History of Early Schools  by Gord Conroy

The Beginnings. However, that did not happen until the spring of 1832 and during that time, the families lived in shanties down by the water. Then they built their inn, The Shakespeare Hotel, (see Sargint Street), as it would be named, which was the first permanent building in “Little Thames.”  The hotel got its name because Commissioner Thomas Mercer Jones (see Jones and Mercer Streets)  of the Canada Company brought Sargint a sign for the hotel with the Bard's likeness. The name "Avon" for the river and "Stratford" for the town quickly followed, and the Shakespearean tradition was begun. 

The hotel also functioned as the first church, first schoolroom and first hamlet hall. It was Mrs. Sargint who helped make the inn the centre of business and social life. It was she who readied the "big room" for the first Anglican church service, held by Canon William Bettridge from Woodstock. 

And it was she who first taught the children.

The very outgoing Mrs. William Sargint was the first "unofficial" teacher in the little pioneer community, beginning in 1833, the year after she and her husband William arrived in “Little Thames” where they established the first hotel now marked by a stone and plaque on what is now Ontario Street. (see Sargint Street). There would be no schoolhouse for eight years.

Mrs. Sargint gathered the children together and taught them rudimentary lessons in their inn.. And so, the basics of the Three R’s were passed on though we don’t know how often the children came or how much they learned. We do know that some parents had been well educated in England and Scotland and they brought books with them and sometimes whole libraries and supplemented the first teachings themselves at home.

The log school, a “common” school, was open to all. It was very small, only 20 feet by 30 feet, and built by the manual labour of almost the entire population of Stratford ...about 50 people. In 1841, there were 31 pupils...including Linton’s own children. There were 33 pupils listed in the first report sent to the Department of Education.

In the winter, a big box stove heated the room. In the summer, the flies droned against the panes of the small windows. In every season, Alexander McGregor sat enthroned with desk and chair on a platform that gave him a fine unobstructed view of the students squirming on the long hard benches below him.

Students and Curriculum. School was confining for both students and teacher. Students used small, individual slates and pencils for their work. The slates were reinforced with tin caps for added strength at the corners. The pencils used on the slates during the solving of multiplication problems set by the schoolmaster created a screeching sound. Quite the racket.  McGregor apparently placed a small table in the centre of the room and as students finished the assigned problem, they each slapped down their slate, face down, with a great din caused by the tin on the reinforced slates.

McGregor’s first classes held all the young of Stratford’s leading citizens, the children of Linton, (see Linton Avenue), Daly (see Daly Avenue), McCullough (see McCullough Street) and Orr (Alexander Barrington Orr; Thomas Orr (Cobourg Street) who had only arrived in Stratford in 1857.

One young man was James Peter Woods who became a County Judge. (see Woods Street). Apparently, young Woods enjoyed launching his sleigh from the steps of John Monteith’s store, and sledding to the river. The store was located just east of the school, on the south side of the river at the site of what would become Victoria and Grey Trust Company at 1 Ontario Street.  John was the father of Andrew who became the Trust Company’s first president. (see Monteith Avenue).

The curriculum at the school included the three R’s plus grammar, history, geography, and some basic Latin. Parents were assessed for the education of their own children. However, in Stratford, there was one widow, who was unable to pay. She applied for, and got, free tuition for her child...an early foreshadowing of free schools.

Parental Attitudes to Schooling. In this early time of the 1830s and 1840s, whole families often ran businesses and the children did not always attend school despite the log school being built in 1841.  In 1855, the school inspector was complaining bitterly to Egerton Ryerson who had been appointed superintendent of education in Canada West in 1844 [later Ontario] that three-quarters of the children weren’t attending and that their elders apparently didn’t care, as people of all classes were “so busy getting rich that they had no time for visiting schools or troubling much about them.”

As mentioned, the log school of 1841 was built on what is now the lawn of the Stratford Library just south of the first residence built by John Corry Wilson Daly, the local Canada Company agent, (see Huron Street), when he arrived in town in 1833. His house which was situated on what is now the front lawn of the Perth County Court House was demolished to make way for the present building (Huron Street) which opened in 1886.

Beside the school, just to the west, on St. Andrew’s Street, was the “Auld Kirk,” a wooden structure, built in 1838. It was the first place of worship for the Presbyterians on that site, and by 1840, a steeple was added. The church would be rebuild twice on the same site in 1868 and 1911. (see St. Andrew’s Street).

Changing Times. During this decade of the 1850s, Stratford changed. The railway arrived in 1856. That brought a new era of growing prosperity and new more substantial buildings. That meant early log homes and shanties were taken down and replaced.

