GEORGE C. CROUT
Albert B. Graham: School Days
of a Schoolmaster
Albert B. Graham was born March 13,
1868, or as he expressed it in
his own wry sense of humor, "came
up between two stalks of corn on
the last farm on Route 36, west of St.
Paris in Champaign County."1
From as early as he could remember, he
had aspirations of being a
schoolmaster. When he first revealed
his secret ambition, his
Scotch-Presbyterian father remarked,
"What a thing for a lad to decide
when there is a mortgage on the
farm."2
Joseph A. Graham never lived to see his
son realize this ambition, for
in a tragic fire in February 1879, he
lost his life, leaving the
eleven-year-old boy to care for his
younger sister and mother.3 Young
Albert Graham went to work, taking on
any odd job he could find in the
community-serving as hired man, sawing
wood, doing chores around
the blacksmith shop, and even helping
his mother with the sewing which
she did for the neighbors.4 Yet
the strong-willed boy never lost sight of
his goal-to achieve a good education
and a teacher's certificate.
How well he succeeded in doing this is
shown by his career as a
country schoolmaster, which began in
Johnson Township, Champaign
County. By 1890 he was Superintendent
of the Lena-Conover School,
then went on to Terre Haute as
Principal and Superintendent of the
one-room schools of Mad River Township.
In August 1900, he was
employed as Superintendent of Schools,
Springfield Township, Clark
County.5
Mr. Crout, an educator and former
principal, co-authored an elementary school
textbook on Ohio history. He also has
written a biography of Albert Graham.
1. Columbus Ohio State Journal, June
20, 1951.
2. Jean Harshman, "Father of
4-H," Columbus Sunday Dispatch Magazine, February
23, 1947, 22-23.
3. Albert B. Graham, "The Story of
the Burning of Our Farm Home," The Papers of
Albert B. Graham, privately owned by
Helen Graham Baker, Middletown, Ohio. Graham
was a fine photographer and took
pictures of Ohio rural life and schools and children. This
collection was given to The Ohio
Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, by him. It includes
2,100 negatives on glass plates and
1,200 prints, with photographs of 200 one-room schools
and 150 of early centralized schools.
4. Fannie Bosler, "A. B. Graham:
Educator. Founder of 4-H Clubs," Mimeographed,
Centennial Committee, Graham School
Celebration, March 10, 1968, 1-2.
5. Austin Showman, "A. B. Graham
Set Stage for World-Wide 4-H Movement," Ohio
Farm Bureau News, XXXIX (January 1960), 20-21.
116 OHIO HISTORY
Through his innovative teaching methods,
and his belief in a
community-type school, Graham soon
gained the reputation of being a
promising schoolman. Having worked as a
farm hand as a youth, he
recognized the difference between good
farming practices and poor ones
based on ignorance or superstition.6
He believed strongly that science
offered salvation for the American
farmer, and he thought the best way
to see the applications of science to
agriculture was through young
people, in whom he had great faith. He
once remarked that "young
people are all God has to make grownups
out of."7
He further believed that the best way to
reach the young people was
through a club program, which offered
both knowledge and fellowship.
As he went into his new position in
Clark County, although he had
formulated plans for such a program
carefully, he was wise enough to
take things slowly, for he did not want
to arouse opposition. His
philosophy was based on a parable drawn
from his rural background:
"It's like transferring a queen bee
to a new hive, before you release her,
she has to take on the odor of the hive,
so the workers will want to feed
her instead of stinging her to
death."8 In simpler terms he once
explained that "I was new, so I
didn't want to start right out with my
unusual theories, I wanted first to get
the confidence of the people."9
Assured that he had gained this, he
issued his call for all young people
interested in joining a club devoted to
the study of agriculture to meet in
the basement of the Clark County
Courthouse on January 15, 1902.10
With this meeting began the world's
first boys and girls' agricultural
club, which developed into the national
and international 4-H Club of
today with chapters in over seventy-five
nations of the world and
enrolling over eight million young
people.11
This new club work was to lead the Ohio
schoolmaster into other
fields, first with The Ohio State
University as its first Director of
Agricultural Extension, and then to the
United States Department of
Agriculture. Although most of his
writing was devoted to producing
official pamphlets for the University
and the Department of Agriculture,
before his death at ninety-one, on
January 14, 1960, he wrote a detailed
record of his school days in Ohio,
covering the period between 1874 and
1885. Based on these manuscripts, a
picture of the education of this
period emerges.
