HISTORY OF EDUCATION IN MINNESOTA.*

BY PROF. DAVID L. KIEHLE, LL.D.

Mr. President and Members of the Minnesota Historical Society: Permit me to introduce this survey of the history of education in Minnesota with a recognition of the obligations of the citizens of our state to this society for its preservation of a knowledge of the many and diverse elements that have entered into our developing industries and institutions, ideas, experiments, incentives, together with the lives and labors of its people. Civilization, like Nature itself, has the power of so utterly assimilating the forms and forces that have made it, that the individual elements lose their identity, leaving no record behind. It is only by the careful and intelligent offices of a society like this that these passing views, these dissolving elements, can be preserved for the future student and historian.

In submitting this address on the early planting of our institutions of learning, it is especially gratifying that it may be in the presence of the venerable and honored president of this society, Ex-Governor Ramsey, who, in his public and private capacity, has rendered invaluable aid by his wise counsel in the erection of this noble structure, and of which he might with modesty say, with the traditional founder of the old Roman state, "Quorum pars magna fui." We congratulate our respected fellow citizen that it is his privilege to witness the magnificence and the beneficence of this superstructure of education, the corner stone of which he helped to lay in those troublous times.

*An address at the Annual Meeting of this Society, January 19, 1903. For a more extended treatment of this subject, see Professor Kiehle's book, "Education im Minnesota," (Parts I and II, pages 120 and 101), published after the delivery of this address, in the late part of 1903, by the H. W. Wilson Company, Minneapolis.

THE TERRITORIAL PERIOD.

The planting and fostering of a system of education in a new state is the most far-reaching event in its history. The pioneers who did this service stand as the representatives of the world's civilization at its high water mark. These men and women of that early day brought with them the courage and endurance necessary to face the hardships and dangers of unsubdued nature in climate, land, and flood, as still held by aboriginal savage life. They opened up highways of travel, built towns and factories, and, more than all, they brought in their own characters and ideals the best of modern life in homes, churches, and schools.

The spirit of our modern civilization was active in education before the state as an institution had organic form, and long before the elements were at hand for the organization of a state system. When Minnesota became a territory in 1849, there were but three centers of civil and social life so far developed as to furnish starting points for schools, namely, Stillwater, St. Paul, and St. Anthony. At these points were elementary private schools, taught by Miss Horsford (Mrs. H. L. Moss) at Stillwater, Miss Backus at St. Anthony, and Miss Bishop and Miss Scofield at St. Paul.

Two years before, Dr. Thomas S. Williamson, a pioneer missionary to the Indians, in the catholicity of his spirit, considered the higher interests of the white people of St. Paul, wrote to Ex-Governor Slade of Vermont, president of the National Popular Education Society, representing that in this village there were some thirty-six children of school age, and requested that a teacher be sent them. In response to this appeal Miss Harriet E. Bishop came. She has described her schoolhouse as a little log hovel, some 10 by 12 feet in size, covered with bark and chinked with mud, and previously used as a blacksmith shop. On the sides, pegs were driven into the logs, and upon them boards were laid for seats. This log schoolhouse was located on St. Anthony street (now Third street), at the corner of St. Peter street, on the later site of the First Presbyterian Church. It is also memorable in being the place where the first public schoo! meeting was held in November, 1849, soon after the organization of the territory.

DENOMINATIONAL SCHOOLS.

Inasmuch as the earliest educational influences were represented in the missionary spirit of individuals and Christian denominations, this seems to be the place to recognize the continued enterprise of these high-minded men and women down to the present day. Their work has not been superseded by the more comprehensive plan of the state that followed. With the specific aims of providing an educated laity and ministry, they established schools of higher learning for all who would avail themselves of these advantages.

In 1853 the Baldwin school in St. Paul, open to both sexes, was incorporated by the Presbyterians, and in the following year Baldwin College was opened to young men. But the sparsely settled condition of the country, the unorganized condition of society, accompanied by the financial stress of 1857, and followed by the civil war of 1861-65, arrested all educational enterprises, so that we must look for their continued history in the years following. In 1874 through a bequest of Charles Maca!ester of Philadelphia the name of Baldwin College was changed to Macalester College, and it was permanently located with buildings for instruction and residences for professors on its present campus of thirty acres in St. Paul, where it is now doing excel lent work under the presidency of Rev. James Wallace, Ph.D.

