Hanover Central High School - Key Yearbook (Cedar Lake, IN)

Page 8 text:

Hanover Schools Go Back to 1838 One of the first log school houses was built in 1838, Pictured is Mrs. Mary Meyer, John Horner, George Gerbing, and John Geisen. With the bicentennial on every- one’s mind, Key Staffer Becky Wornhoff prepared this report on Hanover school history with the grateful help of Cedar Lake ' s histo- rian, Mrs. Peter Horner. Ball Log School, built in the sum- mer of 1838 is claimed to be the first school house in Lake County, not that it was established by virtue of authority of law and supported by taxation, but that it was a common meeting place for instruction and improvement under the guidance of Judge Harvey Ball and his gifted sons and daughters. In 1839 Mrs. Jane A. Ball began conducting the first boarding school. This school continued during the following 16 years. It sent six stu- dents to colleges and seminaries and fitted many for everyday life. The Civil War caused a delay in an orderly development of a school system but after the conflict ended, there was a growing demand for ele- mentary schools. The nex t school in the area was built along what is now Morse Street on the east side of Cedar Lake and known as Red Cedar School. There, early teachers Mary Jane Ball and Mr. Mrs. Andrew Cutler taught quite a roomful of pupils as the years entered the 1860’s. With John Binyon acquiring the land on which this school stood, the name of this school was changed to the Bi- nyon School. In this up-dated school, each child had his own desk in contrast to the backless benches used in the earlier schools, A pot- bellied stove with its long line of stove pipe was centrally located and a strong woodbox stood nearby. The earliest school in the Brunsw- ick area was built on the Echterling farm just south of Brunswick. It was replaced in 1875 by a new two-story Brunswick School which contained high school classes on second floor. Other early schools included a one- room school on the Henry Piepho farm and another on the Chris Brands farm, both north of Brunswick. The Zion Evangelical Church lo- cated north and west of Brunswick set up a small parochial school which was connected closely to the German teachings of the parishio- ners who had migrated into this area from Hanover, Germany. When the Hanover school system began to take care of educational needs by setting up district schools, the paro- chial school was discontinued. Children in the southwest area of Hanover Township were educated in Klaasville Public Schools from about 1880 on. In 1916 a severe tor- nado tore down many buildings in Klaasville and at that time the little one-room school house blew away. Catholic children who were mem- bers of St. Anothony’s Parish of Klaasville were taken to the newly- built St. Martin’s School in Hanover Center and public school children rode in horse-drawn bus to the Brunswick School and Schiller School which had been built in 1912 on the same site of the one-room school that had stood on the Brands’ farm. It housed several .classrooms

Page 7 text:

this is completed, the school year is about to end. Year by year new students come in and out of the classroom. From teacher to teacher, year by year, the students gain more useful informa- tion to better themselves, hopefully to have something to show by the time graduation comes around. Planning, selling and raising money, group by group, the organi- zations secure support for their ac- tivities. Progressing with knowledge on how to organize and run things is an asset gained by being a part of some organization or group. Bit by bit we, the staff, try to raise money, not only to pay for the year- book already bought but to better our yearbook for the years to come: for you to be able to have the memo- ries of happy times stored up in pages of the year’s happenings. It enables all of us to see how we have progressed as a school and a united group through the years we ' ve spent together growing and learning. ANCH on! . ... 152 5 76 3

Page 9 text:

of children until it was torn down in about 1956. Brunswick’s two-story school was moved eastward and became the Perfection Musical Instrument Co. owned by George Einsele. When this building was moved, a small building was erected on the same spot to accommodate the lower grades coming from Klaasville and the Brunswick community. It was used as a school until 1970. In the meantime, the rest of the township was also becoming popu- lated with one-room schools. At the corner of Parrish Avenue and 117th Avenue we find the Gerald School. The Roettgen School, located on land belonging to Phillip Eberle, Sr., was in existence from 1885-1912. Schutz school was located on land of pioneer families, Valentine Schutz and Henry Meyers, on Par- rish Avenue, south of the present Jane Ball School. This school closed down in 1910 and its children went northward to Armour School. Ar- mour school property was deeded over to the township by J.H. Meyer in 1885. It was located directly east of the first Ball School. St. Martin’s of Hanover Center originated in the Mathias Geisen log cabin home in 1880. A frame build- ing was later purchased and used. The familiar red brick building school, torn down in 1974, housed classes for many years, beginning in 1913. The present Holy Name School was built in 1949. Kindergarten was opened in the township in 1968. Prior to this time private kindergartens had been op- erated by Mrs. Neil Jackson, south of Cook, two miles, and one by Mrs. Adam Schafer, a former teacher in the Piepho one-room school. With the building of the Lincoln School in 1912, there was only a one-room school in the Brunswick area for the lower grades, which closed in 1970. Schiller School, used from 1912-1956 and St. Martin’s Parochial School, later changed to Holy Name, in use from 1908 to now, within the township. High schoolers were transported to Crown Point, Lowell and Dyer High School. An- other elementary school was built in 1956 and named after that pioneer in education, Jane Horton Ball. In 1974 the middle school was added to the high school and the sixth grade moved up from Jane Ball, making the school the Hanover Central Middle and High School with the enrollment of 934 in grades 6 - 12 . Freshman and Sophomores High School stu- dents at Hanover Center ' s Lincoln School are: Back Row, Walter Ludwig. Robert Tthomas, Richard Howkinson, Lawrence Turnquist. Front Row, Martin Mager, Nelson, Loretta Ludwig, Sara Ruge, Herbert Meyer and teacher, Mr. Hill. . . . Adam Shafer is standing beside the school bus that he used to pick up the students for school.