6. Janet Coate, "Tribute to a
Pioneer," The Agricultural Student, LXIV (March
1958), 13.
7. Dayton Daily News, March 23, 1961.
8. George Laycock, "He Started the
4-H," Ford Farming, Winter 1958, 19-22.
9. Harshman, "Father," 22.
10. A. B. Graham, "How We Happened
To Do It," 4-H Life, June 1949, 14.
11. Franklin M. Reck, The 4-H Story (Ames,
1951), 11-16.
Albert B. Graham 117 |
|
The Graham farm was located in Champaign County, Ohio, one-eighth of a mile east of the Miami-Champaign county line. It was two miles to the schoolhouse to which the boy was legally assigned, and only one mile to Miami County's Allen School District. During the rainy season the dirt road to the one school was almost impassable, while the Allen school was on a well-graded, graveled road. So Albert was enrolled in the Allen School on a tuition basis of one dollar per month.12 The Allen school was a two-room brick building. Graham once described it: The desks were made by a local carpenter and were sufficiently spacious that three little fellows could occupy one seat. There were evidences that the desks had been given to embryonic wood carvers, who had practiced letter making. The stove was of the ordinary box type with a pipe running two-thirds the length of the room. The erasers were mostly made of sheepskin, tacked to a wooden block or a heavy piece of felt tacked to a block. Drinking water was carried in a pail from nearby homes. This was always a job for two for the bucket of water had to be carried in the middle of a pole, at each end of which was a youngster who had been especially favored by being called out to go for the water. It was also a mark of special favor to get to pass the water. There seemed to be no acquaintance with bacteria in that day for no thought was given to drinking from the same cup. This was called the tin-cup method of passing colds around. What was not used was poured back into the bucket.13
12. Graham, "My First School," Graham Papers. 13. Ibid. Other reminiscences of this school were reported in an interview with Graham in the St. Paris Dispatch, May 28, 1953. |
118 OHIO HISTORY
Young Albert Graham was assigned to the
beginner's class. He noted
that "this class sat on a low
plain board bench without a back, and as
each one was called he proceeded to the
teacher's side and read from the
book which was placed on her knees. The
process of word learning
began. From an old red chart, about 12
by 15 inches, I learned to know
the capitals and lower case letters. I
learned to read simple sentences
with words very seldom having more than
one syllable."l4
All was not work, as Graham recalled.
"The games played by most of
the small boys were such as racing with
stick horses, building jails from
fence rails taken from Allen's rail
fence adjoining the school property.
The old swimming hole in Sam Yates'
field was always a temptation at
noon time to steal away longer than we
could travel the distance back to
the schoolhouse before one
o'clock." The most common games played
were listed as "Anthony Over"
(throwing the ball over the
schoolhouse), round town, scrub
baseball, prisoner's base, wood tag,
stone tag, fox and geese in winter,
three deep, blackman,
drop-the-handkerchief, and breakout.
The teacher did not have a
handbell, as Graham recalled, and the
"children were called from the
playground by ... [the] rapping on the
weatherboarding with ... [the
teacher's] fists or with a
stick."15
After two months the term ended, and he
was enrolled in a
subscription school held in a room at
the Masonic Hall in Lena, with the
tuition the same as at the Allen
School. Of this term he wrote: "I was
making staggering attempts to read the
first few pages of McGuffey's
First Reader. I had a small slate which
probably cost five cents and the
half of an ordinary sized slate pencil.
My father would only permit me to
have half the slate pencil for if I
lost it I would still have the other half to
fall back on. I recall that my first
efforts were made by copying what
Miss Selman [the teacher] had written
at the top of the slate.... I learned
to count up to 100 and could write most
of the numbers by taking both
sides of my slate."16
After the second two-month term,
Schoolmaster Frank Smith began
another subscription school in the same
room, and for the first time
Graham encountered a male teacher and a
strict disciplinarian. He
recalled two of his older classmates
whispering and looked up to see that
in his teacher's hand was a blackboard
eraser covered with sheepskin,
which he instantly whirled and threw at
one boy, hitting him on the head.
