Schools In Lower Town

Schools In Lower Town. . Early Settlers in Lower Town had large families. Good schools were a part of their New England expectations. Both private and public schools were maintained at several temporary Lower Town locations. , In the 1830s the Misses Azuba and Elizabeth Vail taught private classes in the basement of their residence at the end of Maiden Lane at what would now be 1030 Broadway. In 1838 Baptist Rev. Thomas Holmes taught pupils in a private school in the small church meeting house on Wall Street. The first public schoolhouse in Lower Town was erected about 1837 on Maiden Lane. , By late 1841 Rev. Holmes taught at a second public school at 1202 Traver-the oldest school building still Standing in Ann Arbor. Abolitionists Josiah Beckley and William Perry were two of its early directors. The two school districts combined in 1855 to become the Union School on Wall Street. Union became the Fifth Ward School when Lower Town finally became a part of the city in 1861 , School teaching was no easy job in the 1890s. D Miss Anna Clinton, who taught for forty-seven years, was twenty when she started teaching at the Fifth Ward School She got the first salaried teaching position by virtue of the fact that her predecessor was knocked down by one of the husky fellows in the first grade and refused to teach again at that school. , Miss Clinton described the Fifth Ward School as being entered from Wall Street through a vestibule, which served as cloakroom for thetwo lower rooms. In one corner stood the bucket and dipper from which everyone drank. On either side of the vestibule were tow large classrooms. A handsome staircase led up to two more classrooms. Six grades were housed in the school. , Miss clinton's room had a small amount of storage space which held ink and paper, supplied by the school, and craft material, supplied by the teacher. The room was heated by a large stove that frequently went out. , There was no basement under Miss clinton's room-only a crawl space filled with green scum-covered water in summer and iced over in winter. Antoher unappealing feature of the school was its proximity to the slaughterhouses on the river. Miss Clinton said that twice during the fall the slaughterhouse flies migrated to the school in such numbers that it was necessary to close school and exterminate them. Those were the days when Canal Street behind the school was known as "Shinbone "Alley." , Christmas was celebrated by the children and their parents in the frame one-story Baptist church across Wall Street. A spring exhibition was held in the classroom and the year's projects were displayed. Miss Clinton praised the fine cooperative spirit of the Fifth Ward parents during all the years in which she worked with them. , The Donovan School, although the smallest school building in the district, had a large attendance. It had no auditorium and no real gymnasium, and the principal's office was crowded into a cloakroom. To compensate, a strong teacher-student-parent cooperation was established that resulted in a close relationship between learning and doing. , Since The Donovan School could not foster an adequate athletic program, it developed other means of holding the loyalty and affection of the children. This was accomplished through plays and public performances (known throughout the city for their quality), the Donovan News, group projects, parent-teacher programs, and famed circuses staged for several successive springs on Mrs. Elizabethe Leaird Slack's lawn on Broadway.