MT. PLEASANT SCHOOLS 1841-1926
During the 18th and early 19th centuries, free public education in North Carolina was not a high priority. It was not until 1825, when a former North Carolina State Senator, Archibald D. Murphey, succeeded in pushing a bill through the Legislature to create a Literary Fund that would finance “public” education in the state. The Fund’s purpose was to help counties in the building and maintenance of common schools in their communities by distributing funds according to the free population. The Fund was to be managed by the Governor, Chief Justice, Speakers of both houses of the Legislature, and the State Treasurer.
It took another fourteen years, however, for the state to finally approve a referendum for the first “Public School Act.” The Act called for each county to vote on whether to support or oppose a local school tax. If a county approved the tax, the Literary Fund was to provide $2.00 for every $1.00 raised by the tax. The act also called for the appointment of ten superintendents in each county to oversee the schools, creating what would later become a local board of education. There were, however, no provisions in the act to establish standards for teacher qualifications, subjects to be taught, length of school term, or a centralized office at the state or county level.
The election, held in October 1839, saw sixty-one of sixty-eight counties then in existence in the state vote to support school taxes. Voters (white male property holders) in Cabarrus County approved the act even though their neighbors, Rowan and Mecklenburg, voted against it. (Both counties already had strong, well-established, and influential private academies.)
The town of Mt. Pleasant had not yet been established, although there was a Post Office called Mt. Comfort, and residents in the area already had some schools in place, though they were probably neither public nor free. St. John’s Lutheran Church, located about three miles from the village, conducted a school for its congregation and possibly others, and there was apparently another school north of the village called Holechers (Hurlockers). [See the reference below.]
On April 22nd, 1841, the newly appointed Superintendents of Common Schools for Cabarrus County held their first meeting. Present were Christopher Melchor, John H. Bost, George Barnhardt, Henry Blackwelder, Michael Frieze, Charles W. Harris, and R. W. Allison. R. W. Allison was elected Chairman of the Board. The Board authorized the creation of districts within the county to include eighty children from five to twenty-one years of age, with “due regard for the number of children who will actually attend school.”
The Board met for its second meeting on July 2nd, 1841, with two additional members present, James Young and Robert Kirkpatrick. The Board proceeded to lay off thirty-six districts and assign two freeholders (white male property owners) from each district to conduct elections of school committees.
The small village surrounding the Post Office was designated Common School District #26 which was described as, “beginning at [Dutch] Buffalo Creek at the mouth of Adams Creek, thence up said creek to Henry Ludwick’s, thence South to Adams Creek including all the Ludwicks, Jacob House, Jacob Misenheimer, and Alfred Oury to the Lytecker plantation on Adams Creek, thence down said creek to the beginning.” The two assigned to conduct the election, which was to be held at “the schoolhouse at Holechers,” were John Shimpock and Nicholas Ludwick, both residents of the village of Mt. Comfort. The school committeemen elected in August were Jacob Misenheimer, Christopher Melchor, and John Shimpock, again all residents of Mt. Comfort.
There was to be only one school in each district. These schools, while accepting students from the ages of five to twenty-one, were to provide only a basic elementary curriculum and extended through only few grades and were conducted for only four to six months a year. Additional schools had to be approved by the County Superintendents, and in several cases when a second school was requested, a new district was created. There are only two recorded deeds for the creation of schools in or near Mt. Pleasant before 1901. The first was in 1854 and the second in 1881.
Even though funding for the new schools was subsidized by State and County funds, each district still had to raise additional funds and, it appears that the first school in District #26 was not constructed until 1854.
On Oct 21st, 1854, the District #26 School Committee, i.e., Daniel Barrier, Daniel Shimpock, and Martin M. Misenheimer, purchased from Daniel Miller for $1 a parcel of land “for the purpose of erecting a suitable building for a common school.” The land was described as “beginning at a red oak Daniel Shimpock and J. D. Scheck’s corner, thence N59E 33 poles crossing the Salisbury Rd. to a red oak said Scheck’s and M. Petrea’s corner on the east side of the road, thence N38W 8 poles to a stone on the west side of road, thence S71W 24 poles to a stone on said Shimpock’s line, thence S6W 14 poles to the beginning containing one acre and 111 sq poles.” [Based on this deed description and a later 1901 deed, this tract of land appears to have been located somewhere on or near current North Main Street, between current Broad Street and Elm Street.] Interestingly, this proposed school site was only a short distance from the location of the construction site of the Western Carolina Male Academy, a private school for boys above the age of fourteen, being built under the auspices of the North Carolina Lutheran Synod. [It opened in 1855 and became North Carolina College in 1859.]
In 1857, Mathias Barrier, a resident of Mt. Pleasant and the man who provided the land for the construction of the Western Carolina Male Academy/NC College) was appointed to the County Board of Superintendents. In that same year, the Board ordered that the school committees not be allowed to hire a teacher unless they produce a certificate from the examining school committee according to the law. It was also ordered that the school committees report all the heads of families in their districts and the number of their children and names.
In 1859, the Board of Superintendents ordered that each school district should receive $50 and that the remaining funds be distributed on a per capita basis. The Board reported that the Spring installments amounted to 371/8 cents per student from the state Literary Fund and $1.15 per student from the local school tax. School taxes reported collected in October 1859 totaled $3,283.58.
Also in 1859, a group of citizens from Mt. Pleasant opened a school for females called the Mt. Pleasant Female Academy (later called Montamoena/Mont Amoena), “to pursue the business of high school and education in Mt. Pleasant.”
In 1860, a report from the Board stated that District #26 received $160.80 cents rom the County fund total of $5,234.
There is no information on the status of the public schools in Mt. Pleasant during the Civil War. Both North Carolina College and Mont Amoena Seminary closed. In 1868, the state of North Carolina, under the Reconstruction Act, was required to adopt a new constitution. The Constitution introduced Townships, which each County was required to adopt for the purpose of elections and other civil and political activities. Mt. Pleasant was included in Township #8, which was described as: Beginning at a point opposite Bear Creek Church, thence along the Stanly County line south to Caleb Dove’s old place, thence to Solomon Dry’s, thence to John B. Dry’s mill, thence to Henry Bangle’s, thence to the old Savannah place, thence along said road to the Fogleman Branch, thence to George Bost’s, thence with said road to four mile post, thence to George Blackwelder’s, thence to George Cline’s, then to John Barringer’s, thence to Paul Bost’s, thence to Nicholas Ridenhour’s, thence to Cress’s, thence to Daniel Miller’s, thence to Isaac Beaver’s, thence down the east bank of Dutch Buffalo Creek to the widow Isaac Barringer’s, thence to N. H. Barringer’s, thence to widow Moose’s, thence to the beginning.
Article IX of the State Constitution made free public education available for all children between the ages of six and twenty-one “unless educated by other means.” School terms were required to be at least four months a year, and persons between the ages of six and eighteen were required to attend at least sixteen months of school during twelve years. The Article also created and defined the duties of the State Board of Education, which was given the power to regulate all free public education within the state.