FIRST SCHOOL HOUSE OF LAKE COUNTY

The following article was found in the Souvenir Album of Lake County, 1906, page 5 (drawing on page 13):

This school house was built in the early spring of 1838, in the dawn of the history of Lake County. It was located near the west bank of Cedar Creek, on the old Ditmar farm. At the last account it served the less dignified purpose of housing horses. Two other school houses were built that year in Lake County that dispute its right to priority. Hewn logs were its masonry; the puncheon floor, the split log bench against the walls, a slanting board for a teacher's desk, a large, smoking chimney, and a screeching door constituted its outfit of furniture. Its library consisted principally if blue-back spelling books, some worn readers, a dull geography recited in chanted lessons, an incomprehensible grammar, and a few broken slates. Its first teacher was Mrs. J.A. Ball, mother of Rev. T.H. Ball, who, despite the care of her home and her own family of five children, found time to instruct the budding generation of early Lake County.

This was before the days of elaborate equipments. There were no teachers' institute or licenses then; no dreaded examinations for children or teachers. The curriculum consisted chiefly of the three R's -- Readin', Ritin' and 'Rithmetic, to the Rule of Three. The graduating exercises were a "spell-down" exercise of the whole school, or quitting by the boys in order to husk corn.

Out of these primitive schools came those who have attained to fame, to greatness, and to true goodness of citizenship.