Part 1:: There is an old adage, or a derivation of one, that goes something like: Give a man a fish and he can eat for a day. Teach him how to fish and he can eat for the rest of his life. The overt wisdom of this saw is almost absurd. While few of us fail to realise the importance of education in our world more than a few of us are inclined to take our education systems for-granted. And that, to be very honest, ain't good. The public schools in our nation are, despite some rather vocal opinions to the contrary, among the best on the planet. But the road there was hardly clear-cut. At least not in Vermilion, Ohio. The following is a breviary of that process.
As stated in a previous newspaper article, (Vermilion, Ohio Photojournal - 6-29-05) "Most of, if not all, Vermilion's early families migrated to the region from places in New York State and Connecticut on the heels of the American Revolution. As their basic needs for food and shelter were met their thoughts naturally turned to loftier matters. Among them was a school for their children..."
The Buildings: Records documenting the beginnings of formal schooling in (and around) Vermilion are both scarce and slightly obscure. Among the papers of Peter Cuddeback, the first village treasurer, is a hand written register denoting it as the "Day Book of the First School of Vermilion". The book bears the name of George R. Ezra Sprague and is dated 1814. The logical assumption is that classes were originally held in Sprague's log cabin home.
The very first formal school building in what would become Vermilion Village is said to have been located just to the west of the tip of where the westward break-wall of Vermilion's harbor entrance is today.
While there were schoolhouses in the township to the west and south this was the first known school building in the village proper. It was a log structure (c.1830) wherein records show that classes were taught by one Charity Smith during the 1840's. Among her pupils were (Captain) James Stone, Cory and Henry Parsons, Fred Lawless (Sr.), Charles Andrews, Ann Walker, and Katherine Sherod (Brooks). This school was likely claimed by the lake as early as the 1860's.
Four buildings followed the lake shore structure before the very substantial State Street School was built in 1874. One is said to have been located on the site later occupied by the aforementioned, Captain Stone's, home (I find this to be a rather nebulous site description). The next was a brick building that stood in the place where the Congregational Church, now Millet's Auction House, was built. The third was a wooden building later replaced by the Vermilion Township Hall and Opera House. And the fourth village school, known as "the Seminary", was situated in Hanover Square along Ferry and North Grand Streets.
A little mentioned fifth school also existed during the late 19th century. It is was said to be a "select school". Records show that it was operated by Mrs. F.W. Morgan in a room over Leonard's Store (another abstruse locale).
The brick school is mentioned in several histories about Vermilion. When the wood frame school that replaced it was no longer needed it was moved to Becker's building block company by the river. That site is currently the home of the Vermilion Boat Club. When the water-tower that once stood at Hanover Square was built the "Seminary" was moved to a lot on the east side of Grand Street just across the street from what is now Bailey's wonderful Vermilion Hardware.
The building in the picture, taken sometime in the 1960's, is the "Seminary". At the time of this photo it was being used by Miles Shilling as a taxi-stand and a small store. No more than a decade after this picture was taken all the old buildings on that block were razed.
In 1874 a four room brick school on State Street was built at the whopping cost of $18,000. And public education in the Village of Vermilion, Ohio headed toward the 20th century.
Part 2:: To Digress: to turn aside from the main subject of attention or course of an argument. As previously mentioned records pertaining to Vermilion's 19th century education systems are inclined to be somewhat clouded. I will attempt to clarify some of those evidences regarding the Vermilion Village school locales before moving on to the State Street School.
Formal accountings of the exact sites, movements, and dates of use of Vermilion's first two schoolhouses are particularly ambiguous. Some suggest that the first log school was in use from 1813-14 well into the 1840's. Other accounts submit that this school was abandoned in 1821, when the state authorized township trustees to allow support for public schools by imposing tax levies for that purpose. It was apparently replaced by a second school on a site later occupied by Captain L.W. Stone's home. In another account the site is described as being part of the Sherod property, and it is a frame - not a log - school building.
By 1840 a third school, in the Village Square (i.e. the site of the old Vermilion Township Hall), was very much in existence. Phoebe Goodell Judson, once a student there, gives mention of it as being in that place in her book A Pioneer's Search For An Ideal Home. Fragmented township records appear to indicate that the school predated the building of the first Congregational Church (completed in 1843) in the square. It is, therefore, very likely that any school, when located in the square, was always located on or very near the present site of the old Vermilion Township Hall and Opera House. Several reports indicate that a fourth school - a framed structure - was also located on this site and, as previously mentioned, later moved to a new site along the river.
