CHAPTER XX. PROGRESS OF EDUCATION. The education of the masses is one of the leading characteristics of a good government. It is the guide to national greatness and to salutary reforms. Without education, the people would be less than the Negroes of the darker days of the Republic. Without it, man cannot sum up the blessings of liberty; cannot understand the principles of a Federal government; cannot fulfill the duties of citizenship. Though men may be always prepared for liberty, yet he who had not an opportunity, in his earlier years, to attain even the rudiments of that education which a common school offers, is a dangerous member upon whom to confer liberty, because his animal passions generally overbalance his good intentions, and lead him from vice to vice, until those who won for him the precious are forced to cry out, "Oh, liberty, what crimes are committed in thy name!" From the want of a well-organized educational system, many, if not all evils, spring. The terrible forces with which the dangerous classes often threaten to annihilate the people are recruited from the haunts of ignorance and vice. Again, the tyrant may subject an uneducated people with impunity--without fear of encountering any disciplined opposition. All the shocking crimes which tarnish the annals of glorious revolutions have their origin in and must be credited to ignorance. The hideous Parisian communist, the blind, followers of sectionalism in politics, the inhuman religious bigot, all draw their inspiration from ignorance, and by it are urged on to those terribly foul deeds which darken, as it were, the enlightenment of this age, and stain the pages of its history. Though the secret tribunal of olden times comprised men of fair fame, the members of it were led to acts which, to-day, would be punished in the most severe form known to the law of the country, and result in consigning their names to obloquy. In the dim past, such men were heroes; they boasted of learning and culture, and merely acted a part in the drama of their lives. The members of this tribunal dedicated themselves to justice, and seldom-never-failed to punish the guilty and avenge the innocent. Yet the secret tribunal, with all the terrific sublimity which surrounded it, all the high characteristies which belonged to its members, was founded upon ignorance. In recent years-aye, in our own times-political and religious parties have resorted to desperate and disreputable means to assert supremacy. This could not occur had the people been educated up to the All the evils attendant on a want of a true system of edu requirements of our duty. cation have been carried down to the present time, as if to point out to us the dangers of ignorance and lead us far away from the shoals whereon it has wrecked so many. It is evident here, in Macomb, that examples of ignorance have resulted in good; crime is merely nominal here; a peculiar friendship seems to exist between all classes, and a full desire exists in the hearts of young and told to study, that they may know what gives promise of good results to themselves and their country. Macomb County has, from a very early period, bestowed much attention on all matters pertaining to education. Throughout this work, many references to the attempts made by pioneers and old settlers to establish schools appear, so that it is unnecessary to treat separately each school and school building, the history of which belongs to the townships. However, for the purposes of the general history of the county, what has been written regarding the schools first opened here belongs to this section of the work, and for that reason is subscribed as well as referred to in the township history. Probably the first white settlement in the limits of Macomb County was made between 1790 and 1800, in the present township of Harrison, on the banks of the Clinton River, about three miles from Mt. Clemens. The settlement was then and is now called the Tucker settlement. It was here that the first school was taught in Macomb County, on the farm now owned by Franklin Tucker. Between 1795 and 1800, a Mr. Roe, great-grandfather of Milton H. Butler, swayed the rod. Schools were kept up almost continuously in this settlement, but little can be learned of them till about 1816 or 1817, when Mr. Charles Steward taught in a house then standing just below the present residence of Lafayette Tucker. Mr. Steward was called a most excellent teacher for those early days, when he was sober; but he was exceedingly fond of strong drink, and his sprees were not few nor far between. He nearly perished by freezing during one of his carousals, when, attempting to cross the river on the ice, he fell and lay for some time in the snow. In 1820, the eccentric Dr. Dodge was employed. Nothing delighted this old-time teacher more than to dress up in some fantastic costume of flaming and incongruous col ors. From 1820 to 1830, some of the teachers in the Tucker settlement were as follows: Dr. Chamberlain, about 1821; an old soldier of the war of 1812, about 1822; Mr. Richard Butler, now living one mile south of Mt. Clemens, aged eighty-three, in 1823; a Mr. Haw kins, who was fond of the "ardent," in 1825, 1826 and 1827; Dr. Henry Taylor, who died in Mt. Clemens in 1876, about 1827; Mrs. McKinney, whose husband was at the same time teaching in Detroit, taught a private school in her own house in 1827 or 1828, and a Miss Cook in 1830. All the foregoing record relates to the schools of Tucker settlement. Of course it will be understood that all these early schools were in the strictest sense private, public schools, not then being known in Michigan. Each pupil was required to pay a stipulated sum per quarter of twelve weeks, the teacher making his own collections and receiving no public aid. The following table shows the number of children in the county, in 1839, between the ages of five and seventeen years, together with the amount of money apportioned by the State: The value of this table rests upon its comparative antiquity, and the opportunity which it gives of obtaining an insight into the school statistics of the county near half a century ago. Similar statistics for 1881 show that the amount of primary school funds to which the county is entitled is $11,454.36, or an average of $1.06 to every scholar. It is distributed among the townships as follows, Mt. Clemens being counted in Clinton as of yore: The amount of primary school fund accruing to this county at present is almost eleven times the sum granted in 1839, while the number of children increased from 2,624, in 1839, to 10,806 in 1880, being 4,118 as many as the county could boast of possessing in the years immediately following the Territorial days. The schools of Mt. Clemens, Romeo, Utica and Disco, together with the township schools, are treated in the histories of the townships, villages, etc., of the county. SABBATH SCHOOLS. A Sabbath school was organized at Mt. Clemens so early as 1823, when a school was held in an old building used for the manufacture of pottery. It occupied a place where |