Ohio History Journal

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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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Albert B. Graham                                                 121

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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