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

VEVAY TOWNSI-III' AND ITS HISTORY

781

church. We also braided palm leaf hats and sold them for prices
ranging from twenty-five cents to $1.50. The highest priced ones
were woven with a double rim. I have braided many of them and
so did my mother and sisters. Some had ornamental braid, and
those were worn to church. We often made hats to order, and
then we took a measure of the customer's head.
When my parents lived in Ohio they were not wealthy, but one
thing I always commended them for-they always kept us in
school, and therefore raised a family of school teachers. We never
applied for a school, we didn't have to. If a stranger came to the
house we knew at once he was after a straw hat or a school teacher.
In those days there were but two terms taught in a year, summer
and winter terms, and wages necessarily low, as most of it was
paid by a rate bill, and often the teachers themselves were required to make out this rate tax. I taught the winter I was
sixteen for 75 cents per week in the first district north of Mason.
I taught six days a week for four months and boarded round,
sometimes sleeping with the children, three of us sleeping at the
head and one across the foot of the bed. It was a log school
house, Dutch fireplace, four-legged benches to sit on, and a desk
for writing made by boring holes in the logs, then driving in two
long pegs and laying a board across them. When we wrote we
faced this desk, but while studying we sat the other way on the
benches and used this board for the back to our seats. First
boys had recess and then girls, and it was then the writing lesson
was usually given.
Pens were made of goose quills, and one of the requirements in
the examination of teachers was the ability to make good pens.
Each teacher was obliged to have a sharp penknife in order to
make and mend pens as needed.
Examinations were all oral, and the certificates were granted
the same day, two years being the limit of time.
My brother and six of us seven sisters were teachers, and some
of them taught in every district for twenty miles around, several
times over.
We lived here three years before the State Capitol was moved
from Detroit to Lansing, and I well remember the time the change
was made.
One incident is fresh in my mind, and that is, when at the log