Growth of Pella's Public Schools

SUPERINTENDENTS OF SCHOOLS

1858, C. T. Chapin; 1859, Warren Olney; 1860, E. D. Morgan; 1861, C. B.
Boydston; 1862-1865, F. W. Corliss; 1865-1869, W. D. Forsythe; 1869-1871, W. H.
Post; 1871-1886, C. C. Cory; 1886-89, L. J. Hancock; 1890-91, Prof. Aul;
1891-97, Prof. J. H. Garber; 1891-97, Prof. Willard Lyon; 1897-1901, Prof. W. W.
Cook; 1902, Prof. W. C. Farmer; 1903-05, Prof. F. M. Frush; 1906-1922.

In the first years of hard struggle with the difficulties incident to pioneer
life in a strange land, the school facilities were necessarily crude. The work
done in this department by Overkamp, Muntingh and Hospers has already been
briefly mentioned.

Up to the year 1856, when the two-story brick building was erected on Franklin
street--now used as a feed barn--the buildings used for school purposes were
often the residences of the teachers. The early records mention the log cabin
that stood in the Garden Square, a frame, one-room building, used both for
church and school purposes, that was built on the lot now occupied by the
"Chapel," just west of the Star garage building; a brick building on the lot
where Theo. Tice has his beautiful home, a log house on East Franklin where
Henry Ver Meer now has his residence; a frame building on the corner one block
west of the Second Reformed Church building, on the lot where Wm. Cook in later
years built a home. There were undoubtedly several others, but the above list is
enough to show that the first generation of our boys and girls had to put up
with the same crude facilities, in their school life, that was the general lot
of all those who came to Iowa in the early days.