"That settled such conversations
for the winter."17
14. Graham, "My First School,"
Graham Papers.
15. Ibid.
16. Graham, "My Second
Teacher," Ibid.
17. Ibid.
Albert B. Graham 119 |
|
"It was in his school that I completed my McGuffey's First Reader," recalled Graham. It was here also that Graham was "encouraged to draw and to print," and to notice "little things in nature." Smith did this by keeping a question box in the room, and on Friday afternoons it was opened and such questions as this were discussed: "Does a cow get up on her fore legs first or upon her hind legs? Why is it necessary to cut shavings and fine kindling to start a fire?"18 These three sessions ended Graham's first school year-probably equal to about six months of schooling. During the summer of 1875, he learned that Frank Smith would teach the first school term at the Union-Carmody School, the district in which the Graham family resided. He looked forward to seeing his schoolmaster again whom he looked upon as a friend. "Since I had attended a subscription school taught by him, and he had visited our home on the farm, we felt we had an acquaintance which no other pupil
18. Ibid. |
120 OHIO HISTORY
in school would have," he wrote.
"While he was a rather strict
disciplinarian, he did not resort to the
whip, which was the reputation of
many other teachers at that time."19
While Graham knew the teacher, he had
never seen the school, and
was surprised when he first saw the
small, one-room long building. It
was about eighteen by twenty feet, and
adjoined a burying ground. He
recalled:
In it were the usual furnishings, slab
seats on peg legs, a teacher's book-shelf
on two pins driven into the logs or
between them, a wooden water bucket, a
fireplace, and pegs on the walls on
which to hang clothes. The few textbooks,
Webster's Blue-backed speller, the Bible
as an advanced reader, [John L.]
Talbot[t]'s arithmetic, were on the slab
seats or on the puncheon floor. A writing
shelf or leaf was on one side of the
room and located below the ... windows.
Teachers usually made quill pens for
those old enough to write with ink. Only a
few pupils studied geography or grammar.20
The old playground at
Union-Carmody had trees and clumps of
bushes, which provided some degree of
privacy in the absence of privies, such
conveniences were known at most
homes, but not on this school property
until 1876.21
After the first fall term, Smith left
the school, and the next teacher
impressed Graham as being "on the
job solely for the little money that
was in it, and merely went through the
performance of being a teacher."
After the term ended, he fortunately
left the teacher's desk and became a
contractor.22 The next
teacher, William Gibbs, "was a man of fine
character and was interested in boys and
girls outside of classroom
periods. I can also remember how he
lined up the children around the
sides of the school and pronounced word
after word from McGuffey's
yellow-backed speller. The old plan of
turning down, in which the pupil
who spelled a word correctly stepped
above the one or ones who had
missed it, deeply impressed upon me that
very simple words were often
missed by older students." Although
a good teacher, Gibbs soon left the
classroom to sell insurance which, at
forty dollars a month, was more
profitable than teaching.23
The old log building became so
dilapidated that it was replaced in the
summer of 1876, so Graham entered his
third school year in a new
building of which he wrote:
A new location was secured diagonally to
the southwest where one acre of
ground had been purchased and a new
frame school house larger than the old one
had been constructed and fitted with
modern factory-made seats. These were
19. Graham, "The Story of My Third
Teacher," Ibid.
20. Ibid.
21. Ibid.
22. Graham, "My Fourth
Teacher," Ibid.
23. Graham, "My Fifth
Teacher," Ibid.
Albert B. Graham 121 |
|
122 OHIO HISTORY
built at Troy, Ohio, and made up in
sections with a connecting piece of timber
about one by four inches running from
the middle of one desk to the middle of
each succeeding desk, separating the two
students, with eight desks in one
section. This was a great step forward
in school furnishings.
The blackboard, however, was nothing
more than lampblack worked into a
finishing coat. Later on this became
checked as the finishing coat of plastering
often does when it dries too rapidly.
The erasers were simply blocks of one-inch
wood covered with wool from the pelt of
a sheep or covered with some heavy felt
or goods from an overcoat. Some had a
band on it like a horse brush to make it
easier to hold. The windows were very
long, hence we had plenty of light from
both the north and south. The house
faced the east. There was no bell in the
belfrey, bells were expensive, so school
began with the vigorous ringing of a
hand bell.24
The new school also had another
convenience-two outdoor privies!
