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| Drawing: typical small one-room schoolhouse |
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| The Cooksville School class with teacher Lillian Erickson, c.1900. |
Recently, Laura Stokes of
Tucson, Arizona, and Griff Stokes of Spokane, Washington, provided the
Cooksville Archives with an interesting story of their ancestors’ settling in
the Town of Porter in the 1840s.
Their great-great grandfather, Charles
Stokes (1812-1891), who had emigrated from England to eastern America, settled
on a farm near the southern edge of the Town of Porter (about 5 miles south of
Cooksville) in the Wisconsin Territory in 1841. His farmstead was located along
the stagecoach route between Janesville and Madison and was where he married
Ann Eliza Kimble and where he claimed to have erected the first frame house in
the township. [He may have gotten his sawn lumber from a Janesville mill, or
possible from the closer Cooksville sawmill established in 1842.]
The Stokes eventually had
thirteen children, two of which died in infancy. In 1917, one of the sons, William Henry
Stokes, born in 1845, wrote a brief autobiography, later revised by family
members, which contains recollections of his life in Porter Township, as well
as later in Iowa, Minnesota and South Dakota. It was William Stokes’ two great
grandchildren who recently donated a copy to the Cooksville Archives.
A portion of William Stokes’ memoir
concerns his school days as well as some of the daily chores of the Stokes
children in the 1840s and 1850s. His descriptions of his early schoolhouse
building and his teachers—and the corporal punishment sometimes meted out— are
vivid and undoubtedly accurate.
Stokes writes: “The principal of
this narrative [himself, William Stokes] spent his boyhood days in the town of
Porter where he lived til the age of nineteen. Was educated in the district
schools and my boyhood was usually that which falls to the lot of the average
country boy. My parents did not think that children just came into the world to
play and frolic but they thoroughly carried out the Puritan idea that children
should do their share of the work, which I commenced to do at an early age. I
remember at the age of ten, I had to help do the chores and milked seven cows.
“Some of the boys said that I
had the easiest job because I would have the milking done and was at the house
ready for breakfast before they got through their work but all seemed to be
very well satisfied and we got our chores done in time to attend the District
School, a mile from home, the first built in our township. [Possibly the White
Star School, no longer standing.]
“….This was not a log school house
as the early settlers of Rock County, Wisconsin, were highly favored in having
hard-wood saw mills. Our little school was built from the lumber sawed by the
little mill, five miles away. The school house was built in a rectangle,
probably thirty to thirty two feet long, and eighteen to twenty feet wide. It
was built in the usual manner with joists and studding, oak siding covered with
clap boards, with oak shakes for shingles, and the flooring was of oak. The
outside was weather beaten as it had never been painted. The interior: in the
center, towards the front of the school house was a huge box stove, something
like five feet long, by two feet wide and perhaps two and one- half feet high.
There was a door in the front, wide enough to take in four foot wood. Surrounding
the stove about four feet from the outer edge was a wooden frame made out of
two by four foot studding.
“The inside of this frame was
filled with dirt for fire protection. On the top was a large spider or vessel
which was usually kept full of water. The seats parallel with the stove were
made of slabs with wooden legs. The front seats were made lower than the back
ones, being graded to accommodate the children according to their sizes and the
length of their legs. There were no backs to these seats, nor were any deemed
necessary to support the body. These seats occupied about half or a little more
of the school house. Then came a seat crossways of the room for our
recitations. Just in front of this was the crack which we all had to toe during
our spelling and other recitations. In front of this and to the rear of the
room was a raised platform, perhaps one foot or more in height to accommodate
the teacher and the writing desks of the advanced pupils. The teacher had no
desk but a common chair. At the right, facing the rear at the end of the room
was the blackboard where the written work was demonstrated. The A.B.C. class
and the highest classes were all accommodated, seated and gave recitations in
the same room. This arrangement altho not perfect, had its advantages as it
gave the younger classes the opportunity of listening to the recitations of the
older classes and by this means, they were often qualified to enter the
advanced classes before they had commenced the studies of the higher grades. In
my own individual case, I think I learned more and got along faster by
listening to the recitations of the older classes than in any other way….. In
this way, I learned the multiplication tables and at the age of seven received
a present from my mother for knowing them perfectly.
“Our school house was in very close
proximity to the country burying ground which was probably two acres in extent.
The south line extended along the Janesville & Madison road. According to
my earliest recollections there passed four stage coaches each way over this
road. These four horse coaches carried the mail from Milwaukee via Janesville
to Madison, Wisconsin. The passing of the mail coach was an event which livened
up our otherwise usual quiet lives. These coaches ran each way in relays, some
would have black horses, some white and some bay. These drivers were experts.
The horses usually went on the dead run, only stopping a few moments at the
post office to allow passengers to get on and off. The crack of the driver's
whip could be heard at some distance and many a boy received a smarting cut
when attempting to climb on the back to steal a ride. This also was the main
road from Mineral Point. Almost daily, there were large wagons passing by,
loaded with lead and drawn by from six to eight ox teams. Their camping place
was only a short distance from our school house and after they were gone, we
children use to look over the grounds to find anything that might have been
left.
“If the teachers who taught school
in the days of old could be lined up in a row, I think they would compare very
favorably with those of today. However most of the teachers were of the sterner
sex. Only occasionally were women allowed to teach. Once in a while in the
summer schools, we had lady teachers. I think my first teacher was a Miss
Hitchcock. She was an old maid. I remember very well coming home the first day
of school and describing the teacher. This description was not at all
flattering…. Mortimer Maine was my next
teacher, a gentleman of rare ability and a splendid instructor. He had the
happy faculty of getting the good will of his pupils. I remember very well how
good he was to me, a shy, delicate, very timid little youngster, with a thin
face and large deep set eyes. How easily he ingratiated himself into my
affections.
“I remember the whistles he used to
make for me. When t came to spelling the silent ‘i,’ I was warned by a slight
wink of the eye, which I soon caught onto. This might have been called
partiality, but I did not study this quality of the human mind at that date. I
knew his assistance and the wink of his eye would push me to the head of the
spelling class, where the one that missed the words would have to go to the
foot and the good speller worked himself toward the head of the class.”
Young Stokes soon had much sterner
teachers.
[To be continued:
Tough Discipline in the Schoolhouse.]
(Thanks
to Laura Stokes, Tucson, Arizona, and Griff Stokes, Spokane,
Washington,
for sharing their ancestor’s story of settling in the Town of Porter.)
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