High School Commencement exercises were very well covered in The Albion Journal. The largest class in it’s short history graduated in 1895, a whopping ten students. No Dixons or Fishers or any other ancestor graduated or probably even attended high school in the 1880’s or 1890’s. High school was for the elite of the area. And yet there is one fellow named Fisher in this group. I can guess the Fisher family he is from, but I’m not sure they are related. The family were major fruit growers in Edwards county.
Albion High had a some very cool graduation traditions. Since there were few graduates, each student always prepared and gave a speech related to a general theme for that year. The speeches were printed verbatim, along with a biographical sketch of the individual. Plus, an ink dot portrait, similar to what was done later in the Wall Street Journal, was printed.
In 1895, history was made. The first actual photograph ever printed in the paper was a class picture! Even better, the speeches, duly printed in the paper, were each focused on an area of science and the graduates even did scientific demonstrations for the audience to illustrate their talks. Amazing! A few years before, a tradition of charging audience members a small fee was established. The proceeds went toward purchases of books for the school library.
By the way, the Anderson High School class of 1947 in Indiana had over 550 graduates. My mom and dad were among them. Later, the boomer cousins were split up into three Anderson area high schools. It would have been cool to attend high school with all of the cousins. The Thackers moved to Spencer and the younger cousins graduated from their local high school. Owens County High?
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