------------------ Reply Separator -------------------- Originally From: "Wm. Deginder" <drdeg1@pol.net> Subject: township school tax? Date: 07/24/2000 06:05pm Fellow Listers, in another county I found answers to questions I sent to The List a few days ago: "I have been searching township maps, school lists, diaries, tax reports and other likely sources I can find in the Tri-Counties data. On township maps, I thought I saw public schools located so all children could walk to classes. In early 1800s were children kicked out of elementary school if father failed to pay the township taxes? "A Tri-Counties Lister has sent me copies of a Township Assessor's reports for 1823 & 1824 that list "Poor children sent home because parents are not able to pay". The name of each father appears in the column on the left. The name and the age or birth date of each child appear in the columns to the right. "Would an assessor be recording "children returned" or "children sent home" if the children were in a school run by a church or a farmers' association? "Can anyone tell me why the word "triennial" follows the year-date on each report? ( as in "...1823-Triennial" ) .... from Centre County, Pennsylvania 15 Historical Sketches of Our 200 Years by Douglas Mcneal #12 - Keeping Pace with Government and Education The county's most visible elected officer for its first 50 years was the high sheriff. Early anecdotes suggest that the sheriff acted on behalf of the gentry to hold the working class in check. Sheriff James Duncan in December 1802, at the county's first hanging, used his "weighted riding whip" to subdue an effort by ironworkers to free the prisoner after the rope snapped on the first try. The sheriff was backed by a line of sword-wielding gentlemen on horseback, led by Capt. James Potter. Five of the seven-member posse that pursued and captured highwayman David Lewis in 1820 were still mounted gentry. Schools became the great equalizer. The earliest schools, often church-based, charged $1 to $2 a month per child tuition to support the teacher. After 1809 "paupers" were educated free but families hated declaring themselves paupers. Fewer than 200 children a year got a free education. It was estimated that only one child in 20 statewide attended school in 1830. The Common Schools Act of 1834 made school free for everyone, but many townships, including Centre County's Haines, Gregg, Miles, Half Moon, and Potter, rejected the necessary tax as long as they could. Germans feared the state would cleanse schools of their language; Quakers felt church schools were adequate; and the rich hated to pay more taxes than the poor. Chaos reigned in one-room schoolhouses until 1856 when Secretary Curtin created County School Superintendents and State Normal Schools. For about a century from the establishment of the office, County School Superintendents replaced the sheriff as first in visibility and power. Until State Normal Schools got going, the Superintendent taught aspiring teachers in County Normal Schools each summer, then examined them in the fall. Even after the County Normal was dropped in 1879, County Superintendents certified teachers and buildings, and set school taxes with local directors. T. Ellwood Sones, the last county superintendent, oversaw district consolidation in 1952 and the disappearance of his own job in 1965. Only since the second world war have the Commissioners emerged as county leaders and marshals of the array of human services. Public health had begun in 1906 when school nurses screened all children with standard tests for the first time. Welfare programs took over from the Overseers of the Poor in the Great Depression. At an accelerating rate since the 1940s, Social Security, regional medical and retirement centers, aging and home health agencies, elder hostels and wonder drugs have turned the confinement of Aged Relatives into the liberation of Senior Citizens. For the county's first 195 years, bells and sirens summoned neighbors together in an emergency. Now a 911 call assembles trained EMR vehicles, Medevac helicopters and their auxiliary supports. At the site they greet each other within a perimeter of pick ups and emergency vehicles holding spectators out of the way. Updated April 13, 2000