A History of Berrysburg Seminary, from an address by D. G. Lubold at a reunion of alumni and students held at Berrysburg, Dauphin County, Pennsylvania, Thursday, August 11, 1904. Published by the Elizabethville Echo.
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Before the middle of the last century there were few facilities in the interior of Pennsylvania for obtaining any other education than that supplied by the common schools. All the testimony relating to the character of those schools agrees that the advantages which they offered were very meager. The teachers, with few exceptions, were poorly qualified and were continually changing because of the short school term and small AN-ages. Such teachers as could be secured were mostly from a distance, those who taught in this vicinity coming from New York and from the lower counties of our own state.
The common school system, adopted in 1834, was not required to be established in every district in the state until by the law of 1849. The office of County Superintendent was created by the act of 1854 and the following year the first Superintendent of Schools for Dauphin County, in his report, complains of the “deplorable scarcity of those properly qualified to teach,” “young men, presenting themselves for examination who had not opened a book for six months,” and “some being entirely unacquainted with geography and grammar.”
It was a difficult matter to secure properly prepared home teachers. The normal schools had not yet come into existence. Millersville, the first normal school, started as an academy in 1854, but was not recognized by the Department of Education as a normal school until 1859. The cost of a college education was too great except for a very few, and they had to be prepared by private tutors to enter college. The academies and seminaries were few and far apart, there being none in all this section of the state, Freeburg Academy dates from 1853, Union Seminary, at New Berlin, from 1854, and the Missionary Institute, now Susquehanna University, at Selinsgrove, from 1857.
Such were the educational conditions in this rich and beautiful Lykens Valley; yet it was left for one not a native of this community to take the first steps to bring about a change. Perhaps, in this connection the memory of one Robert McCune should be preserved, who some time in the Forties opened a select school in an old house in the northern part of Berrysburg, where he taught along with the common studies a few of the higher branches.
The first school in this part of the state affording facilities for a higher education was the Berrysburg Seminar and Boarding School, as it was originally called. It was founded in the year 1851 by the Rev. Henry S. Bassler, a minister of the Reformed Church, and a man of liberal spirit and progressive ideas. He owned the farm at present in possession of Rev. Jacob Rauk, located just north of the town. Being impressed with the needs of his own children and those of the community in general for a school of more liberal education, he decided to establish one himself. He set apart about one and a half acres of ground, and with scarcely any money, and with no assistance from others except some labor which the citizens contributed, he erected the building which for many years was the home of the Seminary.
The building was about thirty-five by fifty-five feet, three stories in height, and built of brick, which were made nearby. On the first floor was the school-room and just inside the entrance to the building a small hall, with hat and cloak room to the left, and to the right, flights of stairs leading to the second story. A hall extended lengthwise through the middle of the second story with four rooms on each side, for the use of students. There was a similar hall on the third floor, but only three rooms on each side. At the east end of this hall a room extended across the width of the building. This was intended for a recitation room. At one time it was used for purposes not connected with the school. During the Know-Nothing campaign (1856) the members of that party held their meetings in the room with the greatest efforts at secrecy, When the building became the property of the borough in 1871, the upper two stories were thrown into one room, for the public high school; the lower room being then used for the primary school.
Rev. Bassler had also personal charge of the management of the Seminary. He hired the teachers and furnished board in his own family to the students who roomed in the building. Finding it difficult to meet the financial obligations made in erecting the building, he sold the school at the end of about two years (March 24, 1854), to Mr. Aaron P. Lark. It was under Mr. Lark’s control until June 10, 1859, when he formed a stock company, which conducted the school until the building was sold t the borough school board.
The stockholders men on June 10, 1859, adopted a constitution and elected the following officers:
- Lot Bergstresser, president
- Aaron P. Lark, secretary
- Benjamin Romberger, treasurer
- Daniel Romberger & John Hartman, trustees – one year
- Jonathan Swab & Peter Bishop, trustees – two years
- John Miller & J. D. Snyder, trustees – three years
At first the school was quite successful, and continued for some years, students from a considerable distance being in attendance. Many of the first native teachers of the public schools in this region, as also many of the foremost citizens were among the early students of the seminary. But the frequent change of principals, and the Civil War, brought many changes to the fortunes of the Seminary. During the last sixteen years of its history, it had again a fair measure of prosperity. Of course, during the period fro 1870 to 1880, only the two summer sessions can be regarded as part of the history of the Seminary, the winter term being simply the sessions of the public school of the borough.
To be continued in Part 2.
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