The precise disposition of the fifth school called the "Seminary" is also problematic. Built in Hanover Square in 1855 it was later moved to a new home on Grand Street. In one report the school is (as previously portrayed) identified as the shop where Miles Shilling's Taxi Service was later located. And in another report it is situated in the two-story building (next to the taxi stand) that was later partially occupied by Pat's Antique's and Trading Post. That particular building, incidentally, was also the first home of the Vermilion News, and Whitmore's Paramount Laundry. In any case, this school was used by the "lower grades" until the turn of the century.
My initial observations (i.e. portraying these matters as being abstruse, ambiguous, clouded, nebulous and/or obscure) are not, as one can see, exaggerated. Perhaps the most reliable accounting of these subjects can be found in local resident Betty Trinter's book(s) The Way It Was, and the 125th Anniversary Historical Vermilion Edition of the Vermilion News. Yet even therein are some references foggy. Yet, as I emphasized from the outset, "The road" as it pertains to the development of our schools is/was, "hardly clear-cut".
Tracing that history from the building of the stately (pun intended) 4 room State Street School with its ornate bell tower (pictured) in 1874 through the early 21 century is, as you will see, a less ambiguous devoir.
Part 3: Prior to 1821, when the state authorized its townships to levy taxes to support public education, Ohio's early systems were funded by the individual families of the children who attended each school.
It was [logically] the custom to hire teachers according to their demonstrative academic abilities. Few had attended a college/university. And it was not unusual for some of the students to be nearly the same age as their teacher(s). Oftentimes males were the preferred teachers in the winter season because that is when the older students, who were no longer needed in the fields, returned to school and they were inclined to be of a more spirited humor. A good paycheck was 75c a week, or a quantity of corn, a beverage fermented from the corn, or some form of labor.
After 1821 the townships were able to appoint a Director to make monthly inspection tours of each school and report on curriculum, attendance, and the physical condition of each building. Vermilion Township Schools were spaced some 3 miles apart and were numbered. The village school was always No. 1. Some others were: Cuddeback School, No. 2 (on the corner of Risdon and West Shore/Lake Road); Poyer School No. 7; and Crane School No. 5, etc.
In 1851 Vermilion formed its first Board of Education. In many respects this activity signalled the start of our present formal education system(s). The board set uniform rules and guidelines/standards and courses of instruction that were to be applied throughout the township.
In 1873 the school system was reorganized and a capacious 4 room brick High School was built on State Street the following year. (As previously stated it cost a whopping $18,000 to build.) Students from rural areas that wished to attend this school either walked, came by horse, or found board in the village. Youngsters in the lower grades continued their schooling at the "Seminary" until new rooms were added (pictured) to both the back and front of the State Street building to accommodate them.
Each of the lower grades occupied one room in the building with one teacher. Gym classes and basketball games took place in a wooden outbuilding directly east of the school.
For reasons unknown (at least to me) no one graduated from the school until 1889 when a class of four young ladies, Edith Leimbach (Hageman), Alice Nieding (Reimenschneider), Georgia Brummet (Daley), and Martha Forwick (Moyer) received diplomas. Graduation ceremonies were held before an ample audience in the Opera House on the 2nd story of the Vermilion Township Hall. Most of, if not all, these ceremonies were conducted in the Opera House until 1927.
School supervisors prior to 1881 were a Mr. Lee, Mr. Cummings, Mr. Steele, and a Mr. Yarick. After that time J.O. Versoy assumed management of the system for 12 years, and was followed by Charles F. Gove (1896); C.W. Sloan (1899); J.C. Seeman (1910); A.L. Irey (1914); R.F. Sellers (1917); W.H. Mitchell (1924); and G.C. Imhoff (1926). During these years both the village and student population experienced a steady increase and the need for a new school became obvious.
George Synder (1946) was about to become Superintendent and Cletus K. DeWitt was Principal when the Vermilion Board of Education selected the Dayton, Ohio architectural firm of Walker and Norwick, along with W.A. Rabold of Canton to be architects of a new High School in mid December of 1924. Both Snyder and Dewitt (who was principal under Synder and eventually replaced him as Superintendent) would maintain full-time teaching positions until work on the new school along East South Street was completed in 1928. When the elementary grades moved to the new school in 1939 the assumption was that Vermilion had entered the modern era of education and all the educational needs of the children had been satisfied. But that was to be only a very fleeting happenstance.
