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Starting from the child rev3:Starting from the child rev3 15/11/07 12:50 Page 1

Starting from the Child

THIRD EDITION

• How can early years practitioners build on children’s competence

Starting from the

and autonomy as effective early learners?

S tarting
• How do adults get to know children sufficiently well to plan
effectively for their learning needs?
• How can early years practitioners plan for high quality child-initiated
experiences alongside more focused adult-initiated learning? from
Early years practitioners continue to face the dilemma of planning

Child
for the needs of individual children whilst meeting the demands of
targets and goals set by government. In such a pressurized climate,
it can be all too easy to go with what is imposed, rather than stand
the
up for what young children need and are entitled to.
In a practical and realistic way, the third edition of Starting from the
Child supports practitioners in the Foundation Stage to be
advocates for young children and their learning needs. Julie Fisher
outlines the important theories and research which should underpin

Child
decisions about best practice. She offers meaningful and T H I R D E D I T I O N
inspirational ways of developing appropriate learning environments
and experiences for Foundation Stage children.

Revised and updated throughout, the new edition includes:

• Latest research impacting on our understanding of early learning
• Reference to recent government initiatives such as the Early
Years Foundation Stage
• An extended explanation of how to plan for child-initiated learning

THIRD EDITION
alongside adult-initiated learning
• A completely revised chapter on ‘The place of play’, with a new
focus on different types and contexts for play, cultural influences
and the role of the adult in supporting play
• Two new chapters on the observation and assessment of
children’s learning, and self-evaluation for practitioners
Starting from the Child is essential reading, not only for early years
practitioners, but for all those who manage and make decisions
about early learning. FISHER
Julie Fisher is an independent Early Years Adviser and visiting
Professor of Early Childhood Education at Oxford Brookes
University, UK.

Cover design: del norte (Leeds) Ltd

J U L I E F I S H E R
STARTING FROM THE CHILD

THIRD EDITION
STARTING FROM THE CHILD

Teaching and learning in the

Foundation Stage
THIRD EDITION

JULIE FISHER

Open University Press

Open University Press
McGraw-Hill Education
McGraw-Hill House
Shoppenhangers Road
Maidenhead, Berkshire
England SL6 2QL

email: [email protected]
world wide web: www.openup.co.uk

and Two Penn Plaza, New York, NY 10122289, USA

Copyright # Julie Fisher 2008

All rights reserved. Except for the quotation of short passages for the purpose of
criticism and review, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a
retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic,
mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written
permission of the publisher or a licence from the Copyright Licensing Agency
Limited. Details of such licences (for reprographic reproduction) may be obtained
from the Copyright Licensing Agency Ltd of Saffron House, 6±10 Kirby Street,
London, EC1N 8TS

A catalogue record of this book is available from the British Library

ISBN (pb) ISBN 10-0335223842

(pb) ISBN 13-9780335223848

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

CIP data has been applied for

Typeset by BookEns Ltd, Royston, Herts.

Printed and bound in the UK by Bell and Bain Ltd, Glasgow
to my friends and colleagues in Oxfordshire
CONTENTS

List of boxes and figures viii

Preface to the Third Edition ix
Acknowledgements xi
1 Competent young learners 1
What children know and can do
2 Conversations and observations 19
Learning about individual children
3 Planning for learning 39
Decisions about appropriate experiences to support
and extend learning
4 The role of the adult 60
Making the best use of teaching time
5 Encouraging independence 80
Environments that develop children's learning autonomy
6 Collaboration and cooperation 98
The importance of talking and learning with others
7 The place of play 118
The status of child-initiated experiences
8 The negotiated learning environment 141
Issues of ownership, power and control
9 The assessment of children's learning 167
What practitioners need to know about their children
and their achievements
10 Reflection and evaluation 190
What practitioners need to know about their practice,
their provision and themselves
References 204
Index 219
LIST OF BOXES AND FIGURES

Box 2.1 Example 1: Building a balanced profile 29

Box 2.2 Example 2: Responding to children's work 32
Box 2.3 Example 3: Building independence 34
Box 3.1 Principles of early childhood education 44
Box 3.2 Example 4: What William already knew and 55
understood
Box 3.3 Short-term plans 58
Box 5.1 Making decisions about the use of space 87
Box 5.2 Principles about using space 88
Box 5.3 Principles about gathering resources 89
Box 5.4 Planning and arranging resources 91
Box 6.1 Example 5: Planning for talk 107
Box 6.2 A rationale for grouping children 112
Box 6.3 Purposes of different learning contexts 116
Box 7.1 Example 6: Child-initiated activities involving
learning in many curriculum areas 135
Box 7.2 A charter for play 140
Box 8.1 The negotiated classroom 164
Box 9.1 Example 7: Focused teaching and assessment 1 179
Box 9.2 Example 8: Focused teaching and assessment 2 179
Box 9.3 Example 9: The cross-curricular nature of learning 180
Figure 4.1 The balance of learning experiences 69
Figure 4.2 The balance of learning experiences in the 71
Foundation Stage
Figure 4.3 The balance of learning opportunities 72
Figure 7.1 Child-initiated activities involving learning in 134
many curriculum areas
Figure 8.1 Target setting in the Foundation Stage 163
PREFACE TO THE THIRD EDITION

Writing this third edition of Starting from the Child has caused me to
reflect on the period of unprecedented change that has faced those of
us working in early education over the past 10 years. For much of that
time we have been in the government's headlights. On occasions this
has been cause for celebration, as policies and strategies have
acknowledged the critical role of early education in laying the
foundations for future learning and living. On other occasions this
has brought about immense frustration, as successive initiatives have
rained down upon the sector, frequently before previous initiatives
have bedded down and frequently before previous initiatives have
been adequately or rigorously evaluated. Nevertheless, it is this ever-
changing context in which children are learning and in which
practitioners are teaching that this new edition of Starting from the
Child seeks to address.
These changes in context have led me to make a couple of decisions
about the scope of this edition. Firstly, because I know this book will
now be read by an increasing number of practitioners in the private
and voluntary sectors, I have used more inclusive terminology so that
the word `teacher' has been replaced, where appropriate, by the words
practitioner, adult or educator. Secondly, while I have referred on
many occasions to the Early Years Foundation Stage, I decided early on
to keep the focus of this book on the 3±5 age range. This should not in
any way suggest that I do not appreciate the critical nature of the first
three years or their impact on the years from 3±5 and beyond. But I felt
that to address the full 0±5 age range in a book such as this would
dilute the detailed way in which I have been able to talk about the
learning environment, the role of the adult and the experiences of
children in foundation stage education.
Those of you who have read previous editions will see some
significant rewrites which, I hope, capture key elements of current
research and policy. In particular I have completely restructured
Chapters 7, 9 and 10 to respond to feedback from readers about what
x Starting from the child

they would find particularly valuable. Those who are familiar with the
book may also notice a change in Chapter 4 and the `Triangle' of
classroom experiences. The `Triangle' has perhaps been the most
influential outcome of this book and many practitioners now use it as
an effective way of planning for learning in their foundation stage
settings. Following the extensive amount of in-service work I have
done around the `Triangle', I have amended the use of the term `adult-
intensive' learning to `adult-focused'. This is mainly because adult-
intensive and adult-initiated sound too similar and, when abbreviated,
have the same initials! So, more recently, I have been using adult-
focused (a±f) instead of adult-intensive (a±i).
This book remains a tribute to the early years educators with whom I
work day in and day out. Those who inspire me and challenge my
thinking and extend my understanding. I am so grateful to all those
who have shared their thoughts and ideas and allowed me to use their
material in this book. Many of those practitioners work in Oxfordshire,
and it is in recognition of their vision, their expertise, their energy and
their enthusiasm and with grateful thanks for all that I learnt in my 11
years there as early years adviser that I dedicate this new edition to
them.
The first edition of Starting from the Child? had a question mark after
the title that I removed when writing the second edition. Now, as I
finish this third edition, my belief is stronger than ever that a child-
centred pedagogy is the only effective way to capture and harness the
incredible powers of young children as thinkers and learners. There is
every evidence that the best practitioners continue to challenge all
those external agendas that threaten to inhibit the exceptional
capabilities of young children. They place the child at the heart of
every learning experience and defend every child's right to an
educational experience that is liberating and enriching. There is not
one expert practitioner that I have met who, in their thinking,
planning and evaluation, does not start from the child.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

So much of this book has been influenced by the principles and

practice of colleagues with whom I have had the privilege to work. I
still want to record my thanks to those whose support and encourage-
ment first enabled me to write. To Paula, without whose inspirational
practice this book would never have been written. To Janet Moyles,
who not only encouraged me to write but opened the doors for me to
do so. To Keith Postlethwaite, at the University of Reading, who read
my early work, took it seriously and gave me the confidence to
continue. To both Angela Redfern and Carol Boulter who accepted the
time-consuming role of `critical friend' and helped so much to
challenge and refine my early thinking and writing. To Tina Bruce
for her thought-provoking and supportive comments. To my collea-
gues in the Early Years Curriculum Group who have continued to be a
source of inspiration and professional friendship, ideas and critical
evaluation over many years. More recently, I have been privileged to be
part of the Oxfordshire Early Years Team and I am so grateful to all my
colleagues ± not just in the team, but across the county in their
different roles ± for the generous way in which they have shared their
experiences, their ideas and their enthusiasms. Finally, my loving
thanks go once again to David, who continues to understand why I
need to write and speak and lecture and lobby, and who supports me as
I do so, and to Sophie, for giving me new perspectives on everything I
do.
 1

COMPETENT YOUNG LEARNERS

What children know and can do

Introduction

Before starting statutory schooling at the age of 5, young children have

developed a range of skills, knowledge and understanding at a speed
that will never again be repeated in their lives. The years from 0 to 7 are
a period in human development when the capacity to learn is, in John
Brierley's words (1994), `at flood-readiness'. All the evidence shows
that, in their early years, young children demonstrate a variety of
characteristics that make them natural and successful learners.
However, when those same children begin their more formal
education it can be a different story. Children who have been
motivated and determined become disillusioned and disaffected
(Barrett 1989; Smith 1995); children who made sense of things and
had begun to form their own personal construct of the world become
confused and disorientated (Donaldson 1978; 1992); children who
posed a thousand and one questions become quiet and uncommuni-
cative (Tizard and Hughes 1984; Cousins 1999). It seems that
education can inhibit some of the most prominent characteristics of
competent young learners.
So how can there be such a gap between some children's learning
before they begin at school or their early years setting and the learning
that follows? Is it simply a question of ratios ± too many children and
not enough adults? Are those adults not sufficiently knowledgeable
about how young children learn and how to support that learning? Is
there too much pressure from external agendas to follow children's
interests and preoccupations? It would seem that at the root of the
dichotomy between learning and educating lies a failure on the part of
many educators to learn from those who have been most successful in
the teaching and learning process in the child's pre-school years at
home. If more time were spent observing the strategies of children as
2 Starting from the child

learners, prior to the constraints of the educational setting, and more

notice taken of the strategies of the significant adults with whom
children learn in their homes and communities, then there might be
more chance of schools and other early years settings mirroring the
successes of children's earliest learning environments.

The influence of experience on heredity

All early childhood educators need to study the learning of children

from birth. The development of every child is the result of a unique
interaction of experience with heredity. While genetic programming
determines many of the characteristics displayed by any human being,
a variety of environmental influences combine to affect the develop-
ment of the brain and consequently the individual (Shaffer 1993). The
balance between these two key factors varies within each child, but the
impact of `nurture' on `nature' will determine the characteristics which
differentiate one child from another and make their development
unique. Hereditary influence means that given the same set of
experiences, one child's abilities will differ from another's, irrespective
of the experiences they have. Equally, a child raised in a particular set
of environmental circumstances can have their genetic programming
nullified and their hereditary advantages erased (Meadows 1993).
Until fairly recently, the emphasis in education has been to make up
for the deficits of a poor set of hereditary circumstances (Anning 1991).
In the 1960s and 1970s there was `a naive belief that compensatory
education would serve to combat the known effects of social disadvan-
tage on children's educational achievements' (Anning 1991: 5). While
many research studies have now discredited such assumptions, there is
other evidence that highlights the negative effects on development of a
poor set of environmental factors (e.g. Smith 1995). Mia Kellmer Pringle,
the first director of the National Children's Bureau, identified four
human basic needs that have to be met from `the very beginning of life
and continue to require fulfilment ± to a greater or lesser extent ±
throughout adulthood' (1992: 34). In Chapter 2 she identifies:
. the need for love and security;
. the need for new experiences;
. the need for praise and recognition;
. the need for responsibility.
Jennie Lindon in her book on child development (1993: 11±12) also
identifies some basic needs of young children:
. the need to be cared for physically;
. the need to be kept safe;
 Competent young learners 3

. the need for emotional well-being.

