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Annual Reports for Portage Twp
School District No.2
1833 – Annual Report
Tallmadge No. 1: 192
scholars
Portage No. 1: 43
scholars
Portage Twp. School
District No.2 - No Report
Portage Twp School
District No. 3 - No Report
Portage School District No. 4 - Total 57
Wm Slater, District
Clerk - no enumeration
[Because a Portage Twp School District No 4
exists in 1833, it’s easy to assume there was a Portage Twp. School District
No.2 this year too. Its possible School Districts No 1 and 2 existed for a
number of years prior to 1833 as well, but no documents have been found
support the date of Akron’s first schools.]
1834 - Annual Report
Portage Twp. School District No.2 - Total scholars 136 - lists children’s
names only
Asa Stanley, District
Clerk - Jacob Brown Justice of the Peace
Children of Note: 1
Stanley child; 4 Humiston children; 7 Nichol children; Harriette Cole; Mary
Bryan; Mary Crosby (becomes Henry W. King’s wife) and her 4 siblings; 4
Mustill children; 4 Spicer children; 3 Williams children; 8 Chandler children;
4 Howe children; 1 Babcock; 2 Barnard children; 3 Robinson children
1835 - Annual Report
No Report made his year
for Portage Twp. School District No.2
1836 - Annual Report
Portage Twp. School District No. 2 - Total Scholars 210
D.D. Evens
District Clerk, F.C. May, Town Clerk
1837 - Annual Report
No school reports were
filed in Portage Township this year.
1838 - Annual Report
Portage Twp. School District No. 2 and 6 - which include a good part of Akron
Total Scholars -
503, males 227; females 276
This year Horace K. Smith was appointed Township Clerk under the new school
law introduced by Senator Leicester King and influenced by Super Samuel Lewis
(the 1838 Ohio school law was, at the time,
among the most important school laws ever written.)
This year is extensively enumerated. Each
school district lists parents’ names, scholars’ names, male or female. In some
cases he describes the school districts boundaries. The report covers 12 pages.
It is also enlightening to see that prominent citizens sponsored children to the
schools other than their own, notably in School District No. 2; Horace K. Smith
sponsors Wm and M Flowers along with Hulbert and Almira Smith; L.V. Bierce,
whose infant son died shortly before this date sponsored Susan Hopkins; Mrs.
Trumbull sponsored Waterman Gage; S.A. Wheeler sponsored 3 children and his
daughter Melissa; Philo Chamberlin sponsored 2 along with one of his own; Dr.
J.D. Commings sponsored 2 and none of his own; Webster B. Storer sponsored Lucy
Tubbs and Wm Dodge sponsored Isabella Howard
It is likely that some of these sponsored
children were African-American, the children of runaway slaves, as many of these
sponsors were also rabid abolitionists.
By the end of the year in 1838 and with the
desperate effects of the Panic of 1837 (USA’s deepest economic depression)
almost all common schools in Ohio closed. Soon after the 1838 School Law was
repealed.
The next report of School House No. 2 comes
from the 1847-48 school year.
Western Reserve Historical Society: Enumeration of youth and
partial census for school districts in Portage County, Ohio, 1832-1838 :
includes a census of youth and parents for Akron in 1838 / prepared by William
Cumming Johnson from original records in the American History Research Center,
Kent State University Library. by Johnson, William Cumming Kent, Ohio : American
History Research Center, 1982.
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