At this time students were informally
graded by the McGuffey reader
they were studying. Graham wrote that
"as such there were no grades to
indicate advancement in school. Those of
the first, second, third, and
sometimes the fourth year in school,
read and spelled at least twice a
day; sometimes three times. The roll was
called at least once a day,
sometimes twice-noon and evening."25
As Graham continued through elementary
school, he met the usual
succession of teachers. Most served for
only one term, and then
proceeded to another school or another
occupation. Although they had
all secured a teaching certificate from
a local board of examiners, none
had teacher training or college work. In
his record of his school
experiences, Graham described each of
them. Of one, he wrote, "he
taught only a few months. My impression
of him in conducting his
school was that headmarks in the
spelling class were used, and little slips
of paper with the word 'merit' written
on them were handed out to those
who met his approval as to their
behavior."26 Of another he said "he
taught only two months and this was
certainly long enough for during all
that time he kept the shutters on the
windows closed with slides
somewhat open to protect his eyesight,
but his eyes gave him trouble
throughout the entire period. He very
seldom went outside on account
of sunshine and intense light." On
the last day of the term under this
schoolmaster, a group of his friends
visited the school, and one of them,
good at art, put a picture on the
blackboard "of an old man operating
some kind of an improvised machine for
spanking boys. Here was a man
operating a paddle worked by some system
of levers and wheels and the
boy was strapped in the frame and was
receiving the licks on the most
appropriate part of his body. Then the
artist gave a little talk as to how
24. Ibid.
25. Graham, "Third Teacher," Ibid.
26. Graham, Untitled, Ibid., 13.
Albert B. Graham
123
efficient a machine of that kind might
be made to work in school." Thus
was born the legend of the
"paddling machine."27
Albert Graham recorded his
description of another schoolmaster:
Daniel Death did not belie his name for
he was certainly death to any
transgressor of any reasonable
regulations. I can see him coming over the stile or
steps into the school yard the first day
of school. He was a very large and erect
man, walked with a springly step and
with somewhat of a determined swing to
his arms. He was a big square-faced,
determined-looking man. He was just as
determined as his looks indicated. He
wore a hat with rather a large brim pulled
down tight on his head. It was very
unfortunate that he set a bad example for
many of us in that he chewed tobacco. It
was following his example that caused
me to have my first experience in
chewing tobacco.... Daniel Death was an
outstanding example of a good school
disciplinarian. He played ball with both
the eldest and the youngest of his
pupils. He was too corpulent to run, but he did
enjoy batting a hard rubber ball, and
letting someone else do the running for him.
On this playground everything was play
to him, but in the schoolroom
everything was business.28
Daniel Death was the finest teacher of
reading I ever had. He had no patience
for those above the third reader who
drawled their words or resorted to mere
pronunciations. He required them to read
with some expression and if after a few
trials he did not get a response from a
pupil, he would read it for him, and what
wonderful reading he did. One would
forget that he was in a schoolhouse. He
used McGuffey's Fifth Reader for reading
lessons for advanced pupils. He was a
great believer in blackboard work for
all classes, especially arithmetic. He
encouraged the pupils to draw both on
their slates and on the blackboard. If any
piece of work was done especially well,
that space was reserved for several
days, thereby giving recognition to the
pupil who could express himself
pictorially. He broke all precedents in
that part of the country by encouraging
the older pupils to bring pictures with
which to decorate the schoolroom. He was
ahead of his day in a great many
features having to do with spiritualizing the
school. He remembered all his students
at Christmas time, forgetting not even
those who had grown up and left the
school.29
With the death of his father, Albert,
his sister, and his mother moved
from the farm to the village of Lena,
which placed him in Allen's school
district where he had attended his first
session of school. Here Mr. J.
Morgan Stith was teacher of the advanced
room, and his wife taught the
primary grades. Graham's memory of the schoolmaster
is vivid:
He was of the old schoolmaster type. He
believed in a great deal of so-called
discipline and that meant flogging. Even
though he punished severely those who
transgressed his regulations, after all
it seemed to be softened with justice.
During the free occasions he was a
play-fellow with all who entered into school
games but with the jingle of the little
handbell that state of mind ceased.
