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men in the county. In addition to the grade and high schools, eighty were enrolled in 1895 in the first term of Columbus Normal School. In all a total of one hundred four teachers taught an enrollment of 4,541 students in the county that year and the school property was valued at more than sixty-eight thousand dollars.

One homely index to the prosperity of the region was the increasing number of photo cars which visited Columbus, staying until almost every inhabitant "was taken," either alone or in groups at one dollar per dozen. Another transient business which found a good market in the thickly populated farm communities of Platte County were the fencing machine operators who came to the individual farms offering to weave any height or weight fence on the field in an "on-the-spot" installation.

Still another example of the itinerant operator was the early bunco artist who, capitalizing on the typhoid scare which struck the population after several cases were reported, moved into town to analyze the water under microscopes. These men would then report a contamination in the water which could be removed only by the use of some "tried and true" purifier.

FIRST SCHOOL IN PLATTE COUNTY DATES BACK TO MARCH, 1860.

On March 5, 1860, the citizens of Columbus met in the dining room of the American Hotel and organized the School District I.

At that meeting, they elected John Rickly, Michael Weaver, and George W. Stevens as the first school board. In October of that year, they took the first school census, which showed sixty-six children of school age --- thirty-five east of the Meridian line and thirty-one west of it. At that time District I included all of the rural area outside of Columbus.

The first school house was made available to the community on December 10, 1860, when the Columbus Town Site Company donated to the district the old Company House --- a log cabin with grass roof, the first building was erected in 1861.

George Stevens was the first schoolmaster. He was paid one dollar per day for his services. The first warrant drawn in his favor was sixty-five dollars and twenty-five cents for sixty-seven days of teaching.

NEW BUILDING*

The old Company House was used as a school house until March, 1861, when it was sold for twenty dollars and twenty-five cents to Charles A. Speice, who used it for stove-wood --- a scarce item in those days.

The first "new" school building was finished for classes in the fall of 1861. Seven years later, it was sold. (The Latter Day Saints, who used it for a church for many years, acquired it in 1871.)

*Court Room 1868-1870.

It was replaced in 1868 by the third school building, thirty by fifty feet in dimensions, which was built at a cost of four thousand dollars and was mentioned as the finest building in the Platte Valley.

The increase in population in the frontier village to 1874, was the reason for the first brick school house, which was forty-seven by fifty-seven feet and two stories high. It was built where the First Ward school now stands.

FIRST HIGH SCHOOL

In the fall of 1879---the date is tentative because official school records for that and prior years have been lost --- the district "expanded" its school system by renting the First Congregational Church building, eighteen by forty, one story high, from Julius A. Reed, a pioneer Columbus banker.

J. A. Reed acquired the building, which was located on Twenty-second Avenue between Ninth and Tenth Streets, on May 7, 1879, when the Congregationalists bought the site for their second building, in the block east of Frankfort Square.

It was in the old Congregational building that members of the first high school graduating class, 1885, received their "advanced education." They were: Doctor H. J. Arnold, Judge Earnest Slattery, Addie Ransdale, and Mate Wadsworth. Arthur M. Gray was a member of the class of 1886.

SECOND WARD BUILDING

The first graduates, however, actually received their diplomas in the Williams School in the Second Ward building. This brick structure was built at a cost of twelve thousand dollars for which bonds had been voted. The Board of Education formally accepted it on May 26, 1885, in time to hold the 1885 graduation exercises there. The old academy was sold to the Baptists for a church.

The Columbus High School was accredited by the University of Nebraska in the school year of 1887-

1888. Among the graduates in 1888 were Clarence Sheldon and Albert J. Galley.

TWO DISTRICTS CONSOLIDATED

District 1 was enlarged by its consolidation with District 13 --- recorded in the earliest available minutes of the Board of Education on May 2, 1881, with the notation that District 1 had assets totaling $931.90 and District 13, $473.65.

District 13, which was on the northwest side of town included what is now the Third Ward. In this district a frame building known as "The Yellow School" was built on the site of the Third Ward School. It was built in 1878. A smaller building was built there in the late 1860's. In 1871, the annual report of Charles A. Speice, second county superintendent, mentioned "the two Columbus districts," District1 and District 13. In 1886, the district spent sixteen hundred and fifty dollars to brick-veneer the school building.

Minutes of the school board in 1889 referred to four buildings: Second Ward, five teachers; First Ward, four teachers; Third Ward, four teachers, and the suburban District1 school with one teacher. The latter building, first known as the "Browner" School and later as "Reed" School, was detached from District around 1910 and changed to District 80.

JUNIOR HIGH SCHOOL

The present junior high school building was erected as a senior high school after a bond issue of twenty-five thousand dollars was voted for it in 1898. That was the year R. M. Campbell became high school principal, after having served as assistant principal from 1896.