It is deserving of record that the founding of this college was chiefly due to the laborious efforts of Rev. Edward D. Neill, D.D., the pioneer missionary and educator who came to this state in 1849. He was not only the servant of his own denomination, but, as a public spirited citizen and cultivated scholar, he was identified with the civil life of the state, and was one of the influential leaders in developing its educational system, as we shall have occasion to notice further on.

The Methodist denomination moved early in establishing Hamline University in 1854, formally opened to men and women in 1857. It was located at Red Wing, which "in 1849 had a population of 305,—300 being Sioux Indians, and the five being two missionaries, with the wife and child of one, and the government farmer." "In all, between the years 1857 and 1869, the university graduated 14 women and 9 men."

Hamline University, after a struggling career of many

years, owing to conditions already noted, dates its new and prosperous history after its removal to its present location between the Twin Cities in 1869, and its re-opening in 1880 as a collegiate institution under the presidency of Rev. D. C. John, D.D. (1880-1883), and, since 1883, of Rev. George H. Bridgmau, LL.D., its present administrative officer and president.

The Bishop Seabury Mission, chartered in 1860, includes the system of academic and divinity schools located at Faribault. These stand as a monument to the enterprise and philanthropy of the Episcopal Church.

The ending of the Civil War and the established union of the divided states mark the beginning of the larger industrial and educational prosperity of the state. Every religious denomin?tion has been active in contributing its influence to the upbuilding of the state in intelligence and morality.

At Northfield, in 1867, was founded, by the Congregationalists, the preparatory department of what in 1870 took permanent form in the opening of Carleton College under the presidency of Rev. James W. Strong, LL.D., who has just closed his long and successful administration.

In 1857 St. John's College was founded by the Order of St. Benedict and located at St. Cloud. In 1867 it was removed to its present site in Collegeville; and in 1883 it became St. John's University.

Following the sixties the religious and educational spirit of the state, Protestant and Catholic, multiplied schools and academies in all parts of the state, thus making the best possible provision for the elementary and higher instruction of our youth in the absence of the more comprehensive system which the state has since provided.

Appended, will be found a list of the secondary and higher institutions now established and supported by private benefactions and religious associations of loyal citizens of the state, who in addition bear their full share in support of our public schools.

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THE PUBLIC SCHOOL SYSTEM.

The noticeable characteristic of our own, as of all educational history, is in this, that provision is first made for the higher edu

cation and leadership of those who control and give direction to the industrial life. If society has an intelligent, virtuous and philanthropic leadership in a few good men and women, the masses will follow and obey in confidence. For this reason the university movement in territorial days was a more engrossing subject than the public schools. However, all elements of the system were in view from the first, as we shall see.

The history of education in Minnesota belongs to a second great chapter of our nation's history, which dates from the Ordinance of 1787, when the old states of New England, New York, and Virginia ceded their claims to territory in the Northwest to the general government, and when this new empire of the great west began its history, established on the "trinity of principles, free labor, free religion, and free education." At that time the Government set apart one-thirty-sixth of the public domainsection sixteen of each township-for the support of common schools. In 1848, upon the organization of the Territory of Oregon, the national grant to common schools was increased to two sections in each township, section thirty-six being added.

The first Legislature of the Territory of Minnesota convened September 3, 1849. Its Governor, the Honorable Alexander Ramsey, in his message presented the interests of education in these words. "The subject of education, which has ever been esteemed of the first importance, especially in all new American communities, deserves, and I doubt not will receive, your earliest and most devoted care. From the pressure of other and more immediate wants, it is not to be expected that your school system should be very ample; yet it is desirable that whatever is done should be of a character that will readily adapt itself to the growth and increase of the country, and not in future years require a violent change of system."

The territorial school code made provision for (1) The appointment of a Superintendent of Public Instruction,-Edward D. Neill being the first, and at the same salary as the Treasurer and Auditor, $100 per annum; (2) The division of the township into districts, whenever the district contains ten or more families; (3) The levy of a county tax of two and a half mills for the support of schools, to which was added fifteen per cent of all liquor licenses and fines for criminal offenses.