People, places and memory
Three cents a day at Tabernacle’s winter school
Documented in retrospective school records · Building dates disputed
A county superintendent traced Tabernacle’s school from winter tuition and summer classes to a free, longer term, while local records leave the first building’s dates unsettled.
Three cents per day of attendance
In an 1876 county superintendent’s account transcribed by the Tabernacle Historical Society, J. B. Jordan taught three winter months a year for eight years. He received three cents from each pupil for each day that pupil attended. The report does not say which eight years he taught or how many children came; multiplying that rate into an annual salary would be guesswork.
Haas says summer instruction began in 1826, with a woman teacher in charge. The account does not name her. Its shift from a winter term to teaching in both seasons makes the unnamed teacher part of the school’s story, even though the surviving summary preserves Jordan’s name.
From fees to a free school
Haas reported a small public appropriation for the teacher in 1856, then a school that was entirely free by 1858. He said its term lasted six months a year until 1868, after which it ran nine to eleven months annually. By the time of his 1876 report, district-supplied textbooks were valued at $300. The change was gradual: tuition, teacher support, a free term and books did not arrive together. Society transcript of Haas’s later school description.
The same transcript names Miss Lizzie Flenard as the teacher in Haas’s account and Henry B. Kemble and Caleb Wright among the district trustees. A district return dated July 11, 1893, held by the society, later reported one woman teacher, 60 desks, a $351 annual salary and school property valued at $1,000. These are snapshots of school administration, not evidence that the same teacher or building served throughout. Historical Society’s 1856 schoolhouse page and 1893 return summary.
Which schoolhouse?
Haas dated a shared church and school provision to 1815 and said a worn-out house was replaced after 1851. The historical society points out that an 1803 deed describes a larger parcel, while an 1849 map marks a schoolhouse near the cemetery and an 1885 cemetery plan marks a 20-by-26-foot meeting house there. The society does not claim that the 1885 mark proves a building was still standing. Society’s map and deed comparison.
The society’s separate history calls the village schoolhouse across the crossroads the “1856 Schoolhouse,” while its excerpt of Haas places the decision to replace the old house in 1851. The dates may describe different stages of planning and building, but the material reviewed here does not establish that sequence. Nor does it prove that the church-school at the cemetery, the later village school and subsequent school buildings occupied one footprint. Society’s later-school page.
Sources and research limits
This account compares the historical society’s transcriptions of Haas’s 1876 retrospective report, its descriptions of the 1803 deed and 1849 and 1885 maps, and its summary of the 1893 district return. The original report, deed, maps and district return have not been examined independently. The dates of individual teachers’ service and the precise locations of the successive buildings remain open questions.