History of Goshen Schools

     Goshen has always taken a great interest in her school and in 1928, Principal F.B. Hoggatt recorded this information in the GHS yearbook. It mentions many old Goshen family members and many beloved teachers and administrators and highly illustrates the love of education many Goshen citizens exhibited in the years gone bye.

     One of the first schools in the township was taught in the Myers neighborhood by John Hill. The house stood on the lot at present occupied by the cemetery, and was but little better than a hut of round logs. There was a puncheon floor, slab seats and the windows were of sized paper greased to more readily admit the light. What heat was required, was given out by a huge fire at one end of the room, the smoke being carried off by a stick chimney on the outside of the house. A better building afterwards occupied the same site and schools were taught for many years.  Among the teachers were Samuel Anderson, Joshua Simpson, Sarah Roudebush, Absalom Fisher, Alva Whitney and Mary Blackstone.

     About 1805, a school was taught in the western part of the township, on the present (1928) Porter farm, the teacher being a muscular Irishman named Mitchel. In 1807, a school was taught in a log cabin, a mile south of Goshen, by a Samuel Malsbury. In the village, John Beatty (afterwards a judge) taught the first school.  Charles Vaughan, James Simpson, and William Roudebush were also early teachers here.

       A large degree of interest in higher education was early manifested among the people of Goshen and on the 7^th day of December in 1835, the Rev. L. G. Gaines, the Presbyterian minister, opened a select school or academy in a log building about one mile and a half southwest from Goshen. The school was well attended and under Mr. Gaines’ instruction the different studies were successfully pursued with the pupils making rapid strides in knowledge. Mr. Gaines was a through teacher, a rigid disciplinarian and he labored untiringly to promote the welfare of his school. For a time, he was assisted by Dr Colin Spence of Perins Mills, and it is a somewhat singular fact that of the young men who attended, a large proportion of the became physicians: many o f them attaining eminence in the practice of medicine. Among the pupils of Mr. Gaines’ "Quail Academy" as it was locally called, (probably from a fancied resemblance to a quail trap), were Dr. Townsend Thacker and Dr John E Meyers of Goshen; Dr. John S. Combs of Boston,: Dr. Phillip B. Gatch of Milford; Dr. Alexander Johnson, Dr. Hamilton Cox, Judge Joseph Cox, and Lawyer John Johnson of Cincinnati, Ohio; DR. Whitaker Bishop of Loveland; Dr. L.W. Bishop of Batavia; Dr. Reuben Bishop and Drs John and William Gaines. Mr. Gaines kept up his school, about ten years and after his removal to Williamsburg, he had a select school at that place a few years, which was also promotive of much good.