Centre County Government

12. Keeping Pace in Government and Education

Municipal government has run with the times. When Bellefonte started as a shire town 200 years ago, the court was the center of an elitist local government. The first grand jury in 1801 contained all three commissioners, both founders of Bellefonte, and half the licensed innkeepers in the county. William Connelly, constable of Upper Bald Eagle (Spring) township, was cited for contempt by the grand jurors. He detained them too long a time. Road petitions were the court's chief business.

The county's most visible elected officer for its first 50 years was the high sheriff. Early anecdotes suggest that the sheriff acted on behalf of the gentry to hold the working class in check. Sheriff James Duncan in December 1802, at the county's first hanging, used his "weighted riding whip" to subdue an effort by ironworkers to free the prisoner after the rope snapped on the first try. The sheriff was backed by a line of sword-wielding gentlemen on horseback, led by Capt. James Potter. Five of the seven-member posse that pursued and captured highwayman David Lewis in 1820 were still mounted gentry.

Schools became the great equalizer. The earliest schools, often church-based, charged $1 to $2 per child tuition to support the teacher. After 1809 "paupers" were educated free but families hated declaring themselves paupers. Fewer than 200 children a year got a free education. It was estimated that only one child in 20 statewide attended school in 1830.

Location of the one-room schoolhouses on 1874 map shows where people lived—no student walked more than 2 miles to school.

The Common Schools Act of 1834 made school free for everyone, but many townships, including Centre County's Haines, Gregg, Miles, Half Moon, and Potter, rejected the necessary tax as long as they could. Germans feared the state would cleanse schools of their language; Quakers felt church schools were adequate; and the rich hated to pay more taxes than the poor. Chaos reigned in one-room schoolhouses until 1856 when Secretary Curtin created County School Superintendents and State Normal Schools.

For about a century from the establishment of the office, County School Superintendents replaced the sheriff as first in visibility and power. Until State Normal Schools got going, the Superintendent taught aspiring teachers in County Normal Schools each summer, then examined them in the fall. Even after the County Normal was dropped in 1879, County Superintendents certified teachers and buildings, and set school taxes with local directors. T. Ellwood Sones, the last county superintendent, oversaw district consolidation in 1952 and the disappearance of his own job in 1965.

Only since the second world war have the Commissioners emerged as county leaders and marshals of the array of human services. Public health had begun in 1906 when school nurses screened all children with standard tests for the first time. Welfare programs took over from the Overseers of the Poor in the Great Depression. At an accelerating rate since the 1940s, Social Security, regional medical and retirement centers, aging and home health agencies, elder hostels and wonder drugs have turned the confinement of Aged Relatives into the liberation of Senior Citizens. For the county's first 195 years, bells and sirens summoned neighbors together in an emergency. Now a 911 call assembles trained volunteers and professionals — firemen, HazMat teams, ambulance and EMR vehicles, Medevac helicopters and their auxiliary supports. At the site they greet each other within a perimeter of pick ups and emergency vehicles holding spectators out of the way.