CHAPTER XI.

                            EDUCATIONAL.

    When, where and by whom the first school was taught in Clay
county can not be answered with any assurance of accuracy. The educa-
tional history of the county for the first twenty-five or thirty years is, but
traditional. The first schools were taught in primitive log cabins which
had been vacated as dwellings. The pioneer schoolhouse was built of
round poles, chinked and daubed, with one pole cut out on either side and
the space closed by the use of greased paper, to admit the light. In one
end was the, door, swung on rude wood en hinges, and in the other end
a spacious fireplace. The floor was of puncheons, and the seats long
benches of split saplings or slabs, the bark side turned down and the split
or splintered side exposed for seating accommodations. These houses
were, built, generally, by voluntary contributions of material and labor on
the part of those interested in the respective communities, and without
any expenditure of money for trimmings and furnishings. Oliver Crom-
well related to the writer at different times that be assisted in building
a schoolhouse of this description on the site of the town of Poland, when
a very young man, in 1825, the year that the county was organized, which
may have been the first one. It is known, too, that among the first, if not
the original, a cabin, distinctly for school purposes, was put up on Eel
river, a couple of miles north of Bowling Green, in the Walker neighbor-
hood. It is probably safe to assume that the first schoolhouse was built
within the territory of Washington township, and that either Samuel
Rizley or Jared Peyton was the first teacher.
    Under the statute of 1831, the finances and other features of our
common school system were managed locally by the citizens of the several
school districts. Having decided to build a house, each tax-payer within
the limits of the district was required to work one day in each week until
the house should be completed, or instead, to pay an equivalent of fifty
cents a day, that the labor might be employed. Teachers were then hired
on such terms as their services could be secured, partial payment, at least,
being made in such commodities as they would consent to receive. The
township trustees (of whom there were three) constituted the board of
examiners to certify the teachers’ qualifications in reading, writing and
arithmetic. An applicant who could write a readable hand, “cipher” as
far as the “single rule of three,” and “mind his stops” in reading was
accepted as a competent instructor. Under the law of 1831 counties were
required to elect school commissioners to receive and disburse school
funds, who served for the term of three years, which law was repealed in

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