All these needs have to be met by the caring adult if children are to
thrive and make the most of their developmental opportunities.
Research cited by the Carnegie Corporation of New York (1994)
provides substantial evidence that lack of certain experiences, and
inappropriate or impoverished environments in the early stages of
learning, may have long-lasting detrimental effects on the develop-
ment of children. The report, drawing on research that illuminates the
workings of the nervous system, highlights the critical importance of
the first three years of life. The results of the research led to five key
findings that are of profound significance to all those who are
concerned with the development and education of young children:
. brain development that takes place before age 1 is more rapid and
extensive than previously realized;
. brain development is much more vulnerable to environmental
influence than was ever suspected;
. the influence of early environment on brain development is long
lasting;
. the environment affects not only the number of brain cells and
number of connections among them, but also the way these
connections are `wired';
. there is new scientific evidence for the negative impact of early
stress on brain function.
(Carnegie Corporation 1994: 7±9)
These findings give a clear rationale for creating learning environ-
ments that offer experiences sensitive to the needs of young children
and appropriate to their development, because the results of these
experiences ± good or bad ± stay with children forever. The fact that the
effects of early experiences appear to be cumulative only adds to the
need to safeguard the environmental influences determining the
development of all young children:
an adverse environment can compromise a young child's brain
function and overall development, placing him or her at greater risk
of developing a variety of cognitive, behavioral, and physical
difficulties. In some cases these effects may be irreversible.
(Carnegie Corporation 1994: xiii)

New understandings about brain development

More has been learnt about the brain during the 1990s than in all
previous scientific history (Greenfield 1997; Pinker 1997; Rose and
4 Starting from the child

Nicholl 1997; Jenson 1998; Wolfe and Brandt 1998). By nine months'
gestation, human beings have most of the neurons (nerve endings) in
their brains that they are ever likely to have (Greenfield 1997). At birth,
a child's brain contains around 100 billion neurons, each with the
capacity to contribute to that individual's knowledge and under-
standing of skills and concepts that will determine their unique growth
and development (Pinker 1977; Bruer 1999). Of particular importance
to those in early education is the evidence that it is not the number of
brain cells that is important, but how they become connected to each
other that makes them effective (Greenfield 1997; Diamond and
Hopson 1998). It is the use to which the neurons are put that
determines the growth of a brain's functions (Calvin 1996). Growing
neurons can adapt sensitively to changing circumstances in order to
make the best of a situation (Greenfield 1997) but the key to growth is
whether the neurons are sufficiently stimulated to make contact with
other neurons and make a firm connection (Cohen 1997; Diamond
and Hopson 1998). Brain activity and growth go hand in hand. It is not
only a question of `use it or lose it' says Susan Greenfield (1997: 115),
but `use it as much as you can'.
In the first three years of life, the neural connections are established
at a phenomenal rate. By the age of 5 or so, they begin to tail off and
are virtually complete by age 10 (Gammage 1999). However, this does
not mean that after age 3 no worthwhile learning can take place, or
that if connections are not made by age 3 then an individual has lost
the opportunity for development and growth. Some writers, in their
eagerness to exhort the benefits of early learning, have suggested that
if a child has not been fully stimulated by age 3 then their
opportunities for learning and development become closed off.
Mercifully for most of us, this is not the case! The brain may not
`grow' more neurons, but it does go on making connections and these
can be stimulated at any age (Bruer 1999). However, it does seem that
there are critical periods in development where experience has
significant effects on brain functioning. In other words, the best time
to master a skill associated with a system is when a new system is
coming on line in the brain (Sylwester 1995; Pinker 1997; Bruer 1999).
Language is a good example. It is easy for a 2- or 3-year-old to learn any
language, but if that person waits until age 18 or 50, learning a new
language will be more difficult because the systems governing this
process may have been used for something else. However, not all
critical periods happen in the first three years, nor do all cognitive
systems show such effects (Bruer 1999). As educators, it is important
that we do not make claims for early learning that are overly
expansive. Nonetheless, a realization of the critical importance of
brain connections to human growth and development should
 Competent young learners 5

challenge educators to ensure that the learning environments that are

created, and the support that adults give to young children as they
learn, maximize their drive to make as many connections as they can
with what they already know and understand.

Brain development in children under two

In their influential text How Babies Think (1999) Gopnik et al., suggest
that studying babies makes us think about the brain in a new way.
They explain that such studies show how flexible, sensitive and plastic
the brain is and how deeply influenced it can be by the outside world.
New technology has given researchers the opportunity to reveal that
even newborn babies have a pre-programmed repertoire of skills and
competences to ensure communication with and inclusion into the
community into which they are born. They can mimic their mothers
by pulling faces and poking out their tongues, they can discriminate
human faces and voices from other sights and sounds and they can
discriminate the sounds not only of their own language but of every
language, including languages they have never heard. Within the first
nine months, before those babies can walk or talk or even crawl, they
can tell the difference between expressions of happiness, sadness and
anger. This acute sensitivity, documented by a growing number of
researchers (notably Trevarthan 1971 onwards), enables us to under-
stand why the experiences of babies in their earliest days and months
impact so profoundly on their sense of well-being, self-confidence and
resilience as they develop.
Two other recent books have also alerted us to the importance of the
very first year of life in laying down the foundations of children's
emotional and social well-being and, in particular, the vital contribu-
tion of the interactions that take place between babies and the adults
who care for them. In From Birth to One (2003), Maria Robinson
demonstrates how important it is for an adult to understand the
influence of their interactions, reactions and behaviour towards their
child and, in turn, to understand the child's impact on themselves as
an adult. All children, she says, need to feel secure, and that emotional
security is learnt from the ongoing relationship with their adult
carer(s), based on the patterns of behaviour in the first year. Babies
make secure attachments to their primary carer when they have their
basic needs, such as being wet or feeling hungry, responded to
promptly and appropriately (Bowlby 1971, 1975, 1981). Where a
normal attachment develops, the emotions that babies show at times
of stress or distress are soothed and managed by the caregiver and, over
time, babies are helped to regulate their own reactions through the
6 Starting from the child

meaning given to their behaviour and the response of that caregiver.

Where this cycle of attunement is disturbed, through separation from
the primary caregiver or through neglect, then babies end up with
overwhelming feelings of frustration, loneliness and panic.
In her book Why Love Matters (2004) Sue Gerhardt explains that
these earliest emotions, in turn, shape the baby's nervous system and
that the neural pathways formed by these early experiences can affect
the way we respond to stress and how we cope with relationships
throughout our lives. Gerhard, too, stresses the crucial impact of early
interactions between babies and their primary attachment figure,
emphasizing that emotions become organized through engagement
with others and not in isolation. She provides evidence to suggest that
`expectations of other people and how they will behave are inscribed in
the brain outside conscious awareness, in the period of infancy, and
that they underpin our behaviour in relationships through life' (p. 24).
It is clearly imperative that practitioners who have responsibility for
the care of children under the age of two are aware of the immense
responsibility that they hold for providing the constant, reliable,
loving care that all babies demand and the consequences for babies if
they do not. There needs to be greater understanding that this care is
not just about responding to a baby's physical needs ± their wet nappy
or hungry tummy ± but about an openness to intimacy on the part of
the carer, and a willingness to form emotional loving relationships
with a child and their family if that child is to thrive and develop
without emotional deprivation or undue stress.

What do young children learn?

Given an appropriate environment in which they thrive, what is it that

young children are learning? Shaffer claims that `we change in
response to the environments in which we live' (1993: 5). The
educators in Reggio Emilia, a town in northern Italy renowned for
the quality of its pre-school provision, see the environment as a `third
teacher', creating enriching situations and `helping the children to be
the direct agents and constructors of their own learning processes'
(Spaggiari 1997). But change and development lies particularly in our
response to the actions and reactions of the people around us. We
behave in new ways because of our observations of and interactions
with important people in our lives and are affected by the events we
experience together. Young children come to make sense of their
world by observing, imitating, investigating and exploring. They learn
attitudes, skills, strategies and concepts that enable them to under-
stand and be understood.
 Competent young learners 7

Positive attitudes to learning arise from children's motivation to

learn, to succeed in the face of many odds, and to master the exciting
and intriguing world around them. The posing of personal problems
teaches children the value of concentration and perseverance in the
successful acquisition and honing of skills and understandings. Success
fuels their motivation and determination to succeed and enhances
their confidence and self-esteem as learners. The infinite range of new
and exciting things to discover and explore stimulates young
children's curiosity and engages their eagerness to be both successful
and competent.
Important skills are learnt as a result of establishing patterns of
behaviour that ultimately become automatic. Young children repeat
movements or actions time after time in order to become expert and
succeed at the goals that they have set themselves. Skills usually
develop in the course of activities that the child sees as being worth
while and which give them the motivation to continue, sometimes
through failure after failure, to succeed. Children are motivated by the
response of others, particularly their parent or carer, and this response
sustains them through the frustrations of learning to stand unaided,
throw a ball towards someone else or make their desire for food clearly
understood.
In the course of learning skills, children develop their own peculiar
set of strategies for trying out, rehearsing or repeating what they have
done. Some children prefer to look and think before they act. Some try
and try again until something comes right. Some prefer to imitate,
some to instigate. Some ask questions and others wait for answers.
Whatever strategies are developed, they are tailor-made by each child.
They are chosen because they serve the child's individual purpose and
because they work. These strategies become part of the characteristics
of the child as a learner and are the basis of all strategies that will be
adopted if the child is left to learn alone.
The understandings or concepts that children learn are generally
arrived at through a process of abstraction of the principles that
underpin a number of different experiences. Children come to
understand about size, colour, the past or the seasons through a
variety of first-hand experiences, leading them to see and understand
the conceptual links between one experience and another. In this way
children become able to generalize abstract principles from concrete
experiences. It is almost impossible to rush this transition from
concrete to abstract because if children are forced to establish
connections then it is likely that they will make inappropriate ones
(Brierley 1994; Robinson and Beck 2000).
We know that children do make the wrong `connections' and that,
once made, these misunderstandings ± or alternative understandings ±
8 Starting from the child

can take a great deal of unlearning. The work of Wynne Harlen, Roger
Osborne and others reveals that children have views about a variety of
topics and that they are very often different from the views of `experts'.
However, to children they remain `sensible, useful views' (Harlen 1985:
76) and can remain uninfluenced or be influenced in unanticipated
ways by teaching. The views that children hold are a result of their
personal endeavours to construct their own meaning for, and under-
standing of, the experiences that they have had (Postlethwaite 1993).
They work for the child who has constructed them and since they serve
the child's purpose reasonably well, they may not readily be displaced
by the explanation of someone else especially, as Postlethwaite says, as
these explanations are often more complex than their own.

Readiness for learning

Inherent in beliefs about the competences of young children is an

attitude towards the concept of `readiness' for learning. If children are
viewed as competent young learners, then it follows that they have
predispositions to learn from their earliest days and, as such, are ready
for learning from birth (and, many would say, before). The conse-
quence of this view is that children are never not ready to learn and the
notion of children `emerging' into literacy (Hall 1987), numeracy
(Hughes 1986) and so on, assumes engagement in concepts that at one
time would have been deemed inappropriate for young minds. The
work of Donaldson (1978), Bruner (1986), Hughes (1986) and others,
however, has encouraged the view that children are ready for learning
if learning is adapted to the intellectual proclivities of children
(Watson 1998).
Once again we are drawn to the behaviours of parents and carers
who appear to make these adaptations instinctively. Parents, it seems,
adapt naturally to their child's intellectual tendencies, attributing
consciousness and intentionality to their child's actions from the very
beginning of their lives (Trevarthen 1980, 1992; Stern 1985). When
parents talk to their child they do so as if expecting a response, often
long before the child seems capable of giving one. In this way, suggests
Watson, children's early learning is aided in spontaneous and
incidental ways by older and more experienced members of their
community, who give structure to the child's earliest, hesitant
inclinations to explore the world (1998).
A child is ready to learn when their cognitive disposition and what
is to be taught are matched. Parents may make this match instinctively
knowing, as they do, so much about the body of beliefs, expectations
and assumptions that their child brings to a learning situation. Early
 Competent young learners 9

childhood educators do not have the benefit of sharing each child's

complete learning history and one of the most complex challenges of
teaching is to become as knowledgeable as possible about the cognitive
dispositions of a large number of children in any one group.
Much of the influence of Jean Piaget stemmed from his view that
children progress through various stages of development that deter-
mine their current level of skills and competence. Readiness for
learning, he believed, depended on the child's developmental stage,
and progress from one stage to the next could not be rushed. This view
of development influenced many teachers to adopt a relatively passive
role in children's progress (Darling 1994). Activities were planned that
reflected the notion of readiness with titles such as `pre-reading', `pre-
number' and so on. The role of the educator was to bring children to a
state of readiness to engage fully in significant skills or concepts and
children were taken through a whole range of early stages of learning
in preparation for their arrival at the next stage of development.
Piaget's notion of readiness was ultimately challenged by a number of
researchers, notably Margaret Donaldson (1978), who believed that
children should be actively encouraged to move towards the
`disembedded' thinking that characterizes learning in primary schools.
The work of Lev Vygotsky (1978) has also been highly influential in
this debate about readiness. Vygotsky believed that instead of
matching teaching to existing development, teaching had to proceed
in advance of development in order to challenge and extend children's
maturing functions. He believed that learning comes in advance of
development when progress is stimulated and guided by the expertise
of others. This notion of readiness places the emphasis not so much on
when to teach, but rather how and what to teach.

