HOME INSTRUCTION

The planter class usually choose to educate  its children at   home. Planter opposition helped to retard the public school movement in the South by advancing the argument  that  public monies should not be spent for something that only a few used.  That argument was heard in Arkansas but examples of home schooling were few.   The expense of too great for tutors and tutors were not in great supply so a  private school would meet the need.

PRIVATE SCHOOLS

Individual teachers arrived early in Arkansas.  Caleb Lindsey allegedly taught the first school in a Lawrence County cave.  Offerings depended on the teacher's skills. A typical advertisement in Helena read: 

"A.G. Underwood will open a school in Helena, on Monday next.  For the instruction of Boys and Girls, in the different branches of English education, Geography, Arithmetic, History, and such other branches of education as he thinks himself capable of teaching."    

Such teachers rented a room in town or used a log cabin in the rural areas. Some were not qualified.  An early Bateville's teacher delivered a ringing oration that proved to be taken from the writings of another man.  The discovery ruined his school and he left  town. Others left   the profession.  Harris Flanagin, a future governor, was trained in the eastern United States as a teacher but became a lawyer on arriving in Arkansas.  Albert Pike, another early teacher, was discovered by Robert Crittenden, who called him to Little Rock to edit the Arkansas Advocate.  Pike later entered the legal profession. Not only were the financial rewards of teaching limited but there were other troubles as well.  When a Little Rock teacher disciplined on of Governor Recto's children, the irate father came to the school to return the favor, hitting the teacher and cursing.  The teacher took the abuse as he reported "He had his hand on his pistol & if I had endeavored to make any resistance he would have shot me."

A successful teacher usually opened an academy.  These institutions, grandiose in name and design and often endowed by legislative charters, depended for their success on the management and reputation of the teachers.  Jesse Brown, who opened Little Rock's first school in 1823, succeeded.  His co-educational school offered eleven months of instruction on a variety of levels for twenty years.  Brown even served a city major between 1838-1840.

One of the earliest schools in Arkansas was Dwight Mission.  Founded in 1819 by the missionaries to the Cherokee, it consisted of thirty buildings housing some seventy students.  Cephas Washburn, the missionary minister, was the principal founder and Ellen Stetson was in charge of the females, who ranged in age from 5 to 20 years.  One observer noted that she "is very sever with her scholars, and many of whom are grown women and as handsome as any woman I ever saw." Another teacher there was Nancy Brown, sister of Jesse Brown. These women encountered some hostility but persisted in their responsibilities.

Prejudice against Indians affected the career of Sophia Sawyer's school in Fayetteville.  A female missionary, she was private tutor to the  Ridge family and a witness to John Ridge's murder in 1839. Following the widow and children in flight to Fayetteville, she established her school there, drawing local whites and Indian children.  Miss  Sawyer  possessed a difficult personality and she refused to associate her school with any religious group.  Some locals objected to the presence of Indian children and she received abusive letters.

