First Fowlerville Area School Districts Formed in 1838

  Michigan was in the process of becoming a state when the first settlers arrived in Western Livingston County in what became the Townships of Handy, Conway, Iosco, and Cohoctah.

   Under the law passed in early 1837 by the legislature and signed by Gov. Stevens Mason, it was up to the township residents on when they wished to establish a school. However, once they did, the district was eligible for state funds but also had to follow certain requirements.

   The historical accounts indicate that in 1838 there were enough residents with children in the Township of Handy to make a school feasible. As stipulated by the state law, a board of school inspectors was elected. That first board was composed of John Fowler, Seymour Morton, and Richard Bush.

   The inspectors met in the office of the township clerk during the winter of 1838-39 and established two schools districts. District One embraced the area on the north and east side of the Red Cedar River, while District Two covered the southwest quarter of the township. Shortly afterwards, District One was enlarged to include the northeast quarter of the township.

   A small log school house was erected near the corner of Section 2 in the spring of 1839. Interestingly, this building was in the general vicinity of where the current Fowlerville Community School campus is located.

   Miss Angeline Adams was hired to teach the first term. She was a daughter of Amos Adams from Howell and sister-in-law of Harvey Metcalf who was among the township’s first settlers. Michael Handy taught the winter term of 1839-40.

   According to the first school report, which would have been sent (as required) to the Michigan Superintendent of Public Instruction, John Pearce, the number attending was 433--nineteen of whom were under five years of age or over 17.

   The log building was replaced in 1844 by a framed building that was octagon-shaped. This was later moved from its original location on section 2, probably in the 1850s, to a site on the east side of Hogback Road in Section 12. Most of Section 12 is located north of present-day Grand River Highway with Sharpe Road as its northern border and Owosso Road as its eastern boundary, but a small portion lies south of the road.

    Due its shape, this school became known to everyone as the Round School House. It burned early in 1881, but by that time was considered of little worth. A newer building (known as the East Handy or Hogback School) had been erected south of Grand River.

   With the steady growth in population, four additional school districts were formed during the 1840s and early 1850s. Among them was District 6 which took in an area of what is now the Village of Fowlerville.

   This formation of what became the town’s school district coincided with the creation of a plank road on Grand River that connected Detroit with the new state capital in Lansing. Work had begun in 1849 to connect Howell with Lansing and was completed in 1852-53. Once the road was finished, it became for a time one of the busiest thoroughfares in the state. Stages went back and forth several times a day.

   In anticipation that this improved roadway might bring even more residents as well as commercial growth to the area, Ralph Fowler (for whom the village is named after) instructed Amos Adams to survey and plat land on both sides of Grand River on land he owned. Fowler offered every other lot free to anyone who would put a building on it. He also donated a six-acre tract for the construction of a saw mill by Russell Fuller to supply lumber for the first buildings of the area.

   The Red School, as it was called, was erected in 1851, presumably part of Fowler’s effort (as was the creation of the new school district) to make the town more attractive to new residents. It was located on the west side of Grand Avenue about a block south of Grand River and was used until 1871.

   As the years passed, a total of eight districts were located in the township. A booklet entitled Country Schools in Livingston County, published in January 2002 by George and Lois Winegar of Howell, lists all of the area country schools that were in existence at the midway point of the 20^th century, just before the process of consolidation put an end to the small rural districts.

   The schools included: East Handy or Hogback located as earlier noted in Section 12 (This encompassed part of Howell Township.), Briggs in Section 20, South Handy in Section 3, Griswold in Section 23, Thayer in Section 4 (which included part of Iosco Township), Fowlerville in the village, Handy Center in Section 21, and Hackett in Section 7.

    In their introduction, the Winegars stated that the earliest map they found, showing the location of schools then in existence, was dated 1859. The schools on that map included Hogback, Hackett, and South Handy.

    HANDY TOWNSHIP WAS, OF COURSE, NOT THE only place where school districts were formed.

