Chatfield's Public Education Legacy

Chatfield's Public Education Legacy. . , The Chatfield Academy was a non-governmental institution of secondary education, what we would now call a preparatory school. The academy movement had its origins in New England (Boston Latin was the prototype) and migrated west into Minnesota with the first wave of settlers. Founded in 1858, the Chatfield Academy was financed by subscription fees paid by the parents, who hired itinerant schoolmasters to teach a varied curriculum that included reading, writing, elocution, geography, mathematics, languages and moral science. Housed in a sturdy stone building originally occupied by a furniture maker's shop, the academy did well for a few years but was replaced by the public school system in the 1860s., Few small towns in southern Minnesota have been better equipped with public schools than Chatfield. The first purpose-built public school was a two-story frame building erected in 1865 on a plot of ground overlooking the town square. A new masonry schoolhouse was built on the same site in 1888., Although he is probably better known for his 1828 masterpiece, An American Dictionary of the English Language, Noah Webster (1758-1843) also produced a popular textbook for teaching children to read, The Elementary Spelling Book, one of the first books to receive copyright protection in the United States. It is believed that over 100 million copies were sold and for over a century the "blue-backed speller" was the standard text used in classrooms across the country and the favorite arbiter at spelling bees., , This photograph of Chatfield's 1888 school building was used to illustrate E. M. Phillips, The Rural School System in Minnesota: A Study in School Efficiency, written by E. M. Phillips and published in 1915 by the Bureau of Education., Shown here, the handsome two-story schoolhouse built in 1888 housed both the graded elementary school and the secondary school department until the high school was built next door in 1916. It was demolished in 1962., , The earliest public school in Chatfield was held in "a little log house on Fillmore Street" until a purpose-built schoolhouse was erected a few years later. In 1865 a two-story frame schoolhouse was built across the street from the public square on what is now the Chatfield Center for the Arts campus. As can be seen in the photograph, the building featured numerous windows and a picturesque belfry. By the 1880s it was operating as a graded elementary school with approximately 400 students. In 1888 this district built a new, two-story, eleven-room schoolhouse on the same site as the old building.