Exhibition of the Students of the Sandusky City High School in 1846

On Friday evening, February 6, 1846, students of the Sandusky City High School gave an Exhibition. Orations and compositions were presented throughout the evening. Julia Farwell, the daughter of Sandusky’s first Mayor, Moors Farwell, gave a composition entitled “Love thy neighbor as thyself.” An oration on the topic of slavery was presented by Francis E. Parish, the son of well-known Sandusky lawyer and abolitionist, F. D. Parish. Mr. F.D. Parish had been elected as one of the school directors in 1838.

Annette Tilden, seen below with her young son, after she had married Isaac Mills, was the daughter of pioneer physician, Dr. Daniel Tilden. Annette gave a talk on “Humbled Pride.”

Two of the students listed on the last page of the program are of interest. Edmund G. Ross went on to become a U.S. Senator for the state of Kansas. He is known for casting the vote which acquitted Andrew Johnson during his impeachment trial in 1868, and he was one of the subjects of the book Profiles in Courage, the book co-authored by John F. Kennedy and Theodore Sorensen in 1956. During the 1846 Exhibition, Edmund G. Ross gave an oration on capital punishment.  Richard R. Sloane, better known as Rush Sloane, gave his oration on the topic of the nineteenth century. Rush Sloane became a railroad official, Mayor of Sandusky, and was the owner of the Sloane House, a hotel that stood in Sandusky from 1881 until well into the twentieth century

It is interesting to note that the program for the Exhibition was published by D. Campbell and Sons, who also published the local newspaper in Sandusky. To read more about the early history of schools in Sandusky, see “Local School History of the City of Sandusky, from 1838 to 1872 Inclusive,” written by M.F. Cowdery in 1876, and housed in the Schools Collection of the Sandusky Library Archives Research Center.