The characteristics of successful early learning

Young children may be inexperienced learners, but their competence

should no longer be underestimated. Loris Malaguzzi, who inspired the
development of the pre-schools in Reggio Emilia, said `our image of the
child is rich in potential, strong, powerful, competent and most of all,
connected to adults and to other children' (1993). Modern technology
has made it possible to investigate the very beginnings of human
thinking, and researchers have documented critical development in
the pre- and postnatal months of life. From the beginning, humans
demonstrate intention-directed behaviour (Trevarthean 1992). They
are both intellectually and interpersonally engaged, or predisposed to
be so, much earlier than previous theories allowed (Watson 1998). The
young child is clearly emerging cognitively, linguistically, physically,
10 Starting from the child

socially and emotionally and ± most significantly ± this critical

development usually occurs when the child is receiving no formal
education. Children have the capacity to draw conclusions about the
world when the knowledge that they need has not been formally
taught to them.
Given an environment in which they are cared for and in which
they can thrive, young children display a range of competences that
make their early learning dramatically successful.
. Young children display positive attitudes and dispositions to learn.
The determination for mastery over their environment drives them
to persist and persevere ± often in the face of difficulty and initial
failure ± to succeed in their objectives.
. Young children develop personal skills and strategies that work for
them in their quest to understand the world. These strategies are
chosen instinctively and fulfil children's purposes for the particular
task in hand.
. Young children have developed understandings and sometimes
misunderstandings. Each piece of knowledge acquired, each small
piece of sense that is made, fits into each child's personal cognitive
jigsaw.
The construction of this personal cognitive jigsaw has many
parallels with the construction of the traditional wooden puzzle. At
first, the pieces of cognitive jigsaw are picked seemingly at random.
Sometimes the piece fits straight away, sometimes it is turned round
and round ± with astonishing patience ± before the fit is finally made.
Sometimes the piece is turned round and round and a fit is made and
only subsequent pieces show that piece to be in the wrong place.
Sometimes the piece is turned round and round, does not quite fit but
is jammed in anyway because it is more satisfying to have reached a
solution than to have to start again.
It is the skill of the educator to be aware of the pieces of the jigsaw
that the child already has in place and whether or not they have been
fitted together correctly. If they have not, then supporting the child to
review the construction of their cognitive jigsaw is as delicate and
difficult an operation as persuading the child to select an alternative
piece of wooden puzzle. The `teacher' ± whether an adult or another
child ± needs to be informative without being imposing. Imposition
simply leads to the learner becoming confused and disaffected.
Confusion arises because the links between the pieces have been made
by the teacher and not by the learner. Disaffection occurs because the
initiative has been taken away from the learner and the construction
no longer makes personal sense.
 Competent young learners 11

The expertise of the child's first educators

We have seen that young children's early learning is not only the result
of their own predispositions to learning, but also the result of
interactions with significant others in their family and their commu-
nity at large. It is important to appreciate the strategies that parents use
which make them such successful educators, very often without
realizing it.
. Crucially, of course, most parents love and care about their children
and have a genuine interest in their actions, ideas and development.
Parents may be very busy, be feeling under the weather, be
preoccupied with other things ± but the bond between them and
their children surfaces under all manner of stresses and strains to
reassure the child of the strength of the relationship between them
(Sylva and Lunt 1982).
. Parents operate in the real world. They talk to their children in
kitchens and bathrooms, they take them to shops and playgrounds
and cinemas, they eat with them in front of the television or in
McDonald's. Parents and their children are surrounded by a
cacophony of visual, aural and tactile stimuli ± sights and sounds
that constantly fascinate children and cause them to ask what, how
and why?
. Usually, parents give children time to learn; time to pose meaningful
questions and to come up with their own theories and hypotheses;
time to try things out, to make mistakes and to try again; time to
leave things be, to return to them at will and to revisit things when
the time is right; time to be distracted and to take a detour from
their original path or goal and to learn by accident rather than
design.
. Very often, parents are in a one-to-one situation ± or at least one and a
very small group situation ± when these questions are asked.
Although every parent knows that feeling of being asked one
question too many, research into the interactions between children
and their parents and children and their teachers (Tizard and
Hughes 1984; Wells 1986) reveals that however brief, not to say
curt, parental responses might be, parents still interact far more
frequently with their children than the early childhood educator
with their 10, 20 or 30 children. In the home, children are able to
talk about a range of topics, to initiate and sustain conversations
and to ask questions endlessly, and all of these factors make the
home `a powerful learning environment' (Tizard and Hughes 1984).
. In these situations, parents usually respond to, rather than initiate
learning. The child wants to know, wants to know what to do, wants
to know what to do next ± and the parent is there to supply the
12 Starting from the child

appropriate piece of the jigsaw, there to support and to facilitate the

developing learner.
Studying children and their parents can offer those of us in
educational settings many lessons about effective early learning. It is
so important that practitioners draw on the expertise of parents and
enable them to inform and to go on informing the school or setting
about their child. It can be too easy to pay lip service to the notion of a
partnership with parents, but early childhood educators should not
forget that it is they who join the already established learning
partnership that exists between the parent and their child.

How do young children learn?

While it is possible to identify the learning characteristics of young

children, it is altogether more difficult to try and understand exactly
how they learn. There is no conclusive evidence on this subject,
although there have been a number of influential theories over the
course of the last two centuries. The theories have grown and
developed one from the other and many have, at some point or
another, had an impact on the way in which children have been
educated (see Entwhistle 1987; Wood 1988; Anning 1991).

Young children learn by being active

Any personal study of young children reveals almost non-stop activity
in the quest for skills, strategies and understandings. The work of Jean
Piaget and other contemporary theorists of child development
emphasize that `being active' does not necessarily mean `moving
around', however. Being active means that the young child engages
with experiences, actively (as opposed to passively) bringing their
existing knowledge and understanding to bear on what is currently
under investigation. Being active is what causes children both
physically and cognitively to construct their own view of the world,
to personalize the experience and to apply it in ways that make sense
to them as individuals (Piaget 1929; Bruce 2004).

Young children learn by organizing their own learning

experiences
The work of Chris Athey at the Froebel Institute has provided a new
framework for studying the patterns of children's behaviour as they
learn. These early patterns of behaviour (or schemas, as they are
defined) are seen in babies, and become more complex and more
 Competent young learners 13

numerous as the child develops. By becoming familiar with these

behaviours, the observer realizes that actions are not performed in
isolation but are one of a set of experiences coordinated by the child
(Nutbrown 2006). Athey, in her book Extending Thought in Young
Children (2007), illustrates how such patterns can be represented in
children's play, their thinking and their language. Once in tune with
these categories of behaviour, adults have a valuable framework for
observing children's actions. Schemas are a way of understanding the
learning behaviours of children and, as such, give adults and educators
an appreciation of what is currently interesting and absorbing the
child. `It is through schemas, and the fitting of content to different
schematic threads, that children's own construction of reality and
subsequent continuity can be identified' (Nutbrown 2006).

Young children learn by using language

The language development of young children is a staggering
phenomenon. The increase in young children's vocabulary and their
growing capacity to use language for a range of purposes is powerful
evidence of an innate drive to make meaning and to communicate.
The research of Gordon Wells and his team on the Bristol Language
Study concluded that in the early stages children's linguistic systems
are more or less in place and a basic vocabulary of several thousand
words is acquired. From that point on, however, what is learnt and the
order in which it is learnt becomes `progressively more dependent on
experience ± on having opportunities to hear the relevant functions,
meanings, and structure used appropriately and to use them oneself'
(Wells 1986: 32).
Wells sees language as a code to be cracked, but that before the child
attempts this, he or she has already become familiar with the code in
use. Language development relies on children hearing and using
language in meaningful interactions. In order to work out for
themselves how language is organized, children need the collaborative
help of `conversational partners' who `provide clear and relevant
feedback', enabling children to evaluate the appropriateness of their
current hypotheses. This does not mean that it is necessarily best for
adults to overtly teach children the use of language. As in other areas of
their development, children construct their own internal models of
language and rather than adults teaching children, says Wells (1986:
48), `it is children who teach adults how to talk in such a way as to
make it easy for them to learn'.
Language provides not only a means of acting on the world, but also
for reflecting on that action in an attempt to understand it (Harlen
1985). Piaget argued that language is a medium, a method of
14 Starting from the child

representation within which thought takes place. Vygotsky, on the

other hand, believed that speech transforms the way in which children
learn, think and understand and is, therefore, a tool of thought (Wood
1998). The theories of Jerome Bruner draw and build on the work of
both Piaget and Vygotsky. His assertion is that the internalization of
language is an instrument of thought and that the very young child
uses language `almost as an extension of pointing'. All of these theories
depend on the understanding that thought, action and language are
inextricably bound together in children's development. The successful
development of all three is dependent on experiences being embedded
in what is meaningful for the child.

Young children learn by interacting with others

Children may well be active learners in a highly individualistic sense, but
they construct their personal meanings within the framework of a social
and cultural context (Vygotsky 1978; Wood 1998). The young child is a
social being, playing, talking and living alongside others, watching what
they do and imitating them, questioning what is seen and responding to
questioning, drawing on the knowledge and expertise of others to
interpret and make meaning of experiences (Richards and Light 1986;
Wells 1986; Dunn 1988). Everything that young children learn is
influenced by the culture in which they grow up and the community in
which they live. The writing of Vygotsky emphasized the significance of
social contexts for learning, whereby adults ± or other more expert
members of the community ± help children to acquire skills and
understandings that they might not accomplish, or accomplish less
speedily, alone. Vygotsky refers to the gap between what children are
able to do alone and what they can achieve with help, as the `zone of
proximal development'; in other words:
the distance between the actual developmental level as determined
by independent problem solving and the level of potential
development as determined through problem solving under adult
guidance or in collaboration with more capable peers.
(Vygotsky 1978: 86)
The work of Jerome Bruner (1968, 1985, 1990) and Wood et al. (1976)
extends this notion, adopting the metaphor `scaffolding' to describe the
guidance and interactional support given by the adult or expert until
the child is able to take over tasks for themselves. In this model of
learning, children are not passively absorbing the strategies of the adult,
but take an active, inventive role (Smith 1993), reconstructing the tasks
through their own understanding while the adult or educator provides
what Bruner (1985) describes as a `vicarious form of consciousness'.
 Competent young learners 15

Implications for classroom practice

What then are the implications for educational practice of the issues
that this chapter has raised? What strategies do early childhood
educators need to consider if they are to build on what is known about
how young children learn?

Young children learn by being active

If young children learn naturally by being active and engaging in a
range of exploratory experiences then the primary responsibility of
the school or early years setting is to plan opportunities that facilitate
and support these instinctive strategies. Children need opportunities
to engage with a range of materials and stimuli. They need time and
space to explore, investigate and question. They need a range of play
experiences and appropriate resources of good quality. They need, in
other words, a learning environment that offers concrete experiences
that are relevant, meaningful and worthy of active involvement. If
children are to continue their struggle to make sense of the world,
then the world must be worth the struggle. Clearly, before children
start school or playgroup or nursery or children's centre, the
incentive and motivation to learn have been sufficient. It is up to
practitioners to make children's new learning environments equally
worth while.

Young children learn by organizing their own learning

experiences
Athey (1990) reminds us that in order to tap into the personal
constructs of the child, early childhood educators need to focus on the
underlying processes of their thinking and cognition. When practi-
tioners are concerned with the sense that children are making of their
own learning then this provides a rich source for planning and
development. Observation and appreciation of children's schemas can
offer practitioners a starting point for planning experiences that
capture children's current interests and preoccupations. If a child is
focusing on a trajectory schema ± a fascination with things moving or
flying through the air (see Bartholomew and Bruce 1993 for further
definitions of schema) ± then `he or she needs to be provided with a
range of interesting and stimulating experiences which extend
thinking along that particular path' (Nutbrown 2006). When children
are absorbed by something in this way, it is far more productive for
practitioners to go with and plan for that interest. Starting from the
child becomes increasingly difficult when there is an external
16 Starting from the child

curriculum to be taught (Chapter 3 addresses this issue in depth);

however, early childhood educators who believe in working with
rather than against the interests of children will make time to observe
and record the ways in which they organize their own learning
experiences. Nutbrown says that those who become interested in
children's schema development come to know that children will
pursue their schemas, whether adults like it or not!