   In Conway there were ten schools located within the township borders, although several had parts of neighboring townships within their respective districts. These included Benjamin in Section 27, Brown in Section 30, Cole (with Antrim Township) in Section 3, Coughran (with Cohoctah Township) in Section 25, Croope (with Locke Township) in Section 31, Dillingham (with Locke Township) in Section 7, Grant (with Handy Township) in Section 33, Parsons in Section 14, Randall (with Handy Township) in Section 35, and Sixteen in Section 16.

   Benjamin, Brown, Coughran, Parsons and Randall Schools appeared on the 1859 map.

   In the western part of Cohoctah Township, there were Gleason (with Conway Township) in Section 7, Hayner (with Conway Township) in Section 18 Reese in Section 20, and Boyd (with Howell Township) in Section 32. Russell School was the only one on the 1859 map.

   In Iosco there were five districts located within the township borders. These included Foster in Section 10, Mapes (with White Oak Township) in Section 29, Munsell in Section 14, Parkers Corners in Section 17, and Wilson in Section 26. Mapes, Munsell, Parkers Corners and Wilson were all on the 1859 map.

   Two schools located in Marion Township included parts of Iosco Township within their respective districts. These were Green and Stone.

    The country schools, when they were still under the control of their own boards, offered classes through the eighth grade.  Early on, any student wishing to pursue additional education had to find another alternative. Later on that alternative was to enroll in a high school in a nearby town.

   IN A HISTORY OF THE FOWLERVILLE VILLAGE SCHOOL, published in the 1985 FHS Alumni Program and compiled by Carol (Dey) Oliver with help from Natalie Kreeger, it stated that the Red School House had ten grades and that in 1866 this was increased to 11 grades.

   In 1871, a white wooden school was built on North Collins Street. Later, in 1882, the course of study was extended to 12 grades, marking the official start of Fowlerville High School. The first graduating class—consisting of five young men—receiving their diplomas the following year—in 1883.

   The arrangement that evolved in the Fowlerville area and elsewhere was that the rural school district would pay the tuition of a student at the high school he or she attended.

   In her book The School That Was, published in 1990, Rose Hamlin Tennis, noted that eventually the tuition revenue did not meet the increasing expenses which resulted in the push for consolation.

   “There came a time in the 1950s, when high schools determined that tuition money (in Fowlerville’s case, $65-$75 per pupil) paid by rural schools for their students to go into the ninth grade was not enough to educate the students,” she wrote. “That meant the high school district taxpayer (those owning property within the Village’s district) would have to make up the rest of the money. Consequently, the movement for consolidation was started to give the high school districts a larger tax base.

   “The selling point was that there would be more opportunities for students to have such things as music, art, sports, and a gymnasium,” she noted.

  “Each district had to vote to close its rural school,” she pointed out. “Another vote determined which high school they wanted to join. If the whole district could not agree, some districts would split. This was lawful as long as your property adjoined property that voted to go to the same high school.”

   Mrs. Tennis concluded by stating that the process in many cases “divided the community and caused many hard feelings, some lasting a lifetime.”

    While part of the end result was that high school-aged students no longer had to pay tuition and could take a bus to school rather than being responsible for their own transportation and the ‘economy of scale’ could go in effect with a much larger property tax base, the larger change came at the primary level.

    The Fowlerville Community Schools now included all of those rural districts whose residents have voted to join it and affiliate with the high school. A single board of education now oversaw operations as opposed to a board for each rural district.

    Included in the package were all of those country school buildings. A few were initially kept in operation, while others were closed or ended up in private hands. Eventually, though, one by one each of the remaining schools ceased to be used. For reasons of efficiency, elementary students have been taught in central buildings located in town.

    While the legacy of public education in the Fowlerville area encompasses thousands of students--past and present—who were either taught in one of those country schools or in one the various buildings in town, a common thread for many of us has been the high school.

      When the article by Carol Oliver appeared in the 1985 Alumni Program that year’s graduating class totaled over 150—a significant amount of growth from the first five who got diplomas in 1883. Based on the research she’d done, this would have put the number of seniors who graduated from the high school during that time span of 102 years at around 4,800.

    Without my having done any follow-up research, I’d guess that in the past 31 years since then (1986 thru 2016) the school system has come close to doubling that total, if not exceeding it.