He wasn't much older than today's typical graduate student when he helped create what is now Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, and while there are other businesses in Clinton County that can boast a history dating back over 100 years - the Fallon Hotel and the Schwartz paint store among them - none has had the direct impact (both positive and negative) on the average county resident than has had LHU.
Dr. Albert Newton Raub was only 29 years old when he advised James P. Wickersham, then-superintendent of Pennsylvania Common Schools, to establish a Normal School in Clinton County. Raub was at that time the principal of Lock Haven High School, and was very young even for that job. He would soon be named the first president of the Central State Normal School, later LHU.
Or rather, the first "principal," which is what they called the guy with the top job at the college in those days.
Born in Lancaster County on March 28, 1840, Raub became LHHS principal in 1866, 12 years after the Pennsylvania Legislature passed the Common School Act of 1854. The provisions of the act addressed the shortcomings of the elementary school system, according to an unpublished history of the local university authored by former LHU professor Charles Kent and yours truly.
Each county was to have a superintendent of education with a mandate to correct specific problems in the educational system of that era. Pennsylvania was divided into 12 school districts, each with a board of directors. The boards of directors governed schools within the district by approving curricula, hiring and firing teachers, fixing salaries, setting hiring standards, determining grade levels and otherwise providing oversight in all school matters.
All that remained once the Common School Act was ratified was to make provision for training of teachers to staff the elementary and high schools. The solution was passage of Act 619, the Pennsylvania Normal School Act, which created 12 normal school districts in Pennsylvania. Clinton County was located in the eighth school district.
Normal schools were understood to be teacher-training institutions whose graduates would fill staff shortages created by Pennsylvania's expanding population. New urban centers resulting from the industrial revolution, as well as rural areas and isolated towns, were very much in need of qualified teachers.
Raub and other local leaders had for many years advocated for the creation of such an institution in Clinton County. He, along with G.W. Shinn, rector of Saint Paul's Episcopal Church, and local realtor Philip Price organized the Central State Normal School Association in 1870. On the day of its charter, Raub had yet to celebrate his 30th birthday.
"Mr. Raub was at that time Principal of the Lock Haven High School, and through his position, and by reason of his own educational attainments; also was well aware of, and strongly impressed with the defects of the present school system, and the want of higher opportunities," wrote D.S. Maynard in his "Historical View of Clinton County, Pennsylvania" of 1874. "Being a graduate himself of one of the State Normal Schools, he knew all of the advantages to the community of those schools, and was able to speak as by authority of their practical workings."
Raub had graduated from the Normal School at Millersville, now Millersville University.
Barely nine weeks after the Central State Normal School Association was granted its charter, on April 25, 1870, Price donated 18.73 acres of land on high ground in the city for the purposes of establishing the normal school there.
Upon that acreage would be built the first combined classroom, dormitory, and administrative building at the normal school. It would be named Price Hall. Act 619 mandated that it had to accommodate at least 1,000 adults and house not fewer than 300 students.
"To appreciate the generosity of this offer, it must be remembered that Mr. Price's land was all in the city limits, and much of it worth, at that time, $1,200 per acre," Maynard wrote.
At $1,200 per acre, Price's total land donation was worth $22,476 in 1870, or about $387,000 today, based on the Consumer Price Index.
It wasn't until May of 1877 that the first Normal School classes commenced, however. During that time Raub, Shinn, Price and a dedicated board of trustees recruited faculty, enrolled students, prepared curricula and class schedules, wrote entrance examinations, engaged architects and contractors, approved building designs, hired staff and maintenance crews, and oversaw construction of the first building, according to the unpublished LHU history.
The initial class of students met at LHHS, since the Normal School building was not yet ready for occupancy. But by the close of summer of 1877, 48 students (some accounts say 60) had moved from the high school to the new facility to continue instruction.
To say that LHU started small might be considered an understatement today. The initial staff had consisted of at least six professors to teach the core curriculum (spelling, reading, writing, drawing, bookkeeping, mathematics, geography, history, grammar, English literature and the theory and practice of teaching). Additionally, if conditions warranted, faculty were to be hired to teach "mental and moral precepts" and foreign languages.
The president/principal was selected from among faculty members. Other instructors included John A. Robb, professor of Mathematics; M.W. Herr, professor of Drawing, Penmanship and Bookkeeping; I.A. Harvey, professor of English Language and Literature; Miss Agnes Reilly, instructor of Geography and History; and Miss Dora E. Merrill, teacher of Reading and Elocution. Central Normal School opened with the minimum number of faculty and the minimum list of subjects as required by Act 619.
Interestingly, it's unclear whether Raub and members of the board of trustees received any compensation, beyond expenses, during the normal school's seven-year gestational period. But he was certainly paid for services as the first principal (later president) beginning in May of 1877.
Prior to that, Raub made a nice living as an author and publisher, a career he continued after taking the top spot at the normal school.
"He was editor for a number of years of the Educational News, and was the author of numerous school text books, which have an extensive and profitable sale throughout the United States," The Express reported in his obituary.
Indeed, a quick search on Amazon.com shows that dozens of Raub-authored textbooks are still available for purchase, many of which were reprinted for publication as late as 2010.