Young children learn by using language

The work of Margaret Donaldson demonstrates the importance of
young children's experiences being embedded in contexts that are
meaningful to them (1978). Her work, and that of researchers studying
the relationship between language development in the home and at
school, emphasizes the importance of the contexts in which the adult
and the child have shared experiences in common from which to draw
shared meanings (Anning 1991). Edwards and Mercer (1987) claim that
the establishment of mutual understanding and shared meanings is
something with which educators also must be concerned. They suggest
that of the points at which education commonly fails is when
`incorrect assumptions are made about shared knowledge, meaning
and interpretations' (1987: 60). Practitioners and children need to
share a `common knowledge' about the discourse that forms the basis
for communication in the setting in order for the learning that comes
from interaction to be most effective.
Children use language to learn and therefore learning environments
must give them opportunities to use language in a variety of ways. It is
language that affords young children the means of making sense of their
experiences and of internalizing their actions. In order to capitalize on
the power of language to influence both thought and action,
experiences must encourage talk as a key process through which young
children learn. It is heartening to see in recent government documenta-
tion, fresh affirmation of the critical nature of speaking and listening as
precursors for competence in reading and writing as well as for
understanding across all curriculum areas and the development of good
social relationships (DfES 2005). Talking something through, either
alone or with others, is an important way of grasping new ideas,
understanding concepts or clarifying feelings and perceptions. Young
children need opportunities for discussion, for explanation, for descrip-
tion, for narration and for speculation. In learning environments where
talk is recognized as a powerful and natural medium for learning, young
children are able to make meaning of what is new in terms of what is
familiar. Through their talk, they create a context that is personal to
them and one that relates to their own experiences.
 Competent young learners 17

Young children learn by interacting with others

If learning is socially constructed then early childhood educators
clearly have a critical role, a role at one time devalued by
misunderstandings about the nature of `child-centredness' and
`discovery learning' (Blenkin and Kelly 1987). It is the skilled
intervention of the practitioner that will move children from their
present to their future potential. Interactions with children must
facilitate this progress through Vygotsky's `zone of proximal develop-
ment' and practitioners must arrange things, says Athey (1990), so that
knowledge is actively constructed and not simply copied. Early
childhood educators need to have regular conversations with children.
These conversations need to be designed to find out what children
already know and understand (see Chapter 2) or to support, through
questioning or answering questions, the child's current thinking. Such
interactions in Reggio Emilia are described as `a ball which is passed
along. At times the children throw it, at times we (the adults) do'
(Malaguzzi 1992). It is so important that children and adults alike see
themselves as co-constructors of knowledge where both parties
contribute to an exchange of ideas and views and questions in order
to come to new insights and fresh understandings.
Recent material from the Coram Family Research Unit on `Listening
to Children' (Lancaster 2003) promotes adult±child relationships that
uphold children's rights to be listened to as competent individuals
who should have their views, concerns and aspirations taken into
account and who should participate in decisions that are important to
them. This influential work promotes the view that young children are
competent to express their views and supports adults to increase their
skills of listening so that children's voices are heard.
Other children are also part of this social construct, and practitioners
have to look at `the context in which learning takes place in schools (sic)
as well as at the nature of specific learning tasks' (Pollard and Tann
1993). The topic of children working together and learning together is
discussed fully in Chapter 6, but there is growing evidence of the
importance of peer tutoring in classroom contexts ± whether it is
planned or not (e.g. Forman and Cazden 1985; Galton & Williamson
1992; Rogoff & Toma 1997; Rogoff et al. 2003). Effective teaching
acknowledges the role of all those who have knowledge and under-
standings to contribute to the development of individual learners.
Descriptions of learning in the pre-schools in Reggio Emilia constantly
emphasize the significance of groups of children learning together,
sometimes including adults in those groups and sometimes not. In
Making Learning Visible (2001), there are powerful examples of how
`learning groups' create a dynamic synergy that `extends beyond the
learning of individuals to create a collective body of knowledge' (p. 286).
18 Starting from the child

Conclusion

When children start attending an educational setting they are already

competent learners. Competence has evolved from the fusion of the
child's natural predisposition to learn and the support he or she has
received while learning from birth. This chapter suggests that those
responsible for the more formal stages of children's education need to
look to the characteristics of children's successful early learning
environments in order to develop models of teaching that will lead
to the continuation of effective learning throughout the child's
educational journey. In the following chapter we examine how early
childhood educators establish the range of competences that children
bring from home and the wider world and how those educators come
to find out what children already know about and can do.
 2

CONVERSATIONS AND
OBSERVATIONS

Learning about individual children

Introduction

If we acknowledge that children bring to their school or setting a

wealth of skills, knowledge and understandings, then a key task of the
early childhood educator is to identify precisely what it is that children
already know and can do in order to build on their existing
competences. This immediately defines the experiences of both adults
and children. If children already know and can do a range of things,
then it puts the educator in the role of learner alongside their children.
The adult must find out the extent of children's competences to ensure
that the planned curriculum is appropriate to these particular children.
This leads to planning that is tailor-made for each child because the
foundations of learning are unique (Fisher 2000). Each child has their
own personal history of experiences, which will determine not only
what they need to learn next, but how they will do so most effectively.
Establishing the starting points for children's educational experi-
ences is not a task that takes place only when a child begins in their
new school or setting. Practitioners need to establish the starting
points for children's learning throughout their education as part of the
ongoing cycle of teaching and learning. All too often in schools, in
particular, the planned curriculum establishes its starting points from
the learning objectives on written documentation, and considers
`previous experience' to be what has been `covered' in previous
teaching time. However, children continue to learn in and from a
range of contexts that are nothing to do with educational settings, and
it is always necessary to discover what knowledge and understanding
children bring with them from their previous life experiences in order
to plan a curriculum that matches their current learning needs.
20 Starting from the child

The `teacher' as learner

Placing themselves in the role of learner, effective early childhood

educators make assessments of children's knowledge, skills and
understandings before finalizing the planning of an appropriate
curriculum. Often, assessment is seen as the end of the teaching
process, undertaken to discover whether children have learnt what was
planned and taught. However, the more crucial place for assessment is
at the start of the cycle of teaching and learning, when practitioners
find out what children already know and can do so that the next
experiences planned are relevant and meaningful. This process should
happen not just when children start at their new school or setting but
at the beginning of each fresh learning cycle. Assessment is a tool that
comes before and after learning. Before it establishes what is currently
known and after, it establishes what has been learnt that is new. This
chapter is concerned with the two key ways in which practitioners
establish, at the beginning of the teaching and learning cycle, what
children already know and can do, as part of a continuous process of
reviewing and refining children's learning opportunities. The first
strategy is to have conversations with those who know about the child
as a learner. The second strategy is to make observations of the child in
action as a learner.

Having conversations

Early childhood practitioners need to have informative conversations

with a range of people who have knowledge of the child as a learner.
These conversations need to inform the practitioner about:
. what interests the child;
. what motivates the child to learn;
. how the child perceives him or herself as a learner;
. what the child already knows about and can do;
. what the child would like to know about or do.
Having a range of conversations gives practitioners a range of
perspectives on each child and these perspectives help to form a
rounded and balanced picture. Each perspective is valid and needs to
be valued, and each contributes something fresh to the practitioner's
understanding of the child and their needs. Putting together this
profile is rather like undertaking a detective investigation as the
practitioner gathers together the pieces of the evidence that they need
in order to make hypotheses and judgements upon which to proceed
in their work.
 Conversations and observations 21

Conversations with children

Successful conversations with children are based on relationships
where adults listen respectfully to what children have to say (Cousins
1999; Chilvers 2006). Conversations with children ± where children do
most of the talking ± provide early childhood educators with evidence
of children's responses to learning and to experiences. They offer the
children's version of what they have just experienced ± not the intended
learning outcomes, but the actual learning outcomes. They reveal how
children have approached an activity or experience, what they found
interesting, what strategies they used for making sense of the world
and where any misunderstandings might be. Such conversations give
practitioners hard evidence of children's development. When children
have to put into words what they have experienced and learnt, then
their thoughts and language give clear evidence on which to build the
next stages of learning. At this age, oral evidence provides more
detailed and reliable information than recorded evidence. The capacity
of young children to think and understand far outstrips their capacity
to represent that knowledge and understanding in recorded form and
written evidence can present a very impoverished version of their
expertise. Young children can be limited by their capacity to record, to
write or draw what they have done or understood. They can be limited
by their understanding of the task or the worksheet. They can be
limited by the page or sheet that simply requires that boxes are filled in
and leaves no space for their original thoughts or interpretations. Since
the Foundation Stage in schools and settings has been subjected to
inspection by the Office for Standards in Education (Ofsted), there has
been great concern among early years practitioners that evidence of
children's achievements must be in written form. It is often believed
that a child's picture, model or talk does not carry the same weight as a
piece of writing, and worksheets are increasingly in evidence. This is
very misguided. A child is far more complex a learner than can ever be
evidenced by a worksheet. If practitioners want to have evidence of
what a child knows and understands then they must collect the richest
and most powerful evidence available ± the child's own actions and the
child's own words. The very act of articulating ideas and under-
standings reveals a wealth of information about the child's learning:
what they have understood, what they have misunderstood, what
skills they have used and what they have enjoyed. Conversations with
children offer the practitioner a marvellous assessment opportunity as
they reveal needs and interests, and can be a critical moment in the
cycle of teaching and learning.
It is crucial, however, that conversations are meaningful to the child
and that the practitioner genuinely wants to find out about what he or
she is asking about. Questions should demand answers that the
22 Starting from the child

practitioner does not already know, otherwise the questioning

technique is simply being used as a checking device, to discover
whether children are paying attention or not. Young children are all
too aware of whether adults' questions are genuine. This is scathingly
exemplified by 5-year-old Sonnyboy who responded to his teacher's
meaningless questioning with a question of his own: `Why do you
keep asking the kids questions when you knows all the answers? Like
. . . like . . . what colour is it then? You can see for yourself it's red . . . so
why do you keep asking them?' (Cousins 1990: 30).
Skilful, open-ended questioning leads children to share their own
thoughts, ideas and perceptions with the practitioner and teaches the
adult something more about the child. Effective questioning is not
about checking that a child has absorbed the adult's teaching points
but should show that the practitioner is joining in the child's own
quest for knowledge and understanding. Such questions:
. stimulate children's curiosity and thinking;
. challenge children to modify their ideas;
. generate a fresh point of view;
. take children's learning forward;
. ask: What do you think? What might happen if? What do you
imagine will happen?
. ensure the process is given more emphasis than the outcomes.
The following questions show how the practitioner can close down or
open up children's thinking and reasoning.

CLOSED OPEN

What colour are the bricks in your Why did you choose red bricks for your tower?
tower?
Can you make the boat move? How can you make the boat move without
touching it?
Can you stick these two pieces How can you join these two pieces together?
together?
Did the fox catch Rosie in the story? I wonder why the fox didn't catch Rosie in
the story?
Is this big enough to fit in here? How can you find out if things are big enough
to fit in here?
Are you writing orders for the shop? How can Ellie help you to write orders for the
shop?
Do the wheels on you model go How did you make the wheels on your model
round? go round?
Have you changed your idea? Why did you decide to do it differently?
What do tadpoles turn into? What do you think will happen to the tadpoles?
Do you need a nail for those two bits How did you get the two bits of wood to stay
of wood? together?
Have you made a rocket? Where is your rocket going to?
 Conversations and observations 23

Does your house need a door? Can you find a way to put a doorway into your
house?
Do you want a funnel? What might happen if you used the funnel on
the end of the pipe?
Can you make a bag for those letters? How could you carry all those letters (mail)
(mail) around without dropping them?
What do plants need to grow? Why do you think this plant is drooping so much?
Shall we make an appointments book? How can you remember what time all your
customers are coming to have their hair done?
Do birds like to eat berries? I wonder why so many birds come and sit on
that bush?
Shall we put the bonfire out? What is a good way to put the bonfire out?
What are all the little lights called I wonder how the stars stay up in the sky?
that are in the sky at night?
What do fish like to eat? I wonder how long it will take before the fish
come up to eat their food?
Which bear is the tallest? How can we find out which bear needs the
longest bed?

Conversation with parents

Conversations with parents and with carers add to the developing
picture of the child as a learner. Parents bring their knowledge of the
child in a variety of contexts that the early childhood educator may
never be privileged to see. A good case for home visiting is made when
practitioners recount what they have learnt from seeing the child in
the surroundings of their own home, and how relationships change
when parents meet teachers on their own territory (see Edwards and
Redfern 1988 for a very practical account of the development of
partnerships with parents and Liz Brooker 2002, who traces the
learning experiences of Bangladeshi families in the Midlands through
the eyes of the children and families as well as the school).
Conversations with parents should take place well before the child
starts at their new school or setting, when the child starts and after the
child has started. The conversations need to acknowledge the expertise
that parents have about their own children and the understanding that
parents have about their children's current needs and interests. They
should be respectful of the parents' own perspectives and not seek to
mould the parents' views to coincide with those of the setting. If early
years practitioners want to know about children in order to build on
the children's existing abilities, then a significant part of that
knowledge comes from the home, and practitioners need to acknowl-
edge this by providing a range of opportunities to listen to and record
parental knowledge, attitudes and ideas. Parents have a fresh, different
and crucial perspective on their child's development, their attitudes to
learning and their growing skills and competences. We all know that
children can behave as two different beings ± both in attitude and
24 Starting from the child

approach ± at home and in the setting, and it is an impoverished

profile of the child as a learner that only takes account of the child in
the context of the school, pre-school or nursery.
It would not make sense to try to educate a child without taking
account of the most significant people in his/her environment, and
trying to work with them. It is through the home context that
school becomes meaningful, or not, to a family.
(Bruce 1991: 15)

Before children start school/setting

From the time a family first makes contact with a school or setting, or
that school or setting first makes contact with a family, there are
opportunities for a dynamic partnership to be established. To enable
this to develop, Foundation Stage settings could offer some of the
following:
. an invitation to use resources, a toy library and/or to borrow books;
. invitations to special events such as performances or feÃtes;
. invitations to share amenities such as a hall or family room.
These informal contacts are invaluable for building confidence
between parents, children and staff. From such beginnings a more
formal induction process can evolve naturally.