Part 4: The land was situated just to the south of the muddy lane villagers understandably called South Street. It was bordered on the east and west, respectively, by Washington and Decatur Streets, and would likely have been equally divided by Perry Street if that path had not ended at South Street. During a better part of the 19th century great oaks, so common to the territory, grew wild and mingled boughs with an occasional elm, ash, crab apple, and maple tree casting a chorus of their quiet shadows across the earth. Later the wood would be cleared and become the "Pelton Farm". In the early 1920's the Vermilion Board of Education bought the farm, and again cleared and levelled the land from South Street to the Nickel Plate Railroad tracks to the south. Here they built a new village school they would call South Street School. And here Vermilion's education system, for all intents and purposes, genuinely entered the 20th century.
South Street School officially opened its doors to the upper six grades (approximately 250 pupils) in the system for the 1927-28 school year at a cost of $245,000. As was previously mentioned the VHS Class of 1927 used the school's new auditorium for their graduation exercises before the official school opening. This included the building containing an auditorium/gymnasium, a home economics department, cafeteria, a school shop, a science laboratory, and numerous other amenities not contained in the old State Street facility. In addition to this the school property also featured an athletic field and room for several baseball diamonds. It was, to use a rather bromidic idiom, state-of-the-art.
At about the same time all the rural schools were closed. Six motorized busses had been purchased to transport some 200 children in from the country each day. And then, sometime in the mid-1930's, Vermilion's education board determined the facilities in the State Street School to be inadequate for the lower grades and South Street School was enlarged. Early Autumn of 1939 found all Vermilion students housed in a single building once again. The State Street building would never be used as a school again.
Inside State Street School c.1934
South Street School c.1954
During the early forties and through the war years the school population grew and South Street School was enlarged several times. While these attempts to keep pace with the growth experienced were commendable they were not enough. Finally a decision was made to build a new high school. In the meantime, however, some of the lower grades found temporary homes at the Vermilion Township Hall, and the First Congregational Church next door (now the Millet Auction House).
On April 12, 1953 a brand new Vermilion High School (now VIS) was dedicated during a formal ceremony where a new flag pole was presented to the school by one current and three former VHS students. Representing those classes were Carroll Lydic Harrison (1953), Don Haber (1951), Mrs. Janice Sennhenn (1950), and Nancy Tarrant Emery (1949).
Decatur Street School c.1953
Grades K-8 remained at the South Street facility. Due to the fact that the new high school did not initially have a study-hall, industrial arts facility, cafeteria, or music room high school students regularly moved between the buildings for some classes.
One rather unique account of the students' move to the new high school concerns the way in which the library was moved. A brigade of students positioned themselves about five feet from one another in a line between the two buildings. All the books were passed from student to student until the entire library had been moved.
And whilst Vermilion's education system had, by this time, come a very long way from that log school now claimed by Lake Erie further changes were in the wind - and they would prove to be very memorable.
Part 5: That wonderful American humorist Mark Twain (1835-1910) once quipped "Get your facts first, and then you can distort them as much as you please." And so this brief narrative of my life experience with the South Street School follows:
I still dream of the school at night. I know the halls. The tan brick walls cool to the touch, dutifully decorated with untouchable red fire alarms and extinguishers. The shiny marblesque floors. The three bunyanesque stairwells. The ebb and flow of thunderous laughter and applause rolling from the gymnasium/auditorium echoing from boiler room to roof shaking the unshakeable. The aroma of lunch being prepared in the cafeteria at the southern end of the building. The unintelligible banter of the lunch-ladies. The random clatter of their utensils as they work. Somewhere a cough. Somewhere a song. And then a bell followed by a pure and unbelievable silence.
South Street School is my school. I believe that if one spends enough time in one place the rule of squatter's rights applies, and one is entitled to ownership. South Street School is, therefore, my school. I spent seven years there. (I attended Second Grade at the old Congregational Church whilst the new high school was being built.)
I remember all my teachers and most of, but not all, my classmates. In fact, I knew virtually everyone in the school system. Those 7 years preceded the greater part of the migration of Ford workers from Massachusetts, New York, and Tennessee so most faces were familiar.
Mr. James "Jim" Sanford was Principal during those years. (And, yes, he was partially responsible for the housing development that would eventually become known as Valley View. Ergo; Sanford Street.) Mr. Sanford had the biggest hands of any man on earth. I know because I had the misfortune of having one of them touch my backside at high velocity as payment in full for bringing a water-pistol to school. He was actually a very kind person. I just got what I deserved. It was a hard lesson taught and learned.
My teachers from 1st to 8th grade were all great, but there are some who are very memorable. Miss Kropf, my 6th grade history teacher, was both a phenomenal teacher and person. She was a former Marine, and she ran a no-nonsense classroom. She personified the idiom: Walk softly and carry a big stick.
