History of Early Albany Schools Mary Myrtle Worley

The account of perhaps the first instruction given in Albany, dates back to the 1840’s. Since there were not enough children in the community for organization of a school, it cannot be classed as one. Mrs. Abraham Hackleman gathered a few small children into her home, a log house which stood in Hackleman’s Grove, and taught them reading, writing and numbers.

The following incident illustrates the very busy life of these pioneers: When it came time for the geese to be picked, Mrs. Hackleman did not want to neglect the children, so the geese were brought in, and the picking went on with as little interference with spelling and writing as possible.

The first school was situated in the west part of town, not far from the cemetery, and was taught (1851) by Dr. Reuben Cohman Hill. Dr. Hill was a practicing physician and a Baptist minister. In 1850, he crossed the plains to California on the back of a mule and soon after came to Albany, where he taught the first school before returning east for his family. Soon after this, Andrew J. Babb conducted 61 a subscription school in one small room near the location of Takenah Park. During the Civil War, feeling ran so high that the school was divided. One subscription school, the Republican, stood where the Methodist Church was on Third and Ellsworth streets; and the other, known as the Dixie School, Democratic, was located on the southwest corner of Second and Montgomery streets.

A daughter of Oregon pioneers, Miss Lottie E. Morgan has said: “In Albany, Takenah Park has been officially marked as a part of the Pioneer Oregon Trail, and it eventually became the site of Albany’s first Central School. One who attended the first Central School, in 1866, tells that it was a one-room building, some thirty by fifty feet in size, standing in the block known as Takenah Park. Soon after this date, two ells were added, forming a T-shaped building, where more teachers, perhaps three, and more pupils were accommodated.”

Mrs. Zella M. Burkhart contributed the following, copied from a manuscript by J. J. Davis, who came to Linn County with his parents in 1847, and attended the first school taught in Linn County in 1848: “Mr. Anderson Cox, having several children, built a school house on his place that summer and hired a teacher, Robert Huston, for a term of three months. He was the first teacher in Linn County.”

By the 1880’s, Albany had three schools. The Central School at Takenah Park has four rooms and four teachers and took care of pupils beginning with the advanced section of the third grade. Dr. Oliver K. Beers was one of the teachers at Madson, which was then a one-room building. There were sixty pupils in five classes of the first, second, and lower level of the third grades. The Maple School did the same grade of work. The schools at this time were free, being supported by taxation. Albany Collegiate Institute at this time had a preparatory department for those in the upper grades. Because some people had not yet outgrown the idea that free schools were for paupers only, there arose again two rival groups among the young people, known as College “Bummers” and the District “Scrubs.”

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