Parental entitlement
Each setting needs to think carefully about how they help all parents
and children to feel valued and welcomed at the beginning of their
school life. Practitioners may want to consider the extent to which, in
their setting, parents have an entitlement to:
. share their greater knowledge of their child, prior to entry, and
throughout their time in the setting;
. enter a partnership with the setting that takes account of differences
in culture, language and style;
. sufficient time and opportunity for regular formal and informal
communication with staff;
. dialogue with practitioners where parents' opinions and ideas are
listened to, valued and have influence;
. communicate their aspirations for their children;
. comment on and contribute to the records of their child's
achievements in all areas of development.
 Conversations and observations 25

Parental partnership
In order to facilitate a partnership with parents, Foundation Stage
settings may need to initiate many or all of the following strategies:
. visit families at home (remembering that some parents may prefer
to meet in the school or setting);
. design an entry profile for completion by parents and children;
. use photographs and/or a video camera to record everyday and
special events;
. communicate aims and routines using visual material;
. share activities taking place in the setting by making a range of
small books;
. use home/setting diaries, either audiotaped or written and using
community languages where desirable;
. organize a range of times during the day and evening for meetings
and appointments;
. organize a creÁche for younger children;
. arrange for someone at meetings who can speak the community
languages;
. enable an outreach worker/key worker/friend to attend with a
family if support is required;
. adopt a flexible and imaginative response to the needs of families
and the community;
. respect the variety and depth of information that parents convey
about their children;
. recognize the diversity of values within the wider community;
. give parents opportunities to express their own expectations of the
setting;
. give parents opportunities to express their hopes for their children
both inside and apart from the setting;
. give parents opportunities to express their own fears and misgiv-
ings;
. ask parents to describe:
± their child's interests,
± what their child can do,
± their child's health,
± what is special to the child,
± what the child hopes to do at the setting,
± their child's likes and dislikes,
± the history of their child's experiences,
± their child's friends,
± people who are important to the child,
± what the child fears about the setting;
. share the strengths and achievements of the child in the setting;
26 Starting from the child

. discuss ways in which parents and the setting can work together to
support the child's learning.
Conversations with parents can benefit all parties concerned. It
benefits early childhood practitioners because of their increased
knowledge of the child, it benefits parents by making them genuine
partners in their child's learning and it benefits children, who see
home and their setting as mutually interested in their education.

Conversations with other adults

The third group of people with whom early years educators need to
have conversations are those adults who have experience of the child
as a learner before or beyond their current setting. Providing
continuity for children's learning requires an appreciation of what
has taken place before and what will take place after the child moves
into or away from their current learning environment. When the
Foundation Stage was introduced in England in 2000, one of its prime
objectives was to make children's experiences across different provi-
ders and between different sectors as smooth and seamless as possible.
This meant that new partnerships needed to be forged between those
working in Foundation Stage classes and those working in playgroups,
between those in private nurseries and those in nursery schools. In
other words, between all settings that would share a child during their
Foundation Stage experience. For the child, this phase of their
educational journey from age 3 to the end of their reception year
(when they would be 5) was to be given common goals and common
guidance to enable practitioners, wherever they were working, to know
about the principles that underpin early childhood education and how
those principles looked in practice (for a very accessible exploration of
early years principles into practice see May et al. 2006). Many local
authorities have worked to produce assessment and planning guidance
that enables those working in different sectors to develop processes
and practices that are similar, so that the child's experiences are more
constant no matter how many transitions they experience.
The issue of transitions in the early years remains an undesirable
feature of early education in this country. At a time in their lives when
children most need stability and continuity, they are faced with
discontinuity and disruption. If anyone was to suggest that a child in
Year 6 or Year 10 should start their day with one provider and move to
another at lunchtime and then possibly on to a third at the end of the
day, each with their own expectations and demands, then there would
be a public outcry. Yet, in England, this situation has simply been
accepted for a Foundation Stage child. However, a growing awareness
of the importance of young children's attachments to their primary
 Conversations and observations 27

