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Photographer: Mike Wintermantel
Taken: December 21, 2014
Caption: George Armstrong Custer - His Early Days
Additional Description: Top Photo
Custer's First Alma Mater
General Custer's collegiate education did not begin with the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He was first a graduate of the McNeely Normal School of Hopedale, which was Ohio's leading teacher training institution in the first half of the nineteenth century. Organized in 1851 by Cyrus McNeely, the Hopedale Normal School prepared thousands of teachers for Ohio's burgeoning system of common schools. Seventeen-year-old George Armstrong Custer graduated from there in 1857.

Bottom Photo
Custer's First Career
Although destined to be a soldier, Custer first practiced a more genteel profession. Early in 1856 he was employed as a teacher of the District Five School near Cadiz where he earned $28 a month and had charge of about 25 students. Custer was remembered as "very smart...and well liked by all his pupils." He liked music, played the accordian, and was socially inclined. When he was present at a social gathering he was "so jovial and full of life that everybody enjoyed themselves." Later that year Custer took a better paying position, earning $30 per month at the Beech Point School near New Athens.
Submitted: December 22, 2014, by Mike Wintermantel of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.
Database Locator Identification Number: p295991
File Size: 2.646 Megabytes

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