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Crown Point Register, 11 Feb. 1875.
The superintendent was not impressed by District No. 13. The school building was sparsely equipped, and the pupils and their parents seemed unenthusiastic. Based on the fact that the teacher here was Mary Underwood, I'm guessing that this was the one-room Underwood school. Mary was probably the 19-year-old daughter of Daniel and Sybil Underwood. (Three years after this report, she would marry Jackson Castle.)
District No. 1 was being taught by Asa Bullock. He was about 20 years old, the son of Moses and Amanda Bullock, and in 1875 probably still living where he was recorded in the 1870 Census, on the Bullock farm along 73rd Avenue. If he taught at the nearest school to his home, that would be the one-room Adams school on the northeast corner of Colorado and 69th. In spite of poor equipment, the superintendent says, "The teacher is quite thorough and is doing good work." As we learned from his obituary, Asa had formal training at a normal school and taught for some eleven years, before going into the practice of law. At his death, some of his former pupils still remembered him as "a good teacher."
Next we have District No. 2, which was especially bad. The (few) students' textbooks were "wholly unfit" while their seats were "a complete wreck, all broken and cut up." The teacher was Cyrus Smith, and since his farm, as we know, lay just west of the intersection of (present-day) Green and 73rd, I'm guessing he taught at the Ainsworth school, which in 1875 still had only one room. Cyrus' 1915 obituary said, "In his earlier days in Ross township, he taught school for eight years during the winter months." (During the other months, of course, he farmed.) The superintendent says nothing about how well the students were doing. Unless I'm reading too much into that silence, that suggests they weren't doing particularly well. Perhaps Cyrus — while evidently competent, since he kept getting re-hired — was not the sort of extraordinarily gifted enough teacher who could inspire the undersupplied students in their dilapidated school.
Moving on, we find that the "Merrillville Graded School" was large enough to need two teachers. Again, no maps or charts, but otherwise the report was favorable: "Order good; pupils pretty well advanced; good interest, and good attendance. Teacher quite thorough and doing good work." The teacher in this case, I believe, was Orsemus H. Spencer, whom we've met before only in passing (as the brother-in-law of Harriet Hanks Chester, and the brother of Charles Spencer). Mrs. Spencer, whose department the superintendent did not have time to examine, was the former Emma Gearhart, whom Orsemus married in 1871 (Indiana Marriage Collection). She was his third wife.
His first wife was Esther A. Tree, a native of Canada, who shows up in the 1850 Census in Porter County. Her father's name is illegible, but elsewhere[1] is given as Bradford; her mother's name is Lucinda; and Esther has a sister, Marilla, who eventually married Charles Spencer — so two sisters married two brothers. As for the Spencer family, originally from Ohio where Orsemus had been born in 1836, by 1850 they had settled in Hobart. As early as 1855 Orsemus began appearing in the Hobart Township Trustee's ledger as a teacher.
In 1856 Orsemus and Esther eloped (I'm guessing) to marry in Berrien County, Michigan. The 1860 Census shows the young couple, with their two small boys, farming in Porter County. In August 1862, Orsemus joined the 73rd Regiment, Indiana Infantry. Apparently he was taken as a prisoner of war, then paroled, and discharged from the Army in July 1863 for health reasons, suffering from "heart disease and rheumatism from exposure while in prison."[2]
Probably in April 1866, Esther died.[3] On May 20, 1867, Orsemus married Lucy Hanks. He and Lucy, with the sons from his first marriage, were recorded in Hobart in the 1870 Census, he giving his occupation as schoolteacher. Lucy died sometime in 1870 or 1871, though I can't determine exactly when.[4]
On August 18, 1871, Orsemus married Emma Gearhart. As late as June 1879 I find both of them in the Hobart Township Trustee's records, receiving pay as teachers. Perhaps it was that summer that they left for Kansas, where the 1880 Census found them, and where they lived out the rest of their lives. Orsemus died there in 1896. When Emma died in 1907, her body was brought back to Indiana for burial.
This 1875 report does not cover all the schools in Ross Township. I would have liked to hear about the Green, Deep River, Hurlburt, and Vincent schools, all of which show up on the 1874 Plat Map in eastern Ross Township, as well as several others in the more westerly part of the township.
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[1] In the 1900 death certificate of Esther's sister, Marilla Tree Spencer.
[2] Ancestry.com. Kansas, U.S., Enrollment of Civil War Veterans, 1889 [database on-line]. Provo, UT, USA: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2013. Original data: Enrollment of Ex-Soldiers and Sailors, their Widows and Orphans, 1889. Unit ID #190462, 69 volumes. Records of the Adjutant General’s Office. Kansas State Historical Society, Topeka, Kansas.
[3] Per a family tree on Ancestry.com that does not cite a source for this information.
[4] I find information in the Crown Point Register, in the "From Hobart" columns of June 9, 1870, and June 23, 1870, about the illness and death of Mrs. O.A. Spencer, but if that is a misprint for O.H., then how could Lucy be recorded in the census on July 19, 1870? The same family tree mentioned in footnote 3 above gives June 3, 1870, as the date of Lucy's death but does not cite a source, and again, what about the census?
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