Pioneer history of Ingham County, compiled and arranged by Mrs. Franc L. Adams, secretary of the Ingham County pioneer and historical society.

LEROY TOWNSHIP AND ITS HISTORY

621

that being the first owned by my father in Ingham county, my
mother was postmistress. Later the name of the office was
changed to Leroy, and was kept at different places in this township. Afterward our mail came to Williamston, and since the
existence of Webberville we have a post office at that place.
Schools were a primitive sort in the very early days. A log
school house was built on the corner east of father's and I have
heard my husband speak of attending school there when it was
taught by Lodema Tobias, a young girl of fifteen or sixteen. I
suppose she was slightly more advanced in the three Rs than her
mates. Mrs. Ephraim Meech, Aunt Nancy, as she was called,
was one of the early teachers. The log school house mentioned
was afterwards occupied by Hiram Dana as a dwelling house. A
tavern building was erected at Podunk about the time the saw
mill was built or soon after, and in an unfinished room of this
building was kept the first school which I attended in Podunk,
although there had been at least one term before taught in a
shanty, which was afterward occupied for a short time as a
dwelling by Edwin Stanton. Miss Margaret Dryer was teacher
in the tavern building. This structure being in the edge of the
woods we were wont to play and eat our lunches in its shade.
One of our favorite amusements was to pull down saplings and
swing or teeter on them; another was to play on the saw logs.
"Our school in the green woods" was a rather frequent opening
sentence to the compositions which some of us were required to
write. Miss Dryer was a good teacher and the school made a
fair progress both that summer and the next, when she taught in
the new school house which had then been built. My father was
director of the school district at that time. Teachers were then
paid in part by "rate bill" and boarded around.
Right here I wish to make a grateful and well deserved acknowledgment to my parents. For though we went to school more or
less regularly after this time, yet the beginning and ground work
of such education as we possess is due to them; and they grounded
us well in the essentials, and also taught us habits of industry and
application.
Time passed-farms were cleared, roads improved, bridges
built, swamps and marshes drained, the face of the country transformed, and in 1871 the railroad was put through.