Schools
Fort Wayne
More than they are either able or willing to bear
In June 1853 Fort Wayne had 1,200 school children and no public schoolhouse. The editor of the Sentinel wrote that a school tax might be more than the city could bear, and the voters turned it down, 325 to 130. Five years later he was elected a school trustee.
Fort Wayne
A total loss to the Seminary Fund
The county's first school was meant to be paid for by the fines of its courts. In 1841 the clerk counted $3,392.70 in fines and forfeitures since 1824, and $238.31 collected. In 1860 one of the seminary's lots was forfeited back to the fund.
Fort Wayne
Taken as the property of the Trustees
In June 1847 a procession laid the corner stone of the Fort Wayne Female College at the end of West Wayne Street. Eleven years later the sheriff offered the same ground for sale at the suit of David M. Dunbar, and the paper never said what happened next.
Allen County
No roads leading to it
In 1837 somebody built Cedar Creek Township's first schoolhouse near the center of the township, by a swamp, with no roads leading to it. It was never used as a school. By one account the township's first election was held in it, and half the voters never found it.