caregivers (Howe et al. 1999; Cairns 2002), as well as a marked increase

in the number of children coming into the care of professionals, rather
than families, for many hours a day at a very young age, has prompted
concerns for this state of affairs (Biddulph 2005; Belsky et al. 2007).
Early childhood educators as well as parents and other professionals
are beginning to voice these concerns in growing numbers (see Selleck
2006).
The problem with different settings in different sectors is not just
whether or not they deliver the same curriculum. Different settings
very often have different adult to child ratios; they have different
accommodation and resources; they may have different aims and
values and they can often have different expectations of behaviour.
Indeed, one of the hardest aspects of transition for children (especially
where these are happening in one day) is where expectations of them
and their behaviour are different. Where in one setting, for example,
children have to ask to go to the toilet and in another they do not.
Where in one setting children are expected to find and replace their
own resources and in another they are found and replaced by the
adults. Where in one setting guns and sword play are permitted and in
another they are banned.
None of these differences are desirable for the child trying to make
sense of the world and coming to their own understanding of rules and
constraints. However, while such a situation exists, then the only way
for different settings to improve the situation for children is for staff to
talk together, to get to know the way each other works and to try and
come to some agreement about common ways of planning for
children's learning, observing and assessing their learning and sharing
information that impacts on their leaning.
For those teaching children in their final year of the Foundation
Stage, another crucial transition will be into Key Stage 1. The outcomes
of the national Foundation Stage Profile have shown that the aim that
`most children will achieve and some, where appropriate, will go
beyond the Early Learning Goals by the end of the foundation stage'
(DfEE/QCA 2000) has been far too ambitious. What we now know from
the national data is that the vast majority of children enter Year 1
without achieving all the Early Learning Goals. This has profound
implications for Year 1 teachers and their curriculum planning (Fisher
2006). Many good schools now realize that the task of the Year 1
teacher is to continue and complete children's Foundation Stage
experience before moving on to the Key Stage 1 programmes of study.
Many innovative projects have begun in local authorities (e.g. OCC
2006) to support Year 1 teachers to move from the didactic teaching
styles of recent years, brought about mainly by the constraints of the
literacy hour, and the new more responsive and child-centred
Exploring the Variety of Random
Documents with Different Content
 186 SALINE COUNTY. upon Ealeigli as the permanent
county seat, sealed proposals for a brick courthouse were invited (on
June 9) to be submitted on Monday July 18, 1853, and James Stelle
and Horatio R. Coffee were employed to make a full profile of the
proposed new structure On July 18, when the bids were opened, it
was found that Jarvis Pierce was the lowest bidder, and the contract
was therefore awarded him for $5,500. The building was to be
36x4:0 feet, two stories high, the first ten feet from stone work to
ceiling, and the second twelve feet between floor and ceiling, the
foundation to be of stone, and the walls of brick, the first story walls
to be eighteen inches thick and the second fourteen inches thick.
There was to be a portico on the south end, six feet wide supported
by four stone columns. A common roof was to be surmounted by a
cupola, and on March 11, 1854, the " old courthouse," was ordered
to be offered for sale on May 30, with the lot on which it stood. On
the first Monday (7th) of November, 1853, an election resulted in the
choice of Samuel Elder, county judge, and David Upchurch and
Moses P. McGehee, associate justices. In 1855 the court was the
same except that James L. Kennedy had taken the place of David
Upchurch. In 1856, Moses P. McGehee became county judge, and
James L. Kennedy and James Stricklin, associate justices, and the
June (1858) term of the county court convened at Harrisburg, the
county seat having been chansred. The court then consisted of
Moses P. McGehee, county judge, and James Stricklin and William
Watkins, associate justices. In March, 1859, the court ordered that
Green B. Raum and William H. Parish, together with such other
competent person as they may select, be appointed commissioners
for the county of Saline, to select sites upon which to erect a
courthouse and jail in the town of Harrisburg, and if necessary to
negotiate for the purchase of the same, also to obtain plans and
specifications for the buildings, and submit them to the court
 HISTOEY OF ILLINOIS. 187 and when the plans were
approved by the court to enter into a contract for the construction of
the buildings, payment for which was to be made in county bonds,
the issuance of which by the court had been authorized by the
Legislature for the purpose of erecting county buildirgs. Sealed
proposals were received July 20, 1859, on the public square at
Harrisburg, according to plans and specifications prepared by J. K.
Frick & Co., architects, and the contract was awarded that day to
John W. Mitchell and Robert Mick, for the sum of $15,440, the
contract including the courthouse, jail and jailer's residence. The jail
was completed and received August 4, 1860, and the courthouse,
late in the year 1860, or early in 1861, full settlement being made at
the December term of the court, 1861. The building is a two-story
brick with four doric columns of brick encased in plaster in front,
standing near together, and supporting the roof of a portico, in
which two spiral iron staircases wind up to the circuit courtroom
above. In 1861, the county court was composed of D. J. Blackmau,
county judge, and Jacob Smith and William A. Harris, associate
justices. In 1865, Moses P. McGehee, was county judge, and William
L. Mitchell and Hiram Burnett, associate justices, and in 1867 the
same court presided. In 1869, Moses P. McGehee was county judge,
and John D. Church and John W. Cox, associate justices. In 1873
Moses P. McGehee was still county judge, and William A. Harris and
John W. Cox, associate justices. In the year 1873 the change
provided for in the constitution of 1870, with reference to the court,
by which the county judge was made independent and the associate
justices exchanged for the county commissioners, went into effect,
and R. N. Warfield was elected county judge and served
continuously until 1882. Owen Phillips was then elected and served
four years, when he was succeeded in the fall of 1886 by the
present judge, William H. Parish.
 188 SALINE COUNTY. The first board of county
commissioners under the present constitution, who were elected in
1873, were William H. Pankey, William M. Simmons and Nelson
Webber, who after being elected, chose the three, two and one
years' terms respectively, in the order named. In 1871 the
commissioners were William H. Pankey, William M. Simmons and
John A. Wilson; in 1875, William H. Pankey, John A. Wilson and
Alexander Oliver; in 1876, John A. Wilson, Parker Massey and
Roswell Seten; in 1877, Parker Massey, Robert Lewis and James A.
Harris; in .1878, Robert Lewis, James A. Harris and Richard
Westbrook; in 1879, James A. Harris, Richard Westbrook and John B.
Berry; in 1880, John B. Berry, James A. Harris and Richard
Westbrook; in 1881, the same; in 1882, Richard Westbrook, James
A. Harris and William G. Frith; in 1883, the same; in 1881, W. G.
Frith, J. A. Harris and J. R. Baker; in 1885, J. R. Baker, J. W. Harris
and Richard Westbrook, in 1886, J. L. Cain, J. R. Baker and Richard
Westbrook. THE CIRCUIT COURT. The first term of the circuit court
for Saline County was begun on Monday, June 5, 1848, at Raleigh,
Hon. William A. Demning, judge. The first grand jury impaneled,
consisted of John R. Norman, William Stricklin, John Rhine, C. B.
Bramlet, Henry Garner, Albert A. Anderson, William Anderson,
William Bourland, Jesse E. Rude, Samuel B. Crank, G. W. Hensley,
Wilson Gaskins, Hermon Thompson, David Tanner, John Miller, James
Hill and James Murray. The first case brought before the court was
entitled " G. A. Pemberton, administrator of T. H. Spencer, deceased,
vs. Logan Lynch, Appeal," and the entry in connection therewith
reads as follows: " And now at this day came the parties by their
attorneys; and the defendant by Parish, his attorney, moved the
court to dismiss this appeal for want of bond. Upon argument,
whereof it is ordered by the court that said motion
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 189 be overruled, and leave
granted to amend the appeal bond herein." The second case was
entitled "Robert Watson vs. Joseph Hays, Appeal," the entry in
connection with which being as follows: "And now at this day come
the parties by their attorneys, and the issue and proofs being
submitted to the court, upon due consideration, whereof, it is
ordered by the court that the plaintiff recover of the defendant his
debt of $6, together with his costs and charges in this behalf
expended, to be taxed, and that execution issue therefor." The third
case was entitled "Francis A. Ritchey vs. William B. Pemberton,
Appeal." A motion Avas made by Allen, attorney for the defendant,
to dismiss the suit, which was sustained by the court. The total
number of cases of this kind before the court on this, its first day at
Raleigh, was six. The next case, and the first suit for divorce in this
court, was entitled " James Henderson I's. Annis Henderson," the
defendant being "ruled to answer by 9 o'clock to-morrow morning."
Then came the case of Gilliam Harris and Samuel Neal,
"administrators vs. Mary Hill et al.'''' for the sale of lands in chancery.
The petitioners, by Allen, their solicitor, moved, and it was ordered
on his motion by the court that W. K. Parish be appointed guardian
ad lifem, for the infant defendant, whereon. Parish appeared and
accepted the appointment, and in the next case, that of " Nathan
Bramlet rs. Barbary Wyatt, Sarilda Pumphrey, et al.,^'' Parish moved,
and it was ordered by the court on his motion, that Willis Allen "be
appointed guardian ad litem, for the infant defendants herein, and
that said attorney defendant answer by 9 o'clock tomorrow." The
above was all of the business of the court on its first day. The next
day, Tuesday, the first case was that of " G. N. Pemberton vs. Logan
Lynch," the decision being in favor of the plaintiff for $13, costs and
charges. Then came " The People vs.
 190 SALINE COUNTY. George W. Dew," on a recognizance
to keep the peace, which case was dismissed at the defendant's
cost. The case o£ " The People vs. Eobert C. Nelson, bastardy," was
continued at the defendant's cost, and the divorce suit of James
Henderson vs. Annis Henderson came on for legal adjudication, and
the marriage was annulled, because Annis, on being "legally called,
came not but made default." In case of Gilliam Harris and Samuel
Neal vs. Mary Hill et al, court ordered and decreed that the real
estate described in the petition be sold for the purposes therein set
forth, and in that of Nathan Bramlet vs. Barbary Wyatt et al. the
court ordered that the prayer of the petition be granted and real
estate mentioned, viz. : the southwest quarter of the northwest
quarter of Section 23, and the west half of the northwest quarter of
Section 26, of Township 8, Range 6, be partitioned so that the
petitioner receive two-ninths thereof, and Archibald Sloan, James
Baker and William Stricklin were appointed to carry the decree into
effect. Then came four appeal cases and a suit for divorce by
Absalom Paterson vs. Mary Paterson, and as Mary did not appear
Absalom received his decree. Archibald Sloan was appointed master
in chancery for Saline County, and after an indictment for larceny
against James Fowler and Wylie Pumphrey, and one for assault
against Phillip Peazle, court adjourned to convene next on November
6, 18 •48, the same judge being present and presiding. The
following is the first list of petit jurors in Saline County: "William
Carr, Wiley Pearce, James Swan, John Jones, Robert Johnson, James
Laws, Daniel Jones, Ira Durham, William Stunson, Garner Stricklin,
Miller Hale, Jacob Cummins, John S. Lambert, Thomas Pearson, Job
Ingram, Howard Gaskins, Duncan Cotner, William Pankey, Samuel
Strallstead, Spokely Vinson, Ransom Moore, Andrew J. Jones, Wiley
Jones and William Crawford. At this term of the court Samuel S.
Marshall was State's attorney. In the case of Phillip Teazle, indicted
for an assault to
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 191 inflict bodily injury, the jury
found the defendant guilty, and fixed his punishment at one hour's
imprisonment and a fine of §5, and that against Robert C. Nelson,
bastardy, was dismissed by agreement at the defendant's costs. But
little else was done except to place upon the docket some appeal
cases, and one indictment against Mathew Brown for an assault to
murder, the first that came before the court, which after being
continued through many terms of court was dismissed; an
indictment against Tarleton Ellige for disturbing a religious
congregation, and one against Jacob, John and Andrew for an
assault to do bodily injury, in which case bail was fixed at $200 each,
the court then adjourned. The next term commenced Monday, June
11, 18-19, Hon. William A. Denning, judge. Mathew Brown, indicted
for an assault to murder, being solemnly called came not, and an
alkis capias was issued to Hamilton County. This was rather a stormy
term of the court, the number of causes for various kinds of crime
being considerably larger than heretofore. A number of cases of
gaming were tried, the verdicts in some being " not guilty," in others
"guilty." An alias capias issued to Hardin County for Thomas
Eubanks, not appearing on trial for gaming, while Riley Gaskins, who
plead guilty, was fined S3 and costs. Sarah Miller, indicted for
bigamy, not appearing to answer to the charge an alias capias was
issued; a case of assault to murder was continued, as was that of
Tarlton Elliger disturbing religious congregation; one against David
Price, trespass vi et armis, because he was not ready for trial, and
two divorces were granted, one to Sarah Miller from John C. Miller,
who permitted the case to go against him by default, and one to
John M. Grable from Mary C. Grable, who also " being solemnly
called came not." At the November term, 1819, Hon. William A.
Denning, judge, and F. M. Rawlings, State's attorney, a number of
the old cases came up again and a few new ones, as "obstructing
the
 192 SALINE COUNTY. public road;" " selling liquor without
license," for which there was scarcely any excuse, as the price for
license was then only ^25 per year, and when Benjamin Thaxton
plead guilty he was fined $10 and costs; "selling liquor on the
Sabbath day," for which Kobert S. Stunson paid a fine of $10 and
costs, and Nancy Boid received a decree of divorce from Robert A.
Bold, who like his predecessors and many of his successor
defendants in divorce suits, "being solemnly called came not." At the
June term, 1850, Hon. William A. Denning was the judge, as also at
the November term. Saline County was then in the Third Judicial
Circuit. A number of divorce suits came on at this term: Elizabeth
Waddle vs. John Waddle, C. K. Mick vs. Sarah Mick, and Thomas H.
Walton vs. Sarah Walton, the plaintiff in each case receiving a
decree, because the defendant though "solemnly called came not."
At the September term, 1851, the case against Carroll Stunson,
assault to murder, which had been continued from court to court for
about three years, was dismissed, as was that of Tarleton Ellige, for
disturbing a religious congregation. A case of counterfeiting came
on, one assumpsit case, one divorce suit, one larceny, one
obstructing public highway, and one for kidnaping, the latter against
Jefferson King, the only case that was ever brought into the Saline
Circuit Court, and which, after being continued from term to term for
a number of years, was dismissed with the privilege of reinstating,
but was never reinstated. At the May term, 1852, Hon. Samuel S.
Marshall was the judge. Besides a few ordinary cases, there was one
against Wallace A. Campbell for assault upon a woman, Campbell
being sentenced to the penitentiary for twelve months, one day in
solitary confinement and the balance of the time at hard labor. At
the March term, 1853, Hon. Samuel S. Marshall, judge, Pleasant
Eaton obtained a verdict against James B. Murray of $750, for
slander, with costs and charges, and George Hollingsworth was
sentenced to
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 193 the penitentiary for one year
for killing James HoUingswortli. At this time J. S. Eobinson was
State's attorney. At the May term, 1854, Hon. Samuel S. Marshall
again presided in this court, but at the October term Hon. Downing
S. Baugh Avas the judge, as also at the May term, 1855. At the
October term, 1855, Hon. Edwin Beecher was judge, as also in June
