Saturday, June 14, 2014

More School Days Stories: The Stokes Family (Part 1) by Larry Reed




Drawing: typical small one-room schoolhouse
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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