HISTORY OF CLAY COUNTY	87

either private or public schools within the period of the first third of a
century of the county’s history. To locate them by way of enumera-
tion they may he divided into three classes—those of the north, those of
the central, and those of the south part of the county.
	In the north part of the county: Francis B. Yocom, Jacob Burke,
Charles B. Cole, Artemas Gilbert, Isham Steed, Arthur Howard,
Benjamin Carman, John Lewis, Joseph Kennedy, Daniel Dunlavy, Isaac
Applegate, Dr. Parsons, George D. Teter, James H. Stewart, James
Batts, Dr. A. P. Davis, Milton P. Carter, Samuel Hill, Aaron S.
Simonson, John Frump, Jr., Mrs. Hempstead, Elizabeth Adams, Mary
Johnson, Rhoda Hall, Emily Root, Mrs. Martha Hawkins, Caroline
Dunlavy, Emma Gaylord.
	In the central part: Samuel Rizley, Jared Peyton, Harvey Peas,
Alfred Bolin, Bluford Bolin, William Slack, Thomas Riddell, David
Herald, James Riddle, Samuel Long, Benjamin Payne, William Heaney,
James Marshall, George O’Brien, Timothy Lucas, George Rector, Enoch
M. Rector, Milton H. Pearcy, Elias Helton, Nathan A. Gibbons, Baldwin
H. Witty, Hezekiab Wheeler, David Lane, James McGuire, John Gibson,
Solomon Cunningham, Andrew Orman, Benjamin Eddy, John Shuey,
Alfred Wyatt, Isaac M. Moore, Ebenezer C. Smith, T. M. Robertson,
Montgomery Hobbs, Margaret McNamar, Ruth Fagan, Clara Wheeler,
Mrs. Sarah Jeffers.
	In the south part: Zachariah Denny, William W. Ferguson, John
Neal, Joe Wiles, Hugh Kane, David Alexander, Isaac Richart, Daniel
Wood, David Cooper, William L. Buckallew, Robert Dalton, John
Lichty, William P. Haviland, Lemuel W. Blevins, John Harris, Henry
0. Duncan, Peter A. Edmonson, George W. Duncan, Isaiah S. Fair,
Charles Grim, William Brothers, A. J. Tipton, Sapphira Darling,
Elizabeth Kauble, Julia Foster, Ellen J. Hill, James B. Zenor.
	Of all this number (and many more) of the hardy, self-sacrificing
pioneers, who blazed the pathway for succeeding generations of teachers,
but five are known to he living, who still reside in the county—Nathan
A. Gibbons, John Frump, Alfred Wyatt, William L. Buckallew, T. M.
Robertson, aged, respectively, $9, 87, 83, 82, 76 years.
	A compilation of the reminiscences, humorous, pathetic and other-
wise, in the personal and professional experiences of these primitive
“Wielders of the Birch” (not ten per cent of whom ever taught in a
frame house), were such a thing possible, would afford interesting
reading and pastime to their successors.
	Of one of the three first schools in the south end of the county,
which was taught by Joe Wiles, in a cabin standing on ground now
enclosed within the orchard on the Levi L. Johnson place, three miles
south of Middlebury, it is said that the Baher boys, living on the State
road, west of Eel river, at the point later known as Coffee postoffice,
five or six miles distant, attended regularly, tramping through an unbroken
forest, with the river to cross. A trail was blazed out for the three
brothers to follow. The school-house could not be sighted at any distance.
	The public schools of Brazil were taught in the original log house
erected in 1845 for church, school and hall purposes, near the site of
the present M. E. church, until the year 1861, when the first frame house
was built, on North Meridian street, in which the first school was taught
in the winter of 1861-62, by Samuel Loveless, then county school