In 1851, the school trustees reached a major milestone and hired Stratford’s first female teacher, Miss Annie Watkins Coleman. Very shortly thereafter, she marched all the girls down the street to a room that had been secured for them on Erie Street, leaving the little log school to the boys.  

A female teacher at this date was not unknown in Canada West, later Ontario. By 1860, one in four teachers was female; by 1870, the numbers were equal; by 1880, there were more females teaching than males. 

Plans for a New "Common" School. In 1852, with talk of the new county of Perth on everyone’s mind, and with Stratford slated to be the county town, it seemed appropriate to have a new school house to accommodate the expanding classes. In January 1852, at the annual meeting of the school board “the erection of a new schoolhouse made of brick” was high on the agenda.  A public meeting followed in the “long room” of the Union Hotel, presided over by the two champions of the new county, J. C. W. Daly, chairman, and J. J. E. Linton, recording secretary. They often found themselves on opposite sides of town issues but not in this case.

Soon after the annual meeting of the school board in 1852, an advertisement appeared in the newspaper.

FOR SALE, cheap...the building now used as the male schoolhouse. 

New Brick School. Central Common School 1855. 

The historic old log “male school” was carried away, and in its place, in 1855, rose the new Central “Common” School, (see St. Andrew’s Street) sporting a new fence and a fine old pump with a tin cup chained to it, a holdover, apparently, from the earlier log school on the same site.   The term "common" school would also disappear with the passage of the 1871 school act and the schools would be "public" schools.  But a new brick school cost money, and Stratford didn’t have enough for its projects. And so, in 1854, the town of Stratford borrowed money for schools, a new market and sidewalks from a Municipal Loan Fund established by Parliament in 1852. They borrowed 6000 pounds and when crops failed and debts mounted, Stratford had money problems. The interest rates were lowered by the government and some loans were forgiven, but Stratford had debts that continued till after Stratford became a city in 1885.

However, with the borrowed money, in 1855, a larger and more substantial Central Common School was built on the site of the old log school. Source: Floodtides of Fortune: The Story of Stratford by Adelaide Leitch. Compiled by Gord Conroy

Advanced Education.  Grammar Schools and High Schools. Public and Separate.

There was a crying need for advanced education in Canada West (Ontario) during the 1830s and 1840s. There were only 64 Grammar Schools in all of Ontario. Grammar schools were the forerunners of the high school. Few were adequate. In grammar schools at that time, there was no set course of study, with 30% of the students unable to read and 24% unable to write. 

That soon changed and it was Dr. Egerton Ryerson  who directed the change. He was Provincial Superintendent of Schools from 1844 to 1876 and the architect of of Ontario's school system. 

In 1853, in Stratford, Rev. Thomas Russell taught grammar school classes in the grand jury room of the court house on McCulloch's Hill which was in actuality small and dingy. (see William Street). That grammar school operated with 30 pupils from 1853-1855 when it moved to new facilities on Norman Street. In 1854, the town council had borrowed the 6000 pounds from the Municipal Loan Fund as mentioned above and in addition to building the new common public school, they also used part of that money to build a new grammaar school.  

This new "Grammar School" which would officially become a "High School"only after the passage of the school act in 1871 was on the south side of Norman Street about half way between St. Vincent and John Streets.  It was erected by Thomas Lunn at a cost of $4000 and described by the school inspector as a "large, lofty,brick building, 45' x 45', with a cupola over it,  small hat rooms not completely furnished; one acre of ground not fenced." The Beacon newspaper was urging  the contractor at the same time to "...put on a little more steam" in laying the sidewalks on Mill and Norman Street, in the vicinity of the new school. 

On Januaary 8, 1855, the school trustees met and appointed the new teacher for this new grammar school (high school).  Charles Macgregor, B.A., a Presbyterian and a graduate of the University of Toronto, was hired as the new grammmar school master at a salary of 150 pounds a year. 

Charles Macgregor was described by the school inspector this way in March 1855: "The master is mild but firm, seldom using the rod. He is young and inexperienced but, as he is willing and winning in manner, he is likely to succeed." He succeeded and was still there when young Cam Mayberry came to Stratford, willing and inexperienced. (see Mayberry Place).

In 1860, the first separate school was built. It was a little frame building facing the street in front of St. Joseph's church on Huron Street. Even after the new St. Joseph's was built in 1867-1868, some classes were still held in the frame building. By 1879, the Belden Atlas noted the location of two separate schools with a combined attendance of 200. One was a large handsome brick edifice, St. Joseph's Searate Schgool on Grange Street, in Romeo Ward, the other was the Convent of the Ladies of Loretto, organized in 1878.