As I see him now he was not a teacher-he
was a drill master. All tables had to
be committed to memory whether one understood what they
meant or not. Rules
27. Graham, Untitled, Ibid., 14.
28. Graham, "My Eighth
Teacher," Ibid.
29. Ibid.
124 OHIO HISTORY
for different processes in arithmetic
had to be committed to memory and recited
practically exactly as they were in the
book. He believed in the teaching of
spelling with a great deal of drill so
we had plenty of spelling exercises and
spelling schools. Skill in arithmetic
was required very much for the same
purpose, that of display.30
As in previous schools there were no
grades. Each one proceeded as far as he
could in the class to which the teacher
assigned him. If a new pupil presented
himself he was asked privately how far
he had been in arithmetic, what reader he
had read from, and probably how far he
had progressed in geography and
grammar. No one was compelled to study
grammar; it was largely a matter of
choice. History had not become a regular
study in the elementary schools of
Ohio at this time but he thought it
would be a good thing if we young people
would study it so a class was formed.
Although I thought the study of [Thomas
W. ] Harvey's Elementary Grammar the
most ... useless textbook I have ever
seen, this study later on became one of
my favorites.31
In the closing weeks of his school, in
April and May, 1881, he prepared a
program for the closing day exercises
which was more or less a show affair. He
used a book having questions and answers
on most of the branches taught in the
schools of that day and drilled us on
the answers. Our drill was so perfect that we
could nearly ask the questions and
answer them. This was quite a good exercise
at making phonograph records of us but
the people generally mistook it for good
teaching.32
The first college-educated teacher that
Albert Graham encountered
was George Snyder, whom he met in the
eighth year. He observed that
"the fact that he was a graduate of
a Liberal Arts College gave us a fair
idea as to what a real educated man was
like. He was extremely
versatile, quite a musician, and was
wellread from a literary standpoint.
All of these talents he brought to bear
on us in his school work.... He
brought into the school a homemade
bookcase well stocked with a great
variety of books on history, science and
literature. This was a rich field
for me for it was in this little library
that I learned to browse more or less
in all the fields represented by this
collection of books. It was George W.
Snyder who awakened me to the
possibilities of becoming an educated
young man."33
In September 1882, Graham was ready to
begin advanced work, now
known as high school. At that time with
no organized high school
program, young people were permitted to
attend the District School
where teachers attempted to give them
this work. The year was a
profitable one for Graham, for his
teacher was A. T. Moore, a graduate
of the National Normal Institute at
Lebanon, Ohio, whom he described
as follows:
30. Ibid.
31. Ibid.
32. Ibid.
33. Graham, "My Teacher, George
Snyder," Ibid.
Albert B. Graham 125 |
|
He had splendid training in the normal school as a teacher and exemplified it in his work. . . . He could speak German but made no display of it before us children. He was an A-1 writer and insisted that all of us follow his example. His letter writing, blackboard writing and every problem which he put on the blackboard indicated the pains he took in writing. Our writing period came as regularly every day as the arithmetic or reading period. . . . [He] gave full attention to ... United States history from cause to effect and not as dry records. He exercised splendid judgment and tact in having the boys and girls do things which would be of benefit to the school. He placed responsibility on them. If questions arose in the class he did not always decide them. Such questions as were within the understanding of the pupils, they were requested to look up at home or inquire about elsewhere. In this school the advanced teacher had always been paid from $5 to $10 more than in other schools of the township. Near the close of the year Mr. Moore asked for an advance in his salary. Even though he was a first rate teacher the Board refused his demands and employed another teacher while the Central Publishing Company at Cincinnati took Mr. Moore as an agent in some of the Southern States.34 Replacing Moore with an instructor who would work for less was soon evident to Graham, who commented that: A very poor exchange it was too, for his knowledge ... did not go very far beyond the common branches. He, like some of the rest of my teachers, was more of a recitation post than a stimulator of learning. He taught us what the book said and very little beyond it.35 Grammar, spelling, arithmetic and geography were all taught in a very regular and formal way following very much every page and line from the book. But 34. Graham, "High School," Ibid. 35. Ibid. |
126 OHIO HISTORY
there was one thing in which he
surpassed all my preceding teachers. He knew
how to sing, he could read music, and he
could teach others to read it. The Old
Conqueror was the school song book which
he requested each one of us to
purchase. It was from this that he
taught us to read and sing rounds and part
singing.36
The old two-room brick of Allen's School
District became so
dilapidated that a new school had to be
built. The people of the
community wanted a high school room, for
the nearest high schools at
the time were at St. Paris and Piqua.
