incipal of Rincon Grammar School in San Francisco. The Ohio legislature established free public education. Congregationalists found the Pacific University in Oregon. In 1855, the Illinois legislature established free public education. Michigan State University was found in East Lansing. The Jesuits found Santa Clara College in California and that same year Auburn University was found in Alabama. In 1857, Illinois State Normal University was established in Normal, Illinois. The Ohio Reform School for boys was found. Margarethe Meyer Schurz opened the first private kindergarten in Watertown, Wisconsin. The Children’s Aid Society sent city boys to Western states. The Minnesota constitution established free Public education. In 1858, Episcopalians found the University of the South in Tennessee. Also, Iowa State University was found in Ames and Catholics found St. Ignatius College in San Francisco. (Chronicle of America; American Eras) In 1850, opera debuted in San Francisco with an aria from Verdi’s Ernani. David G. Robinson published “Seeing the Elephant.” Josiah Gregg, explorer and author of “Commerce of the Prairies,” died. James Wilkins created intense excitement when he exhibited his “Moving Mirror of the Overland Trail” in Peoria, Illinois. Frederic Church painted “Twilight, Short Arbiter Twixt Day and Night,” an epic landscape that suggested the grandeur of the American West. In 1851, Dame Shirley (Louise Amelia Knapp Smith Clappe) began publishing “The Shirley Letters,” vivid accounts of life amongst the miners. Mayne Reid published the novel “The Scalp Hunters.” Stephen Foster composed “Old Folks at Home.” Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, ethnographer and geologist, published the first volume of his “History, Condition and Prospects of the Indian Tribes of the United States.” Schoolcraft’s work became a ...