The next new building in the city's system was the Third Ward School, erected and furnished in 1912, at a cost of thirty thousand dollars. Then in 1912, the first two-room unit of the Highland Park building was built at a cost of between eleven and twelve thousand dollars, financed from the district's general fund, without a bond issue.

In 1919, the old First Ward brick building, erected in 1874, was replaced with the modern building, and the new Fourth Ward building was built. Cost of the two buildings and their furnishings totaled $120,508.80. Their architecture is identical.

KRAMER HIGH SCHOOL

In 1919 District 1 bought the block of ground known as the Leander Gerrard home. The Kramer High School was built in 1924. A bond issue of three hundred thousand dollars was voted that year for the purpose of financing the construction of Kramer High and also for the building of an addition to the Highland Park School building. Kramer High School was opened in September, 1925, and dedicated on December 7, 1925. The cost was $288,758.87, and the Highland Park addition, $13,649.96, or a total of $302,408.83

CITY SUPERINTENDENTS

Michael Weaver was the first city and county superintendent of schools. The office of county and city superintendent was served by the same man until around the 1870's. (The first city school records are dated 1872.) H. L. McGinite served in that capacity following M. Weaver and C. A. Speice.

L. J. Cramer, 1883-1889; J. M. Scott, 1889-1894; W. J. Williams, 1894-December 5, 1900, when he died; J. H. Brittell, acting superintendent until July I, 1901; W. H. Kern, 1901-1906; E. B. Sherman, 1906, resigned August 17, 1907, to become superintendent of the Industrial School at Kearney; U. S. Conn, 1907, resigned July, 1910, to become head of Wayne Normal; R. M. Campbell, 1910-1918, when he declined re-election; C. Ray Gates, 1918-1922; R. R. McGee, 1922-1945; J. R. Bitner, 1945-1948; from 1948 J. S. Young.

ST. BONAvENTURE'S SCHOOL

St. Bonaventure's School was started in August, 1878, and classes began November 4, 1878, with eighty enrolled. At first, it was non-denominational, with catechism taught to Catholic pupils before and after school classes. Quite a number of non-Catholic students were among its first pupils. Later it was changed to a parochial school.

The Sisters of the Third Order of St. Francis of Mary Immaculate, of Joliet, Illinois, conducted the school until 1882, and that year the Franciscan Sisters of Perpetual Adoration, of LaFayette, replaced the original group as resident Sisters.

In January, 1884, the Sisters changed the name from the St. Bonaventure's School to St. Francis Academy. That year it was made a finishing school and a literary course was offered in connection with the ninth and tenth grades. Later the eleventh and twelfth grades were added. From its early years up to about 1925, the school was a "boarding school," having an average of one hundred non-resident pupils both Catholic and ncn-Catholic.

In July, 1925, the parish purchased the Academy from the Franciscan Order of Sisters, and changed the name to the St. Bonaventure School. Since 1925 it was operated as a parish school with day pupils only.

This frame building was used as the first high school until 1885. This picture was taken shortly before the construction of the new high school.

IMMANUEL LUTHERAN

The Immanuel Lutheran Grade School was opened in 1893 under the direction of Reverend Herman Miessler, pastor of the Immanuel Lutheran Church. The first teacher after Reverend Miessler was M. Miller. The school was a one-room school, with one teacher until 1914, when the grades were divided into two groups and two teachers were employed. W. C. Pozehl, principal from 1918, taught grades five to eight, and George Wolf, Sr., had grades one to four.

ST. ANTHONY'S

St. Anthony's Catholic grade school was opened in September, 1913, with Miss Helen Rodak and Miss Josephine Wass as teachers. They taught the entire school year without salary. The next year, the Franciscan Sisters took over the school. The first teachers of the Order could speak the Polish language.

THE TURN OF THE CENTURY --- 1899-1900

More than a century passed away in the years 1899 and 1900. A way of life went with them. Although there had been wars, drouth and depression in the period immediately following the founding of Columbus, the twentieth century brought with it the inevitable claustrophobic effects of an age that has burst through its last frontier. A business revival began after the economic recession of the '90s which promised peace and security for the residents of Platte County and Nebraska became the mecca for those who bought farm land.

Property rose steadily in price until in some places land sold for forty dollars an acre and the cycle of rain --- good crops --- good prices began again. Men now envisaged a time when they would administer vast, modern farms made possible through the technological developments of crop rotation, animal husbandry and irrigation. It was a pleasant time --- this turn into the twentieth century for people had come to fear nature and the elements less and the dread of modern warfare had not yet been brought home to the civilian population.

Already, in 1900, the following businesses had been established in Columbus to survive decades after their original founders established them as infant enterprises: Becher, Hockenberger and Chambers Company; the Thurston Hotel, Boyd Tin Shop, Clother Hotel, Henry Ragatz Company, Meridian Hotel, Gass Fur-

© 2005 for the NEGenWeb Project by Ted & Carole Miller