Others in the Northwest attempted more.  The Far West Academy was the most ambitious project. Chartered by the legislature in 1844 and created mostly by Whigs, the Academy met Democratic opposition.  Isaac Murphy, a future governor, was one board member, and veteran educator-minister Cephas Washburn was involved prominently.  Unfortunately a disastrous fire and the economic downturn bankrupted the school.  Robert M. Mecklin afterwards established the Ozark Institute on the grounds.    In general, the Ozark schools were created by the Presbyterians, Whigs, and merchants.   Education emphasized    the  practical for women, although one Batesville school had a piano and pair of glass globes for chemistry.  Globes for geography were much admired.  One Little Rock teacher with a taste  for art purchased for his school a plaster copy of Hiram Power's Greek Slave, the first American nude.  Its arrival created much local excitement. By contrast schools in the southwest, where the planting class predominated, emphasized the social graces.  Spring Hill and Washington were two early  centers  Hempstead County.  The Spring Hill Female Academy, located near the Red River and erected at a cost of $5,000, went into operation in 1836 with Miss Elizabeth Pratt from  New York in charge of thirty girls  Advertisements noted that geography was taught with the use of "globes" other offerings included rhetoric, composition, logic and some sciences.   The school drew on the patronage of local planters and Governor James S.  Conway sent his daughter there. The next year the Spring Hill Male Academy opened.  When hard times hit in 1843 the school was broken up and some patrons transferred their support to nearby Washington Academy which had been established in 1842.  This school endured for the next twenty years. In 1844 Madame d'Estimauville de Beau Mouchel arrived in Little Rock to set up a fashionable finishing school.  The did not succeed but she did become overly friendly with editor Solon Borland of the Arkansas Banner. She moved to Dallas County the next year and made a good impression. The romance with Borland went sour and according to one student "she  spent the night mostly weeping and the day finding fault with her pupils."  After the evidence of her "too great intimacy" became visible, she was last seen leaving on a boat with her baby.  Her school was renamed the  Tulip Female Institute/"Tulip In Her Glory," and it later added male students. 

COLLEGES   

The first elite of Arkansas often came well-educated.  George C. Watkins and Chester Ashley studied law in the Litchfield Law School;  Solon Borland as a Philadelphia-trained doctor.  Those families who wanted the best education for their children sent them to St. Joseph's Academy in Bardstown, Kentucky.   Robert   Ward Johnson, William Quesenbury and others attended this Roman Catholic    school, although only       Benjamin  T. DuVal of Fort Smith is known to have been a Catholic.  Local colleges formed when prosperity returned   during the 1850s.  Cane Hill College near Fayetteville, supported by the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, began in a two room log  building in 1852, moved into a frame structure two years later, and 1858 boast a brick building,  It granted the first bachelor's degree in Arkansas in  1856.  Robert Graham's Arkansas College was founded in 1852 in Fayetteville.  The first attempt to found a school with statewide support came from Harvard-trained Albert Pike, who promoted St. John's College, a Masonic institution that opened in Little Rock in 1859.  Its failure to thrive was caused in part by state sectionalism: Helena Masons refused to contribute because they felt Little Rock favored Memphis over Helena as the terminus for the railroad.

PUBLIC EDUCATION

When Arkansas entered the Union, the national government gave the 16th section of every township to the state to fund the creation of a seminary of learning.    Michigan used its money to create the state university, but in Arkansas  the Seminary Fund had a low legislative priority.  The first sale in 1840 at $10 an acre was not successful, so the legislature reduced the price to $3. In addition, squatters  occupied some of the land.  Rather than remove them, the state simply gave in.  Congress obligingly turned the state loose in 1846 to manage lands without restriction and as one editor observed, a search for money would be as futile as that for Arctic explorer Sir John Franklin. Plans to establish a university were defeated by arraying the poor against the rich,  by the cry of the aristocracy and by talking of rich men's son and college education.  In the end the state used some of the money that was not lost in the bank failure to buy books.  Then the legislature turned the problem over to the counties, where speculators serving on the school boards got the best land at little cost.  By state law, counties were supposed to file reports, but only two bothered to reply in 1860.  According to the 1860   census, half the school-age children did not attend school at all, the rest were divided evenly between public and private schools.  Public schools were run by school board.  Teacher, invariably men, were hired and paid by the board.  A Scott County contract called for school to begin on July 7 and the teacher "...to keep order during school and try and aid the pupils with all his power."  The session was to last 20n weeks.  No student of "bad character" was allowed to attend.  Teachers received very low pay. "Education, as a system is too much neglected in Arkansas", declared one newspaper editor.  Illiteracy was common, 20,000 persons above the age of 20 years (about 1/4 of the population) could neither read nor write.  The Whigs believed that ignorance contributed to Democratic victories.  For the future education lagged in importance behind moral reform and economic development in antebellum Arkansas.

DWIGHT MISSION

Spring Hill Female Academy Is First-Rate School » The Arkansas News