People, places and memory
Three cents a day at Tabernacle’s winter school
Retrospective school report; building dates disputed
An 1876 superintendent’s account describes a school supported by attendance payments and shaped by the seasons.
Schooling by the season
Edgar Haas’s report, transcribed by THS, says J. B. Jordan taught for eight years, holding classes during three winter months and receiving three cents per pupil per day of attendance. Summer instruction, under a woman teacher, was added in 1826. The account preserves a system in which the length of the term, the teacher’s pay and seasonal employment were closely connected.
The uncertain building sequence
Haas dated the shared church-school provision to 1815 and described replacement in 1851. The society notes conflicting deed evidence and later mapping of the cemetery meetinghouse. Those differences prevent a confident claim that one surviving footprint represents every early school or church.
Sources and research limits
Haas wrote decades after the earliest events. His account is valuable evidence of how the school was remembered and administered; it does not settle the construction chronology. The older deed and complete superintendent’s report deserve comparison before assigning a single founding date.