Gastman,
now principal of the Decatur City Schools, and member of the State Board
of Education. Then came P. B. Rose, then Frank Cook, now a leading lawyer
of Paxton and Prosecuting Attorney of Ford County. (The writer, then a
little boy first attending school at this place in the summer of 1859
in
the reign of Frank Cook as teacher, who himself was not more than eighteen
years old.) Then followed Mrs. Everett, then Asa Skinner, Mrs. Crozier,
Martin Hibbs, Oscar Bell, George Kerr (brother of Dr. Kerr of El Paso),
Hattie Nightingale, Mary McClellan, Lizzie King, T. W. Keys, Mrs. Allen
Julia Champion, R. W. Boyd, Maggie French, Joseph Faulkner, Mary Davis,
J. E. Evans, Alice Keefer, Mattie Barnet, E. R. Sweet, Mattie Keefer, T.
T. James, May Reynolds, Annie French, Eugene Wright, J. H. Low, John S.
Ward, Carrie North, Sara Hart, and Minnie Spaur, who is the present teacher
(1886).
The
school has a good reference library, consisting of an encyclopedia in fifteen
large volumes, a Webster's Unabridged, etc. -- also a very large globe.
The interior is handsomely ornamented with large framed pictures and the
house and yards are always kept neat and in a good state of repair. During
the winter terms the school is over-crowded and it is in contemplation
to make it a graded school by adding another story or another room. A.
B. Turner, George Lallmann and Eugene Stone are directors.
The first
store was started by a man named John Sutton in 1852,
the
year the I.C.R.R. was commenced. In
1853
Sutton
sold out to a Mr. Watson. The second store was started at about this timb
by Frederick Niergarth, who had come from Buffalo. Jacob Jacoby was clerk
for Niergarth. Jacoby afterwards moved to Bloomington, where he is now
a partner in the firm of F. Oberkoetter & Co., and is also a member
of the board of education. Niergarth moved to Bloomington in 1859,
and
is now proprietor of a large boot and shoe establishment. The building
occupied by Niergarth was at the south end of town and burned in 1875
at
the time the I.C. Warehouse was destroyed by fire. The building occupied
by Sutton and Watson is still standing and is known as Mrs. Hurley's Hall,
being used for dancing parties, etc. The timber for this building were
hewn out by
-9-
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