Mr. Harold Welker was another unforgettable mentor. One reason for this is the fact that he was my teacher (in one capacity or another) from 7th grade through my senior year in high school. He was always well organized and knew his subject matter thoroughly. He also arranged for class swimming outings in the winter and offered some of the boys temporary day jobs on his parents' farm in Coshocton, Ohio during the summer. He was serious about teaching.
Others were the Chadwick sisters; Annie the Librarian, and Mary the French teacher. Miss Mary taught me enough fundamental French to be useful in my later studies of English literature. And in Miss Annie's library I quietly read the biographies of many a notable American from the Presidents (some then yet to be), to the great inventors and entrepreneurs, to the notable labor leaders such as Walter Ruether and Jimmy Hoffa. I learned a great deal. Does anyone know that Richard Nixon, for instance, had initial aspirations of becoming an F.B.I. agent?
And it was from my life at South Street School that I also came face to face with human frailty and mortality. During a 1957-58 outbreak of the Asian Flu my best friend, Billy Baker, fell ill and lost his life at the age of 12/13. Then on the afternoon of the High School and Junior High Christmas Dances class presidents of both the Senior and Jr. High School classes, John Bushong and Onyx Falls respectively, were killed at the State Street rail crossing in a tragic car-train mishap. They were transporting flowers for the dances.
Pictured is Mrs. Langfitt's (Yes, the street name is taken from her family name) 4th Grade Class at South Street c.1954-55. They are some of those who shared my aforementioned dreams, memories, and tragedies at South Street School. Most are now gone to other places and climes. But there is little doubt in my mind that any will ever forget.
Part Last: As stated in Part 4 of this essay (Vermilion Ohio Photojournal 12-01-05) Vermilion's increase in population after W.W.II was such that the education board decided that a new high school was needed to keep pace with the demands it placed upon the system. That school was built just to the south of the South Street facility facing Decatur Street and was, logically enough, known as Decatur Street (High) School. It's doors were informally opened to students on February 18, 1953.
The accompanying photograph was taken by local resident, and long-time Vermilion Schools custodian, Glenn Risdon from the roof of South Street School. While the photo bears no date it was very likely taken in the early summer of 1953. As is obvious to those familiar with the building today (as Vermilion's Intermediate School) several additions were made in subsequent years. Classroom space was increased to accommodate 500 students. Included with that space was room for an expanded library. A cafeteria, new administrative offices, business, and science classrooms were added to the north end of the building in 1960-61. On the southern end fine arts, home economics, manual arts, and music classrooms were added.
During most of these years Cletus K. DeWitt was the system Superintendent, Alan "Al" Schroeder was the VHS Principal, and James "Jim" Sanford was South Street Principal. Bill Haber, Chuck Barber, and Glenn Risdon were the principal school custodians. The high school faculty was comprised of 26 teachers.
In the meantime little Vermilion, Ohio continued to grow and, so too, did the numbers in the elementary grades. In 1956 St. Mary's Church opened the first parochial school in the village. This school accommodated some 200 students in grades 1 through 6. Two years later Lake Elementary School was built on Aldrich Road in the eastern portion of town. And three years after that Valley View Elementary School opened on Beechview Drive amidst the sprawling housing subdivision of the same name.
And as these elementary school populations matured; and as the Lorain Ford Assembly Plant expanded its workforce and more families moved to the area it again became obvious that a larger high school would be necessary to accommodate the numbers. In 1968 Sailorway High School opened, closely followed by the construction of Sailorway Middle School nearby.
Close to 200 years have now passed since Ezra Sprague kept a small school in his log cabin home in the wilderness that became Vermilion, Ohio. Nearly 200 years have passed since he made the first entries in the school register. School buildings have come, and school buildings have gone. Thousands and thousands of young people have gone to those schools empty of knowledge and come away full. They have become doctors, lawyers, clergy, engineers, soldiers, business owners, inventors, teachers, writers, farmers - and the list goes on ad infinitum.
The schools have done that which they were intended to do. And they have done it well. When modifications were needed they were accomplished. Vermilion's education system, with a very proliferant history, has for almost 2 centuries responded decisively to the needs of its students and their families. That is unlikely to change anytime in the near future.
Ref: The Way It Was - Vermilion 1807-1984; Betty Trinter, 1984; 125th Anniversary Edition - The Vermilion News, 1962; Special Thanks to Glenn Risdon
12/11/05
12:36 PM
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