Raub, according to the unpublished LHU history, "would set the style and temperament of the administration of Central Normal School. Unlike other similar schools in Pennsylvania, Lock Haven's normal school had no direct antecedent institution. Usually the State's normal schools emerged from converted private academies that had received State authority to set up teacher training programs. Raub and his colleagues had to interpret the Normal School Act on their own."
Raub also had to deal with the universal problems of recruitment and retention of students. He offered inducements in the form of 63 different scholarships, given to children whose parents gave their word that they wished these offspring to be educated for teaching careers.
"An egalitarian to the core, Principal Raub insisted that the Normal School should be a place for the training of future teachers," the authors of the unpublished LHU history wrote. "He believed what was clearly stated in the Normal School Act of 1857, that the Normal School must be open to all applicants without regard to economic or social condition.
"It seemed apparent to him that the affluent and socially well-positioned had no need for Normal Schools for themselves. Normal Schools, he contended, were to train the teachers of the common schools in subjects he believed a republic needed."
Further, according to the LHU history, "It should be noted that in the 1870s, the separate but equal doctrine prevailed. One of the common schools in Lock Haven was set aside for Negroes. Railroads and the lumber industry had drawn a small number of African Americans to Clinton County. No record could be found of how many, if any, of their youngsters were enrolled in the Model School."
The "Model School" was a facility through which teachers-in-training could gain practical classroom experience. Elemen-tary schools were in those days referred to as "common schools."
Eventually disagreements between Raub and the board of trustees, about the direction of the school, led to Raub's resignation in 1884. He went on to preside over Delaware College in Newark (now the University of Delaware) until 1896.
"As Raub headed for the state of Delaware," according to the LHU history, "he was content in the knowledge that he left behind a well-founded institution. An area filled with natural beauty in North Central Pennsylvania now had a functioning Normal School. He believed the establishment of the school was a part of the infrastructure necessary to provide political, social and economic equality for the German, Irish, English and Italian immigrants."
Following him as the second normal school principal was George Petrie Beard, "a dour native Vermonter over six feet tall" who "had been educated for the ministry and was an ordained minister of the Congregational Church" according to author Kent's research. He served three years in that position, until 1887.
Upon his death in 1904, Raub was remembered in his Express obituary as "a man who was held in high esteem by the people of this city as it was largely through his individual efforts that the Central State Normal School, in which all the people of the city and county take so much pride, was established."
The original college building (the construction of which was overseen by Raub) is, alas, long gone, destroyed in a fire in 1888. But Raub's name remains part of the fabric of LHU, as his name adorns one of the classroom buildings on the main campus.
Additionally, the house built for him in 1869 still stands at 426 W. Church Street. A two-story frame building with a signature hooded, Gothic-arched Venetian window over a one-story projecting bay, the house has been aluminum-sided in recent years but is still recognizable from a line drawing executed in the late 1800s.
As for the institution Raub helped create, by 1927 it became known as the State Teacher's College in Lock Haven. In 1960 its moniker changed again to Lock Haven State College and in 1983 it was given its current designation.
It now covers 200 acres, more than 10 times the original Price land donation, and enrolls 5,500 students annually, about 100 times its original enrollment.
And while its economic impact on the area is undoubtedly positive, Albert Raub's dream has also brought untold challenges to the community that borders it, including issues of taxation, historic preservation, parking, student conduct and strains on the city's infrastructure.
Today, for example, Raub's former home is located not far from LHU's East Campus, and is surrounded by student rental units. Proud as he no doubt would be of the university he helped create, one wonders just what he'd have to say about being awakened late on a Friday or Saturday night by noise generated by his former charges.
Over a century after his death, that, gentle reader, is all a matter of speculation.
POST SCRIPT
After my column on the W.A. Simpson House (later known as the Stein house) at 118 W. Water St. appeared in The Express two weeks ago, resident Polly Davenport provided some fun details about growing up in Lock Haven in the 1930s and '40s, and particularly at the underage bar once located in the Stein house basement.
"You brought back memories of my going there at the junior high school age, to dances!" Polly wrote. "Yes, long time ago... I attended school from first grade through ninth at Lock Haven State Teacher's College... The Junior High was in what was the clock tower building. The boys insisted there were rats in the basement. We girls hoped they were just trying to scare us.
"When seventh grade began, a new student arrived, Mary Flowers, daughter of the new college president (John G. Flowers, LHU president from 1937 to 1942). We became friends and I was invited to go for over-nights at their home - and this was a new experience - to always eat in the dining room! Mrs. F had the food brought to her and she would put the food on the plates and pass them around. A button on the floor was there for her to call the maid. What an experience for this little FARM girl!
"Conversely, Mary had to learn how WE ate - in the kitchen with mom doing the cooking and the bowls and platters passed around to each person! Mary watched US as I watched at HER house! Her parents did not discourage our friendship.
"Mrs. Flowers hired two college students to teach a small group of us dancing, and that was when we were taken to the basement of the Stein house after we had had some lessons."
"And now you know my past!!!" Polly concluded.
Frankly I'd love to know more. Perhaps an entire Peek at the Past column devoted to Polly is due.
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Matt Connor can be reached at mbconnor 4265@gmail.com. The four original Peek at the Past books are available for purchase at Ross Library.
