarks Foundation. Each of the fifteen districts in the county will be the subject of study for these historians of education. The results of their research and writing will be a publication, one of the projects aimed at reappraising our cultural heritage for the Bicentennial of our nation. The common school has become, perhaps, the outstanding public institution of our country.
Historians who are researching educational developments in their school districts include the following: M rs. Fred Ferry, Aliquippa-, Mrs. Beryl Piper and Kathryn Ross, Ambridge Area,- J. H. Thompson, Freedom Area-, Donald Kratzert, Hopewell Area; Dr. Charles Henderson, Midland; Lewis Blistan, Monaca; Mrs. Marjorie Mowry, New Brighton Area; Mrs. Clifford Grandey and Carl Walcott, Northeastern; Mrs. Robert K. Brown, Rochester Area-, Roland DeLaney, Western Beaver. Writers are needed for other School Districts. Belle Adams, Aliquippa, is coordinating and editing the work of the committee of writers.