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First School Ma'am-Was A Stockbridge Indian
The Door county Advocate says the first school in Wisconsin was taught by Miss Electa Quinney, a Stockbridge Indian, on the reservation near Kaukauna in 1828. She was of good family, educated at Cornwall, Conn., where she spent six years. The Hon. E. S. Miner of Necedah, one of her pupils, says that she was a better teacher than the average of teachers to-day. Her methods, many of them, were similar to those of the present day. The pupils were mostly Indian children, but the language used was English, Dabold's and Smith's arithmetic, Webster's spelling book, Old English reader, Columbian orator and Woodbridges geography her text books. There was no Wisconsin then, all Michigan on both sides of the lake. The Indians were poor in mathematics, but excelled in penmanship. She rarely whipped, opened her school with prayer. It was modeled after the best New England schools at that time. The school was in connection with a Presbyterian mission. She refused to marry the Sheriff of Brown county: too proud to marry a white man, she married an Indian Minister, and lived to a good old age in Wisconsin. Sixty-three years finds great improvements in the school system of Wisconsin but whether a child at present gets any better knowledge of the elementary branches during the first ten years of his life than he did then is doubted.
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