The
Higgins children attended the Center Ridge School located in Section 10. They attended this country school whenever
they could but home duties took priority and sometimes they could not afford
the cost of tuition.[1] Even
though the State of Illinois passed legislation in 1825 outlining a free school
system paid for through taxation, the residents of Schuyler County preferred to
pay school tuition rather than be subject to school taxation. The 1827 amended law included the provision
that “no person should be taxed for the maintenance of any school unless his
consent was first obtained in writing.”[2] By the time Daniel’s children attended Center
Ridge School, tuition based schools were the norm. Their school was a rude log
building; furnished with slab seats and desks[3]
and undoubtedly privies (out-houses) in the schoolyard.
If the
students did not have a horse or cart to ride, they would walk to school to
make the 8:00 a.m. start time. The school
day typically concluded at 4:00 p.m. During the one-hour lunch breaks, the students
usually ate corn cake baked in a Dutch oven.
Generally, there were two 15 minutes recesses during the day. The students studied
“Arithmetic, grammar, spelling,
reading, writing, (and I mean writing - not scribbling or printing) history of
community and state, and later the United States. School opened each morning
with a song or two and a recitation of the Lord’s Prayer. This prayer was not
rattled off but repeated slowly and meaningfully when the teacher was really a
good one.”[4]
The five-month school year started after the completed harvest. Children younger than nine years old,
attended a spring term but once they turned nine, it was customary for them to
drop out of school and work on the farm during the spring semester. These one-room country schools generally did
not have the students separated by grades but rather by like ability to master
the subject.[5] In 1883, Jackson Higgins sold some of his
land for the new Lower Center School.[6]
[2]
Howard F. Dyson “First School in 1826”, Rushville
Times, 1918, http://schuyler.illinoisgenweb.org (accessed April 10, 2013)
[3] Dyson,
Historical Encyclopedia, 841
[4]
C.B Hedgcock, “Round Prairie School Remembrances”, Schuyler County IL Gen Web Project http://schuyler.illinoisgenweb.org/schuylernewhome/volunteers/schoolletter.html
(accessed April 10, 2013)
[5]
Hedgcock, Round Prairie School
[6]
Museum, Schuyler County, 69
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