History of Seattle, Volume 1 by Clarence B. Bagley

Author:Clarence B. Bagley [Bagley, Clarence B.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Geschichte
Publisher: Jazzybee Verlag
Published: 2017-10-12T22:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER VIII. EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITIES

The resistless progress of Seattle, like that of other cities grown great in the making, has been measured by the wealth of its homes, the health and intellectual vigor of its children. Seattle began with a home, and because it reared itself on the foundation of family dwellings and made itself the stamping ground for children, it has ever been ready for the task of new accomplishments with a spirit of youthful fearlessness in the face of every adversity.

To say that Seattle is a city of homes and children means first of all that it has a goodly supply of schoolhouses. For wherever healthy children abound there are certain to be school books, stern school masters and all the burdensome instruments for giving youth its first ideas and ambitions. And it speaks well for the educational institutions of Seattle today that wherever her staunch pioneers and builders have reached the end of their road, the boys and girls they have trained always have come to the front, eager and ready with new ideas to take up the task of their fathers and carry it to its fulfillment.

At the very start the clear, vigorous Puget Sound air supplied health to Seattle's first youngsters. The sturdy pioneers did the rest. Almost before the early settlers had put the finishing touches on their rude homes, there was a school in the village. From the start, Seattle become a center of intellectual activity. As rapidly as new homes were made and new children came to fill them, extensive accommodations were added until today Seattle surpasses many of the older cities in the efficiency of its public-school systems, its libraries and its university.

In the daily figuring of sums in the first school which Seattle made for itself, one lone boy held his own among a bevy of thirteen girls. The boy's name was George N. McConaha.

To add to the setting of Seattle's first institution of learning, the thirteen-to-one classes were held in a building which was erected primarily for the comfort of the bachelors of the community. The place, Bachelors' Hall, was built as a single men's boarding house in 1853 by W. G. Latimer, whose son, N. H. Latimer, is now president of the Dexter Horton National Bank. The school was opened in the spring of 1854 by Mrs. D. E. Blaine, soon after her arrival in the settlement with her husband. It was known at the time as a “subscription school,” or one in which the parents paid a stipulated sum for the education of their children.

The enrollment shows that the girls (excluding George) who first attended were Mary Mercer, Susan Mercer, Eliza Mercer, Alice Mercer, Ursula McConaha, Laura Bell, Olive Bell, Virginia Bell, Rebecca Horton, Leonora Denny, Loretta Denny, Hulda Phillips, Ruby Willard.

The words of Mrs. Blaine many years later when she recalled her pioneer experience as a school teacher are characteristic of the whole-hearted way in which the city's fathers and mothers did their preparatory work of planning

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