150 years ago

AUG. 18, 1876

A 10-month term of school was voted at the annual school meeting for District No. 1 last Thursday. The term will begin the first Monday in September and will be, as above stated, of 10 months’ duration. Tuition is free for all.

No sectarian or other unworthy influence has ever interfered with our school. Teachers are selected for competency. No one seeks to foist incompetent teachers upon the school for personal or denominational purposes. This accounts for the uniform success of the school, of which our people are so justly proud.

The following levy will be imposed for the year: 7½ mills for teachers’ wages and 2½ mills for incidentals. This action insures the continuation at this place of not only the best school in the county but one of the best in the southwest.

We regret to learn of trouble in regard to Peabody’s school. Protestant interference with public schools should not be tolerated any more than Catholic interference with them. No religious denomination has any business to meddle in the matter. True religion does not intrude itself.

Whose business is it, and what difference does it make, where teachers attend church or Sabbath school? And yet these, as we learn from reliable sources, have been bones of contention more than once in the history of the school.

Tidings come to us of a personal encounter in Summit, in which a very large man belabored a very small man quite severely with an ax handle. Reform is necessary in Summit.

Certain boys whose names we suppress to give them a change to reform without being publicly disgraced will fetch up in the calaboose or some other bad place if they don’t keep out of other people’s melon patches, orchards, etc.