and October, 1856. In June, 1857, Hon. Wesley Sloan, judge of the
Nineteenth Judicial District, presided, as also in October, 1857,
March, June and November, 1858. At this time Thomas H. Smith was
State's attorney. April 4, 1859, the circuit court first convened at
Harrisburg, in the Cumberland Presbyterian Church, Hon. Willis
Allen, judge. At the August term, 1859, Hon. William J. Allen was the
presiding judge, and also in April, 1860, at which time Edward V.
Pierce was State's attorney. In 1860, judging from the number of
indictments in the circuit court, society in Saline County was in an
exceedingly perturbed condition. It was a time of great political
excitement. The breaking out of the great Eebellion seemed to cast
its shadows before, and many, if not the most, of the people in
Saline County, were in sympathy with the Southern movement, while
those who were true to the Union cause were as ardently devoted to
their principles as were the Southern sympathizers to theirs. A mere
enumeration of the cases on the court records will be sufficient to
indicate the real condition of affairs. There were seven cases of
assaults to murder, one of murder, one of tearing down
advertisements, thirteen assaults to do bodily injury, ninety cases of
selling liquor "by the small," two of passing counterfeit money, three
of larceny, two for public indecency, one assault with deadly weapon,
one of disturbing a worshiping congregation, eight of keeping
tippling house open on Sunday, fifteen of gaming, one for keeping a
gaming house, one for malicious mischief, one for disturbing a family
at night, one for unlawful assembly, two for resisting an officer, one
for incest, sixteen cases of attach 
 194 SALINE COUNTY. ment, one for bastardy, four for
slander, five for divorces, twentyfive of assumpsit, three of trespass,
two ejectment suits, one for betting on dice, two for riot — all of
these at the April term, besides an almost unlimited number of cases
of foreclosure of mortgage, most of these, however, by Green B.
Raum, as drainage commissioner, against persons owning swamp
lands. In August, 1860, Hon. William J. Allen presided as judge and
Edward P. Pierce was State's attorney. In April, 1861, Hon. William J.
Allen was judge and J. M. Clemeutson State's attorney, while in
August, 1861, Hon. Andrew D. Duff was judge, with the same
State's attorney, as was the case in March, 1862. In August, 1862,
no court was held because of the absence of the judge, and in
March, 1863, Hon. Andrew D. Duff was judge, with A. P. Corder,
State's attorney pro tern. In August, 1863, and March, 1864, Hon.
Andrew D. Duff was judge, and J. M. Clemeutson, State's attorney,
and in April and September, 1865, in April and September, 1866, and
in April and September, 1867, this was the case. In March and
October, 1868, Hon. Andrew D. Duff was judge and C. N. Damron,
State's attorney. In March and September, 1869, in April and
September, 1870, in April and September, 1871, and in April and
September, 1872, Hon. Andrew D. Duff was judge and Francis M,
Youngblood, State's attorney. In April, 1873, Hon. Andrew D. Duff
was judge and James M. Gregg, State's attorney. In May, 1874, Hon.
M. C. Crawford was judge, and he continued to preside in Saline
County Circuit Court until the July term, 1878, inclusive, when he
was followed for the November term, 1878, by Hon. O. A. Harker. In
May, 1879, Hon. M. C. Crawford presided again, and in September,
1879, Hon. Daniel M. Browning presided and continued so to do until
and including the March term, 1881. At the September term, 1881,
Hon. N. M. Laws presided, and Hon. O. A. Harker was then judge
from the March term,
 HISTOllY OF ILLINOIS. 195 1882, to the September term,
1884, both inclusive. Hon. David J. Baker was jndge at the
November term, 1884, and then Hon. O. A. Harker during the March
and September terms, 1885, when he was followed by Hon. David J.
Baker during the March and September terms, 1886, and the March
term, 1887. A. C. Duff was State's attorney during the May term,
1874, James M. Gregg, during the terms following until and including
the September term, 1880. William V. Choisser, then, until, and
including, the November term, 1884, and then John J. Parish,
commencing with the March term, 1885, and continuing on until the
present time. Causes ^elehre. — The first case tried by a jury in
Saline County was one of the remarkable ones that occasionally
occur in law. On the records of the circuit court it is entitled John
Kelly vs. Isaac M. Johnson, and was brought up to this court from
that of a justice of the peace, to test the ownership of a bull calf,
and is hence remembered as the "bull calf case." It came on for trial
on the first day of the first session of the court, June 5, 1848, at
Baleigh, and was decided on June 6. Kelly sued Johnson for the
possession of the calf. Following are the names of the jury, the first
jury in Saline County, before whom the case was tried: James
Cummins, Joseph Easly, John B. Wilson, William Crawford, William
St. C. Clark, Andrew Benson, William D. Clary, JohnF. Upchurch, John
Barns, Napoleon Choisser, James P. Yandell and Edward Hampton. All
of them are dead but William D. Clary. One of the witnesses for the
defense was a widow. It appears that the calf sued for was
described as "a red bull calf, with a nick in one ear and a long tail,"
while the one in the possession of Johnson had no nick in its ear,
and had a bob-tail. The widow, when asked how the calf with a bob-
tail and no nick in either of its ears could be Kelly's calf, when his
calf was described as having a nick in one ear and a long tail,
woman-like,
 196 SALINE COUNTY. replied, that she " did not care, nick
or no nick, tail or no tail, it was Kelly's calf." Whether npon the
strength of such cogent reasoning or otherwise cannot be stated,
but the verdict of the jury was: "We, the jury, find the defendant
guilty, and assess the damages at |3.50," whereupon it was ordered
by the court that the said plaintiff recover of the defendant his
damages, aforesaid, together with his costs and charges in this
behalf expended to be taxed, and that execution issue therefor. The
costs and charges in the case amounted to about $450, and Mr.
Johnson had to sell his eighty acre farm and his personal property to
meet it, and was thereby financially ruined. The distinguished
attorneys in this case were, for the plaintiff, William H. Stickney, W.
K. Parish, and W. H. Parish, and for the defendant, Willis Allen,
William J. Allen, Hugh B. Montgomery and Francis M. Piawlings.
IMPOETANT TRIALS. The principal murder trials have been the
following: The Edwards trial, the Hollingsworth trial, the Barnett trial,
the Keelin trial and the Pickering trial. James Barnett was tried for
killing George Seete, in Somerset precinct, in 1866. He had three
trials in all — two in Saline County, and one by change of venue, in
Gallatin County. At his second trial he was sentenced to the
penitentiary for fourteen years, and at his third trial the verdict was
the same. In a few years Mr. Macklin, of Harrisburg, procured his
pardon from Gov. Oglesby, on the ground of his old age, the
expensiveness of his three trials and the sufficiency of the
punishment he had already undergone. The Edwards trial occurred
in 1853, Edwards being indicted for killing his stepchild, in Massac
County, by kicking it out of the way. The kicking was alleged to have
caused an injury to its spine of which it died. He was tried in Saline
County, while John S. Kobinson was State's attorney, and who was
assisted by
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 197 John A. Logan. He was
defended by Jedidiah Jack and Thomas G. C. Davis and acquitted.
George Hollingsworth killed his father, James Hollingsworth, in 1854.
He was tried in Saline County, John S. Kobinson being State's
attorney. Hollingsworth was defended by Jedidiah Jack, Hugh B.
Montgomery and William H. Parish, and was couTicted of
manslaughter and sentenced to the penitentiary for one year. More
interest attaches probably to the Pickering murder trial than to any
other that has occurred in this county. William T. Pickering and his
two sons, William and James, killed a young man named ■ Dawson,
in 1871, while he was waiting upon a young lady. The trial came on
at the September term of the court. William T. and William Pickering
were denied bail, and James was admitted to bail in the sum of
$2,000. F. M. Youne-o blood was State's attorney, and the attorneys
for the defense were Kaum & Christy and Davis & Harris. A change
of venue as to the two denied bail was taken to Gallatin County in
October, 1871, and the result of the trial there was that they were
sentenced to the penitentiary during their natural lives. William T.
Pickering has died, and William is serving out his sentence. James
Pickering was finally tried in Saline County, in 1875, and was
sentenced to fourteen years in the penitentiary. After servinofour
years he was pardoned. Samuel Keelin killed William Meece, in
Williamson County, in the spring of 1875 at a church gathering,
because in a personal encounter some time previously Meece had
given him a severe whipping. The attorneys for the defense were
William J. Allen and C. K. Davis. The verdict of the jury was that
Keelin Avas guilty, and fixed his punishment at imprisonment in the
penitentiary during his natural life. He was pardoned out in 188G
because of being insane, which is thought to have been the case
when the murder was committed. The most prominent members of
the Saline County bar have
 198 SALINE COUNTY. been the following: Willis Allen, Hugh
B. Montgomery, S. S. Hayes, Green B. Eaum, William K. Parish,
Francis M. Bawlings, W. H. Moore, John McElvain, Thomas G. C.
Davis, Jedidiah Davis, John A. McClernand, Eobert Wingate, John A.
Logan, Cressa K. Davis and James M. Gregg. Brief sketches of two or
three of these, who were more particularly resident members of the
bar, and who are either dead or practicing law elsewhere, are here
introduced. Green B. Raum was born in Golconda about 1830. His
father, John Raum, was a major in the Black Hawk war, and his
mother was Mrs. Juliet C. Eaum, both of whom were most ardent
patriots during the war of the Rebellion. Green B. Raum received an
education in youth somewhat more limited than even that furnished
by the common schools of the time, and studied law in the office of
Hon. Wesley Sloan at Golconda. After his marriage to a Miss Field, of
Golconda, he moved to Harrisburg, Saline County, where he
remained in the practice of his profession, and in the performance of
such duties as the people of the county saw fit to require of him,
until the breaking out of the Rebellion. During this period of his life
he did not exhibit remarkable brilliancy, but was noted more for his
thoroughness in the law than for any other peculiarity. He was one
of the first to raise his voice in defense of the Government in
southern Illinois, making the first speech at Golconda in favor of the
suppression of the Rebellion. He was, likewise, one of the first to
volunteer his services as a soldier, his course in both respects having
much to do with shaping public sentiment in favor of the war in this
part of the State. He served with distinction through the war, passing
the various grades of promotion from private to brigadier-general.
He was wounded at Missionary Ridge, and after recovering and at
the close of the war, he returned to the practice of the law at
Harrisburg, and together with Dr. John W. Mitchell, had much to do
with securing the construction of the
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 199 Cairo & Viucennes Kailway, in
which project he lost most of his fortune, in consequence of which
he moved onto a farm near Golconda, where he lived until his
appointment, in 1876, by President Hays as Commissioner of
Internal Revenue, when he removed to Washington, D. C, where he
has since resided. Eesigning his office as commissioner of internal
revenue, in 1884. After his resignation he resumed the practice of
the law in Washington, where he has met with marked success.
Cressa K. Davis was born in Daviess County, Ind. He received a
limited education, but after arriving at manhood's estate, by his own
industry and application, became a learned man. Early in life he
removed to Shawn eetown, where, making a living by working at the
carpenter's trade, he meanwhile studied law as a private student,
and thus acquired a legal education. He was admitted to the bar in
Gallatin County, but removed to Saline County in 1858, to enter
upon the practice of his profession. He was scarcely ever caught
reading a law book, and was highly disdainful of precedents and
adjudged cases, but so fine was his inherent sense of justice, and so
strong was his logical faculty, and so certainly did he resolve
everything to its underlying principle, that he was one of the most
famous and successful practitioners ever at the bar of this county.
Very few lawyers anywhere excelled him in the trial of every kind of
case in the courts. He was strongest before a jury, where his strong
common sense was most conspicuous, and withal he was one of the
most charitable of men, this peculiar phase of his character
rendering it impossible for him to save the money he earned. During
the war he was a sterling patriot, ever ready to urge and to lead
men into the Union Army. He died in 1877. James M. Gregg was a
native of Hamilton County and reared upon a farm. He was a son of
Hon. Hugh Gregg. By his own industry, energy, natural endowments
and perseverance he overcame all the obstacles that beset his
pathway, and was admitted
 200 SALINE COUNTY. to the bar before his majority was
attained. He was thoroughly imbued with the realization that
thoroughness was the only royal road to success in his chosen
profession ; and so fully familiarized himself with the facts and the
law in every case entrusted to his care, that it was won, if won at all,
before it came on for trial. These habits and traits of character
rendered him a formidable opponent in any forum, and enabled him
to win not only nearly all evenly balanced cases, but oftentimes to
snatch victory from the very jaws of apparent defeat; and for these
reasons his practice so rapidly increased that he was much
overworked, and this overwork for the last fifteen years of his life
undoubtedly led to broken health and a premature grave. He died at
La Junta, Colo., June 10, 1886, at the age of thirty-nine years, seven
months and five days, widely known, highly honored and universally
sorrowed. Following is a list of the present bar of Saline County, with
the dates of which they commenced practice in the county: William
H. Parish, 1848; James Macklin, 1853; William M. Christy, 1858;
Boen Phillips, 1870; W. V. Choisser, 1875; William H. Boyer, 1878;
John J. Parish, 1879; E. S. Marsh, 1881; A. M. Lewis, 1882; S. R
Williford and William H. Parish, Jr., in 1883; W. F. Scott, 1884. At
Eldorado, Francis M. Parish. RAILBOAD HISTORY. At the present time
there are three railroads in Saline County : the Louisville & Nashville,
formerly the St. Louis & Southeastern ; the Cairo & Vinceunes, and
the Belleville & Eldorado. The former extends from Shawneetown to
McLeansboro, upon which there is but one station, Eldorado, in
Saline County. It enters the county near the southeast corner of
Section 13, Township 9, Range 7, and leaves it a short distance west
of the northeast corner of Section 20, Township 7, Eange 7, the
entire length within the county being about thirteen miles.
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 201 The Cairo & Vincennes extends
diagonally through the county, entering it about half a mile south of
the northeast corner, and leaving it about a mile north of the
southwest corner at Bolton, the entire length of this road within the
county being about twenty-eight and a half miles. The Belleville &
Eldorado line extends from Eldorado northwestward to Benton and
on to St. Louis. Its length within the county is about seventeen
miles, making the total length of railroad in Saline County fifty-eight
miles. All of these railroads have been built since 1870. The first
action of the county looking toward the securing of the construction
of railroads was an election held October 5, 1867, at which it was
decided by the people to subscribe in bonds $100,000 to the capital
stock of the Cairo & Vincennes Eailway Company, on certain
conditions. Green B. Raum,presideut of this company entered into a
contract with the county court, of which Moses P. McGehee, the
judge, and W. L. Mitchell, one of the associate justices,both of whom
signed the contract for the county, to the effect that there should be
twenty-six miles of railroad more or less within the county, and that
Harrisburg should be a pernament point on said road, that 350,000
in bonds should be issued to the company when the road was
completed and cars running thereon to Harrisburg, and the other
$50,000 when the road should bo built and cars running thereon the
rest of the way through the county. This contract was signed in
November, 1867, and the road was to be completed to Harrisburg
within three years. Subsequently an extension of time was granted
for two additional years, and again subsequently the stock held by
the county was purchased by the company, $100,000 in stock for
