Page:Oregon Historical Quarterly vol. 4.djvu/31



The study of the school history of Astoria is of interest to the student of education in that it reveals a condition different from that of some of the other cities of Oregon, particularly those of the Willamette Valley. In the latter, private and public schools struggled for the mastery, with the private school far in the lead for many years. In Astoria, on the contrary, the public school idea had a firm hold from the beginning and asserted itself as soon as the establishment of a public school was possible. The history of Astoria's educational progress, covering a period of fifty-two years, is chiefly the story of the beginning and gradual development of a system of public schools. There is traceable, however, something of the conflict, so prominent elsewhere, between the public and the private school idea.

Astoria's first school, started in 1851, was of necessity private, owing to the fact that the school law, passed in 1849, was practically inoperative, and, in consequence, no public money was available. In the summer of 1851 the Rev. C. O. Hosford, a Methodist minister, at the earnest solicitation of some dozen parents, opened a school near the corner of Eighth and Bond streets, in a small two-room building, erected for use as dwelling house for the teacher, and schoolhouse. This little pioneer school had an enrollment of ten pupils, and was