By Tom Schmidt

Although schools existed in private homes in early Prescott, the hand-hewn log cabin built at the corner of Granite and Carleton Streets in 1868 or 1869 by Samuel Curtis Rogers provided the first schoolhouse for Prescott’s children. Rogers, who helped develop and taught in California’s first rural public school district, used borrowed books and his own library to teach his students. The schoolhouse served not only as Prescott’s but also Northern Arizona’s first schoolhouse.
 

The schoolhouse remained in use until 1873, when it was replaced by a new structure after it was determined that the log schoolhouse was badly deteriorated and vulnerable to flooding from adjacent Granite Creek. The old schoolhouse stood until it tragically burned to the ground in 1948. The Rotary Club built a replica in 1962 on the Sharlot Hall Museum grounds commemorating the original structure, where it stands today.
 

During the 1870s Prescott’s schools (public and private) underwent growth. The Prescott School District was created in 1871. In 1878, Sisters Mary Martha and Mary Rose established a small school (which became St. Joseph’s Academy) in a hospital teaching Prescott’s Catholic children. That same year, the West Prescott School opened in Miller Valley, where the Lone Star Baptist Church held its first services.
 

In 1876, Prescott’s school board called for a bond election to raise money for larger school facilities, the first of its kind in Arizona, requiring authorization from the territorial legislature. Proponents of the new school found an ally in Governor Anson P.K. Safford, who campaigned for a public school system. As reported in the Days Past December 5, 2015, public education was a major priority for Safford, who stated, “Next in importance to the Indian question, none will capture your attention over that of devising some plan for the education of the youth in our Territory.” Construction costs reached almost $12,000, but to many Prescottonians, the school heightened the importance of learning. On October 30, 1876, Prescott Free Academy was dedicated with much fanfare.
 

Prescott Free Academy was Arizona Territory’s first school to use different rooms for different grades. Built on Gurley Street two blocks east of the Courthouse Square where the 1873 school had been built, it provided four classrooms on the first floor and territorial offices on the top floor, including for the Governor. Principal Moses Sherman administered this academy and taught the three upper grades while his sister, Lucy, taught the three lower ones.
 

By 1900, Prescott Free Academy was considered too small for the town’s growing population. The school district hired architect David Kilpatrick to design a larger, modern building: Washington School. Constructed in 1903 on the corner of Alarcon and Gurley Streets, it stands on the same site as had been occupied by the Prescott Free Academy. Both Washington School and Lincoln Elementary School (built in 1909) are listed on the National Register of Historic Places.
 

Sharlot Hall Museum Library and Archives has two excellent new exhibits highlighting the history of Arizona education: Prescott’s Educational Heritage and Sharlot Hall’s Early Education. On display are illustrations, color and black-and-white photographs, books, and other items representing public schools in territorial Prescott, which had several firsts in Arizona’s public education history.
 

Artifacts representing the education of Sharlot Hall, who attended public schools in nearby Dewey during the late nineteenth century, are also among the items exhibited (thanks greatly to volunteers who provided books). Included are schoolbooks published by the D. Appleton & Company, which supplied texts to the entire Arizona Territory and that Sharlot read in school. This series, published after the Civil War, was commercially successful and taught reading with carefully prepared engravings.
 

Late-nineteenth century students like Sharlot also read McGuffey Readers, a series of graded primers for grade levels 1-6. These books, first published by professor William Holmes McGuffey in 1836-37, included stories, poems, essays, and speeches. McGuffey Readers stressed religious values and presented stories and moral lessons emphasizing strength of truth and character in virtuous citizens.
 

Both of these extraordinary exhibits are on display in the Museum’s Library and Archives Reading Room until the summer of 2018 during the regular Library & Archives’ public hours: Wednesday through Friday 12 noon to 4 pm, Saturdays from 10 am to 2 pm or by appointment.

“Days Past” is a collaborative project of the Sharlot Hall Museum and the Prescott Corral of Westerners International (www.prescottcorral.org). This and other Days Past articles are also available at www.sharlothallmuseum.org/library-archives/days-past. The public is encouraged to submit proposed articles to dayspastshmcourier@gmail.com. Please contact SHM Library & Archives reference desk at 928-445-3122 Ext. 14, or via email at dayspastshmcourier@gmail.com for information.