In 1851 there were seventy-eight school districts in the county, and one hundred and forty-seyen teachers were required to supply all the schools, of whom the nativity was as follows:

The following statement shows the more interesting of our county school statistics compared for the years 1873, 1877, and

From the second Tuesday in October, 1880, to the second Tuesday of October, 1881, certificates were issued as follows:

The county possesses but one private school (aside from the sisters schools at Lansing) of importance, the Waukon Seminary, J. Laughran, principal, for many years a prominent educator of this county. Its report for 1881, was two teachers and forty pupils.

According to the State census of 1875 (the latest available) there were in the county but 271 persons over sixteen years of age who could not read, out of a population of 17,868.

RELIGIOUS.

Among the early settlers of the county were Christian men and women, who brought their religion with them into the wilderness, and were not willing to abandon the public ordinances of the gospel, but in the humble cabin, or the groves-"God's first temples" -they gathered at the summons carried from house to house that "a preacher is coming," and raised the simple hymns of praise, the devout prayers, and listened to the earnest exhortations of the devoted pioneer ministers, who traveled through heat and cold, rain and shine, from settlement to settlement, preaching the gospel, bringing news of the outer world, ministering consolation in the days of trial, burying the dead, and marrying the sons and daughters. The ministers were given a hearty welcome in every home; and in the homes of many settlers, whose rough speech and rugged ways would not indicate that they were of Puritan stock, the missionary found a cordial hospitality that made them indeed oases to him.