$5,000 in bonds, so that the net donation of the county to the Cairo
& Vincennes Bailway Company was $95,000, the interest on which
was originally eight per cent. A double railroad election was held in
the county on Saturday, October 9, 1869, to decide on the
subscription in bonds to the capi 
 202 SALINE COUNTY. tal stock of the St. Louis &
Southeastern Eailway Company to the amount of ^25,000, and on
the subscription of 875,000 in bonds to the capital stock of the
Belleville & Eldorado Railway Company, The first proposition was
carried by a vote of 876 to 427, and the second by a vote of 888 to
428. Thus the bonds issued to the three railroads amount in the
aggregate to $195,000. The entire series have been refunded at the
rate of six per cent, thus making the annual interest on the entire
railroad bonded indebtedness $11,700. The railroad property in the
county is appraised at $333,501, and the anual amount of taxes
received from all these three railroad companies is $9,465.40, and it
is estimated that the appreciation of value in property in the county
is about fifty per cent for that lying within two or three miles of each
side of each road, while that more remote has raised in value in a
proportionately diminishing ratio. It is remarkable, however, that as
yet no sinking fund has been established for the payment of the
bonds as they fall due. The Saline County Agricultural Board was
chartered June 6, 1881. The incorporators were W. A. McHaney, W.
R. Rathbone, De Witt C. Otey, W. P. Hallock, W. E. Burnett, W. M.
Gregg and W. H. Howell. The organization of the board took place
June 16, 1881, with the following as the principal officers: W. E.
Burnett, president; Clem. Bundy, vice-president; F. M. Pickett,
secretary; E. W. Wiedeman, treasurer; W. W. Largent,
superintendent ; W. G. Sloan, marshal, and J. H. Mcllrath, chief of
police. The board owns fifty-one acres of land, lying three-fourths of
a mile north of Harrisburg, which is well fitted up with buildings, and
has on its grounds an excellent half-mile race track. The present
officers are W. G. Sloan, president; R. J. Mcllrath, G. E. Burnett and
T. J. Cain, vice-presidents; W. A. McHaney, secretary ; J. M. Baker,
treasurer ; W. E. Burnett, superintendent, and W. W. Largent,
marshal. The property of the board is worth about $6,000.
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 203 HARRISBUEG, THE COUNTY
SEAT. Harrisburg, the county seat of Saline County, was originally
surveyed by A. Sloan, May 28, 1853, the proprietors o£ the town site
being John Pankey, John Cain, James P. Yandell and James A. Harris.
There were twenty acres in the original plan of the town; five acres
being in the southwest quarter of Section 15, five being in the
southwest quarter of the northwest quarter of Section 15, five acres
in the southeast quarter of the northeast quarter of Section 16, and
five acres in the northeast quarter of the southeast quarter of
Section 16, Township 9, Eange 6. There were in the original plat but
two streets: Main Street, running north and south on the section
line, and Locust Street, running east and west on the half-section
line. Since that time there have been numerous additions made,
which it is not deemed necessary to particularly describe. Mitchell's
revised plat contained the first addition. In this plat John W. Mitchell
added forty lots, Nos. 1 to 40; James Feazel added four blocks, Nos.
17 to 20, and Lewis West added two blocks, Nos. 21 and 22. The
public square was known on this plat as Block No. 7. This plat was
surveyed September 9, 1856, by M. D. Gillett. Wilson
 204 SALINE COUNTY. casionally entirely, surrounded by
water, at those occasional times being a veritable island, and the
name " Crusoe " was doubtless applied to it by some imaginative
person familiar with De Foe's great fiction, Kobinson Crusoe. The
original plat of the town was nearly all quite heavily timbered with
oak and hickory mainly, and covered with an almost impenetrable
hazel underbrush, and, although no one was living upon the original
town site, there were a few families living on the island in the
vicinity. To the southeastward was the farm of Thaddeus Gaskins, a
member of the Gaskins family, one of the oldest families in the
county. Lewis Dorris lived toward the southwest, James Feazel
toward the west and Riley Gaskins toward the east, bearing slightly
south. The selection of this particular spot for the location of a town
came about something in this way. The county seat was at Raleigh,
within six miles of the northern boundary line of the county, while
the southern boundary line was about sixteen miles away. The
people living in the southern part of the county determined therefore
upon a movement which would, it was hoped, result in locating the
county seat more centrally. This was in 1852. Meetings were held to
discuss the matter in the old Liberty Church, and committees were
appointed to select a location, and at length, after rejecting one or
two other places, Crusoe's Island was decided upon as the most
eligible, all things considered. Four men were therefore chosen, each
of whom was to buy five acres of land, and the twenty acres so
purchased were to be and did become the town site of Harrisburg.
Lots were sold at public auction in July, 1853. The first building on
the original town site was a log house on the south side of the public
square erected by James Feazel near where now stands the
Harrisburg Bank, in which a grocery was opened and in which a man
named Joseph Feazel was shortly afterward killed. Several persons
commenced building in 185-1: Jo. Robinson where the postoffice
now is, Jarvis Pierce on the
 HISTOKY OF ILLINOIS. 205 southwest corner of Main and
Locust Streets, Moses P. McGehee west of the public square. Dr. H.
E. Pierce opened a hotel known as Pierce's Hotel. Jo. Robinson and
Jarvis Pierce opened a small store on Pierce's corner in 1855. Dr. J.
W. M itchell built the first store building east of the public square
across Vine Street, where E. W. Wiedemann now is, in the fall of
1856 and commenced selling goods. After Dr. Mitchell, came Lewis
Eiley and a man named Hardin, who also, in company, opened a
general store. V. Rathbone moved his drug store over from Raleigh
in 1859. In the fall of 1858 Robert Mick and J. W. Mitchell formed a
partnership and brought on a very large stock of goods. During this
year Pierce & McGehee moved their saw mill down from the vicinity
of Gallatia, the first steam saw mill in this part of the country. In
18G0 the business interests of Harrisburg included little besides
those named above except a blacksmith shop, a tin and stove store
and a wool-carding machine and cotton-gin. The population was
about 500 and the town had also become the county seat, in
accordance with an election held in 1857, but which was so close,
there being only fifteen majority in favor of Harrisburg, that those
who still desired that Raleigh should remain the county seat enjoined
the removal and kept the case in the courts antil 1859, when the
injunction was hired to be dismissed and the removal effected
according to the majority vote as shown on the face of the returns.
The building of the courthouse at Harrisburg is sufliciently set forth
in the history of the county court. Since that time the town has
continued slowly but steadily to grow, keeping pace with the
improvement of the county, which during the last few years is
becoming particularly noticeable. The business of the town is now in
the hands of the following individuals and firms: General stores —
Priester, Nyberg & Co., J. M. Baker & Co., Mitchell & Towle, Otey,
Roberts & Co., D. K. Seten and A. Nyberg. Groceries — William
Gaskins, S. F.
 206 SALINE COUNTY. Hart & Bro., Dorris & Pearce, E. W.
Wiedemann, E. H. Church and J, S. Crank. Hardware — Seten & Son,
and Ferguson & Wiedemann. Stoves and tinware — -C. A. Maltbj.
Furniture — Seten & Son. Clothing — M. J. Schrader. Harness and
Saddles W. T. Skaggs and T. C. Eichardson. Undertakers — John
Pruett and Ferdinand Ledvina. Bakery and restaurant — C. W. Tate.
Eestaurant — Thomas & Ganser. Drug stores — Gregg & Grace and
W. P. Hallock. Lumber yard— G. K. Mitchell. Carriage manufactory —
W. S. Hibbetts. Livery stables — J. W. McCormick, Simpson Pierson &
Co. and Boen Phillips. The erection of the flouring, lumber and
planing-mill operated by J. W. Mitchell, was begun in 1868, first as a
saw mill in an open shed, in which was sawed the lumber for the
flouring-mill, which was completed in 1870. In this mill there are five
run of stones and one set of rollers, the capacity of the mill being
about 100 barrels of flour in twenty-four hours. The machinery is
propelled by a sixty horse-power engine. J. G. Porter was a partner
with Dr. Mitchell until the spring of 1872, when he sold his interest to
the Doctor and retired. The Pioneer Flouring Mills were removed
from Gallatia soon after the town of Harrisburg was started. In 1873
they were purchased by E. F. and T. C. Dwyer, who, in 1881, put in
two sets of rollers and other machinery at an expense of $10,000.
Besides the two sets of rollers the mills have four run of buhrs, and
the entire machinery is propelled by a sixty horse-power engine. The
building is a three-story and basement frame, and the property is
valued at from |12,000 to $15,000. The Saline Eoller Mills were
erected by J. G. Porter in 1883. The building is 40x60 feet and four
stories high, the first story being of brick, the other three frame. It
has four sets of double rollers and three sets of buhrs. The
machinery is propelled by a six;ty horse-power engine, and has a
capacity of eighty barrels
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 207 of flour per day, and 100
bushels of corn. The entire establishment is worth $15,000. Johnson
& Ford's planing-mill was started in 1885 by the forming of a
partnership between Mr. Johnson, who had for nine years carried on
blacksmithing and wagon-making, and J. B. Ford. A lumber yard was
opened by them soon afterward. Their machinery is propelled by a
twelve horse-power engine, and has a capacity of about 5,000 feet
of flooring and 8,000 feet of siding per day. They are also agents for
all kinds of agricultural implements and mill machinery. C. A. Stuck &
Son removed their planing-mill, scroll and turning machinery, from
Danville to Harrisburg in January, 1886. Their engine is of fifteen
horse-power, and their planingmill has a capacity of about 15,000
feet per day. A woolen-mill was built here in 188-4 by Norman &
Fozard, the capital being furnished by private subscription. The mill
was leased in 1886 and again in 1887 to Charles Paddock. It
contains 360 spindles and six power looms, and manufactures yarns,
blankets, cloths, flannels, etc., having a capacity of about $100
worth of goods per day. It also contains a set of custom cards for
the convenience of the farming community. The Saline County Bank
was started June 15, 1876, by Robert Mick, with a capital of
$24,000, the location being near the northwest corner of the public
square. C. E. Lewis was cashier of the bank until 1878, when he was
followed by J. W. Bradshaw, who has been cashier up to the present
time. The earnings of the bank have been permitted to accumulate
until now the capital of the institution is nearly $50,000. The Bank of
Harrisburg was started January 1, 1883, by J. M. Baker & William M.
Warford, the latter of Elizabethtown, with a capital of $30,000. The
location is in Baker's Block, near the southwest corner of the public
square. Mr. Baker bought the interest of Mr. Warford August 1, 1885,
since which time he
 208 SALINE COUNTY. has coudiicted the institution alone.
During the first nine months S. T. Webber was cashier, since which
time Charles P. Skaggs has filled that position. The Harrisburg
Chronicle was started in 1859 by John F. Conover, as a six-column
folio, and was conducted by him until 1867. It was then conducted
by Dr. J. F. Burks, until 1870, and again by Mr. Conover until 1873.
when it was consolidated with the Saline County Register, and
established by F. M. Pickett in 1869. The Chronicle was then
conducted by Conover & Pickett until 1876, when J. W. Eichardson
bought Mr. Picket's interest, and in the summer of the same year Mr.
Conover' s also. Mr. Pickett bought the paper back in the fall of 1876,
and in 1878 it became the property of the Harrisburg Printing
Company. In 1881 Mr. Pickett became sole proprietor again by
purchase of the stock, and leased the paper for four years to Otey &
Eichardson. In August, 1885, Mr. Pickett resumed control of the
paper and still retains it. The Chronicle is a Eepublican paper,
becoming so, after various changes, in 1878. The Saline County
Democrat was started by C. S. Hayes, May 2, 1880. About June,
1882, it became the property of M. B. Friend, who changed the
name to the Harrisburg Democrat, as it still remains. About
November 1, 1885, it was purchased by the present proprietor, W. K.
Burnett, who brought out his first number November 5. At the
present time it is a six-column quarto paper, and always has been
and is now Democratic. George Newell Post, No. 454, G. A. E., was
organized June 6, 1884, with thirty-eight members, and the
following ofiicers: Com., F. M. Pickett; S. V. C, J. M. Barker; J. V. C, J.
H. Pearce; Q. M., T. J. Cain; Adj., Eichard E. Oliver. The Post now
numbers 186 members, and is oflicered as follows: T. A. Casto, Com.
; J. H. Cannon, S. Y. C. ; J. A. Burgner, J. V. C. ; F. M. Pickett, Q. M. ;
J. H. Pearce, Adj. Arrow Lodge, No. 3&6, I. O. O. F., was instituted
October 12,
 HISTORY OF ILLINOIS. 209 1869. At the present time it
has forty-two members and the following officers : C. P. Skaggs,
Eep. ; A. J. Greenhood, P. G. ; P. A. Johnson, N. G. ; William C.
Ferrell, V. G. ; C. P. Skaggs, Sec. ; A. G. Page, Treas. Harrisbnrg
Lodge, No. 187, A. O. U. W., was instituted June 8, 1881, with thirty-
five charter members. At this time it has sixty-eight members and
the following officers ; M. A. Garrison, Dep. ; T. A. Casto, P. M. W. ;
J. J. Parish, M. W. ; Noah Feazel. Foreman; C. C. Wilgus, Overseer;
C. P. Skaggs, Eecorder and Treasurer. Harrisburg Legion, No. 51, S.
K. of A. O. U. W., was instituted May 14, 1885, with fifteen
members. It now has twentytwo, and the following officers: A.
Nyberg, P. C"; W. H. Howell, C; W. W. Largent, V. C, J. H. Nyberg, Lt.
C. ; C. P. Skaggs, Eecorder and Treasurer ; C. A. Priester, Eecording
Treasurer. Saline Camp, No, 33, S. of V., was organized January 1,
1886, with sixteen members. It now has forty-seven, and officers as
follows : C. P. Skaggs, Past Capt. ; William Jobe, CajDt. ; W. K.
Burnett, 1st Lt. ; George M. Miley,' 2d Lt. ; John C. Baker, 1st Serg. ;
W. D. Miley, Q. M. S., A. D. McKinney, S. of G. This organization is
auxiliary to the G. A. E. Women's Belief Corps was organized in June,
1886, and has about forty members. The president is Mrs. K. Pickett,
secretary, Eosa Durham; treasurer, Jennie Fitzgerald. Harrisburg
Lodge, No. 325, A. F. & A. M., was chartered October 5, 1859, with
twelve members. The first officers were Green B. Eaum, W. M. ; M.
P. McGehee, S. W. ; K N. Warfield, J. W. ; John W. Mitchell,
Secretary. At the present time this lodge has seventy-two members,
and the following officers: J. S. Ferguson, W. M. ; C. P. Skaggs, S. W.
; T. W. Hall, J. W. ; E. N. Warfield, Treasurer; W. A. McHaney,
Secretary. It meets on the second Wednesdav night of each month,
and notwith 
 210 SALINE COUNTY. standing that it suffered a loss by fire
of ^1,000 in 1882, it is yet in a prosperous condition. Saline Chapter,
No. 165, R. A. M., was chartered October 29, 1875, with forty
members and the following officers: Peter Robinson, H. P. ; W. G.
Sloan, King ; W. A. McHaney, Scribe ; John M. Gregg, C. H. ; B. H.
Rice, Treasurer, and S. W. Forzy, Secretary. At present it has sixty-
eight members, and officers as follows: Peter Robinson, H. P.; C. P.
Skaggs, King; Wilson Gaskins, Scribe ; R. N. Warfield, Treasurer, and
W. A. McHaney, Secretary. The ChajDter meets on the third
Wednesday nights of each month. Saline Covincil, W, D., received
dispensation in October, 1886. Peter Robinson is the 111. G. M. ; W.
A. McHaney, 111. G. M., and W. E. Burnett. Egypt Lodge, No. 1844,
K. of H., was chartered October 17, 1879, with twenty-three
members. It has now twenty-six members, and the following officers
: W. K. Burnett, P. D. ; W. I. Reynolds, D. ; E. A. Richardson, V. D. ;
M.Miley, A. D. ; J. W. Richardson, R. ; J. H. Grace, F. R. ; T. Y.
Reynolds, T. ; N. Johnson, 0. The lodge meets twice each month.
Since its organization it has had but four deaths, the policy in each
case being ^2,000. It is a co-operative society, and as there is no
class arrangement policies are always paid in full. The K. & L. of H.
was organized April 9, 1880, with twenty members. Its present
number is the same. Mrs. Kate Pickett, P. P. ; T. Y. Reynolds, P. ; Eliza
J. Barter, V. P. ; F. M. Pickett, Sec. ; W. P. Hallock, Treas. The society
meets twice per month and is beneficiary in its objects. Besides the
above named secret societies there are the Iron Hall and the AV. C.
T. U. The physicans of Harrisburg are the following : S. S. Cheaney,
N. S. Hudson, J. H. Rose, J. W. Renfro, L. N. Parish, E. M. Provine, J.
Mitchell and Y. Rathbone.
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