Charlie Gorney - Side I

Things you may not have known about the history of schools in Galesburg:

- Galesburg’s first school was built in 1840 on the north side of the public square. The building was inclined, with the teacher’s desk at the bottom of the incline, so that all of the students would be in his view.

- The first teacher, Eli Farnham, taught about 60 children at a time for ten years, at a rate of $1 per day.

- Between 1863 and 1875, there were separate schools for black children.

- Much of Galesburg was indifferent to the public school system. In the late 1850s, E. S. Wilcox, a Professor of Modern Languages at Knox College, wrote in the Galesburg Free Democrat to caution against this: “The fair name of the ‘College City’ is being tarnished by our shameful negligence of the interests of our common schools.”

(Source: History of the Galesburg Public Schools from 1840-1861, by W. L. Steele, Superintendent. Published by the Knox County Historical Society in 1910. Found in Seymour Library, Special Collections and Archives, Local History Series.)