Realizing the limitations of the new
teacher to instruct high school classes,
the Board of Education asked
Albert Moore to return at a salary
satisfactory to him.
In late autumn, 1884, the new $5,000,
three-room brick building was
opened, with its high school room. In
addition to three teachers, Graham
was hired as janitor at five dollars a
month. The feature of the school
which drew most attention was the school
bell. Graham wrote: "It was
the first school bell in our part of the
country. It weighed about 400
pounds. Its first ringing was by myself,
after having climbed up into the
belfrey before the rope was attached to
it, to toll it by using a manner
because of the death of General
Grant."37
Graham's final year of high school under
Moore was an inspiring one
for him. He wrote that:
This experience ... seemed to develop in
me more and more the thought that I
should be a teacher. He exemplified
daily what good teaching is, both from the
standpoint of inspiration and his
ability to get us to do things for ourselves ....
He guided us rather than repressed us in
our social relations with each other and
in our little young people's groups. He
entered into the spirit of the lives of the
young people as well as into the spirit
and social life of adults in the community.
He had frequent visitors at school, most
of whom came when the literary
exercises were on.38
It was he who planned the first
graduation, which Albert stated "was
another step in recognition of what we
had done and it inspired all of us
to endeavor to do more. ... A little
diploma received on June 19, 1885
from the hands of a representative of
the Board, Dr. J. D. Lauer, is still
one of my most cherished
possessions."39
36. Ibid.
37. Ibid.
38. Ibid.
39. Ibid.
GEORGE C. CROUT
Albert B. Graham: School Days
of a Schoolmaster
Albert B. Graham was born March 13,
1868, or as he expressed it in
his own wry sense of humor, "came
up between two stalks of corn on
the last farm on Route 36, west of St.
Paris in Champaign County."1
From as early as he could remember, he
had aspirations of being a
schoolmaster. When he first revealed
his secret ambition, his
Scotch-Presbyterian father remarked,
"What a thing for a lad to decide
when there is a mortgage on the
farm."2
Joseph A. Graham never lived to see his
son realize this ambition, for
in a tragic fire in February 1879, he
lost his life, leaving the
eleven-year-old boy to care for his
younger sister and mother.3 Young
Albert Graham went to work, taking on
any odd job he could find in the
community-serving as hired man, sawing
wood, doing chores around
the blacksmith shop, and even helping
his mother with the sewing which
she did for the neighbors.4 Yet
the strong-willed boy never lost sight of
his goal-to achieve a good education
and a teacher's certificate.
How well he succeeded in doing this is
shown by his career as a
country schoolmaster, which began in
Johnson Township, Champaign
County. By 1890 he was Superintendent
of the Lena-Conover School,
then went on to Terre Haute as
Principal and Superintendent of the
one-room schools of Mad River Township.
In August 1900, he was
employed as Superintendent of Schools,
Springfield Township, Clark
County.5
Mr. Crout, an educator and former
principal, co-authored an elementary school
textbook on Ohio history. He also has
written a biography of Albert Graham.
1. Columbus Ohio State Journal, June
20, 1951.
2. Jean Harshman, "Father of
4-H," Columbus Sunday Dispatch Magazine, February
23, 1947, 22-23.
3. Albert B. Graham, "The Story of
the Burning of Our Farm Home," The Papers of
Albert B. Graham, privately owned by
Helen Graham Baker, Middletown, Ohio. Graham
was a fine photographer and took
pictures of Ohio rural life and schools and children. This
collection was given to The Ohio
Historical Society, Columbus, Ohio, by him. It includes
2,100 negatives on glass plates and
1,200 prints, with photographs of 200 one-room schools
and 150 of early centralized schools.
4. Fannie Bosler, "A. B. Graham:
Educator. Founder of 4-H Clubs," Mimeographed,
Centennial Committee, Graham School
Celebration, March 10, 1968, 1-2.
5. Austin Showman, "A. B. Graham
Set Stage for World-Wide 4-H Movement," Ohio
Farm Bureau News, XXXIX (January 1960), 20-21.