A Suggestive Sketch of the Life and Achieve
ments of the Famous Country Teacher of
- South-Eastern North Carolina
‘Ghost”-Elliott probably left no will, yet lie left a
legacy tha't accrued to the interest bf several genera*
tions of children in the southeastern part of the state.
-Ghost” Elliott'* (probably no* onje knows his actual
name) was a graduate of the University of North
Carolina who taught;, country schools in Sampson, Dup
lin, Wayne, and possibly other southeastern counties
of the state. He wa,^ a scholar and cared as little for
money as .possibly any man of similar ability in the
state has ever oared. He made his home, w;hile teach
ing, with the plain country people, aVd was as plain as
his hosts. All his acquisitions ip a:long life of teaching
would hardly have bought the Ford that the young
man who now begins to teach expects to ‘buy out of
the surplus of his first year’s salary. .
. Neither chick nor child had be, and probably never
conceived; it as possible for . himself to maintain a
horse. The story goes that once his class at the Uni
versity was to have a re-union at a certain comfnence
ment. He did not' disappoint his classmate's, but was
there,’ walking all the way from Sampson or Duplin to
Chapel Hill. The reunion was'a time of reminiscence
and fun with thef classmates. On the other hand,
“Ghost” Elliot had conceived the occasion to be one in
which he would have an opportunity to! discuss the
classics and the sciences With other scholarly men.
All would, perhaps, be listening intently to some story
of college pranks, v^hen “Ghost” (would hunch his
neighbor and ‘ask in an undertone what he thought
of this or that passage of Latin, or Greek that he quot
ed at. the time. But the tradition 1s that the ptherg
did Jnot^^reatly cb-opewie ^th the sentry '^Chbla*
in .hi» efforts to make the Occasion a^bst of leacrfting.
The writer has hid pointed but to^him 'neaj Turkey,
near the Duplin-Sampsoii line, a home in which it was
said that Rev: J. U Stewart, Rev. B. Fv- Marahle, ani
“Ghofet” Elliott spent a nighit together. If that is true,
• there is possibly no. little country home in North Caro
lina in which three brainier men ever spent d night
together. Stewart was a graduate of the University;
preacher and lawyer too. He was learned in bpth the
ology and the law,, and tSould have shone more bril
liantly in either if it had been his only mistress.. He
was wealthy, as wealth then went, but preached regu
larly at country churches, charging the munificent
' salary of one hundred dollars a year. He wouldn’t
compete with the. cheaper preachers, though it seemed
to make little difference after ho had accepted the pas
torate at *$100 whether he ever collected it all or not.
Dr. Marable was a graduate of Wake Forest, College
and was in the beginning of his ministerial career a
Baptist preacher. After marrying, he became a Pres
byterian minister, making on6 of the few changes from
the Baptist ministry to the Presbyterian that have
ever been jpade in the state. The only othei^the writer
recalls is that of Rev. J. J. Douglas, better knWn in
the state as a poet than preacher, who still lives.
Probably "Ghost” Elliott was an agnostic, t>ut" ho
was no fool about his infidelity. He left do legacy of
unbelief. The legacy, of which I write was a number
of his old students who had learned “Stoddard 3 Men
tal Arithmetic” under his tuition, and' how to teach it.
Stoddard’s arithmetic had become the standard of schol
arship in mathematics in several counties, and so re*
maineff for many years. Only a few weeks ago, Dr..
J. M. Parrott, head of the^tate department Of health,
bemoaned the fact tfatft the schools of today do .not
use Stoddard’s arithmetic. He stated that he,had onc^:
asked a leading School man of the state- why it is upt.
used, and had received the reply that it takes too much
work to teach it. . * J _ ;
The writer, .as well as Dr. Parrot, whs brought up on
Stoddard’s arithmetic.. He was third in descent from
"Ghost” Elliott. EMiottliad taught a Davis boy to
, Duplin, Who afterward piarried a Miss Dickson to, Iliad-,
en, a sister of
Mr. Davis taught his daughter "Katie, and Hiss
taught the writer as aflad^ 4Phe' ‘‘Gho^^ethpd had.
come down in_^ py#ty. The writer never used, a-«late,
(tablets were ..unknown till he. ;went .to college) to
"working”, arithmetic . problems. or sums ; he was.
W.kr.
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twelve years old. A pupil would‘have thought himself
discredited, in both his owfa and the .school's sight, if
he had used a pencil!in the solution of problems." At
twelve, and probably at eleven, the writer could stands
on the school house floor, hear a problem read, catchy
it and proceed to unravel it, and successfully at that.
My recollectipn is that I had solved “in my head” every
problem, in the “arithmetic*’ when I was 12'years old,
and it contaified such algebraic problems as follow^: A
tree fell, breaking on its fail into two parts-, The stump
was the combined length of the other two parts; the
longer of the two fallen parts was two-thirds of the
length of the stump. The combined length of all three
of the parts was 60 feet. What was the length of each
of the three parts? ,
Now, that is not one of the actual problems, for I
haven’t a copy of the book, but is illustrative, of the
kind of work a boy was expected to do “in his head’'
before he - was put to “ciphering.” The answer t*o, the
above is 28| 18 2.-3, and 13 1-3 feet, if any reader de
sires to test his skill in figuring it out. ^faybe not a
“practical” problem* in the minds of modern educators
•—But it compares! favorably with one we . recently/
heard a high-school senior trying to help a fifth-grade
ptipil solve: “If one must be at a certain place at ten
minutes past two o’clock and it takes 15 minutes to
reach the' place, what i® the latest time he must start 7*^
O yes; practical enough but the bad part of it was
that neither the senior nor iihe fifth- grader could solve
it. “We could get the clock and see, but that, wouiant
be fair,” the senior, whose morals were better than her
knowledge of arithmetic, was heard to say. Finally the
writer was asked to help—how “fair" that was doesn't,
appear. I stated the time to, start,; but then the plaint
was that it “mufst be put down like arithmetic.” O, it
must be on! paper—whether the head is benefited or
not!/ The grade „depended;<Jh handing in answers
il|iceftarithmetic.” I %ce<i ittftfr tMio?"Hke arithmetic/'
and probably a* fifth grade girl got a good mark On her
arithmetic the next day.
/Sly! we country boys wouldn’t have asked for help
on one of jhose Stoddard’s problems if we had h^d tp
worry at it' for a moijith;—thaf is* the pnes with mathe
matical heads wouldn't. ■* Some folk- could not learn
under any method; others Would leam^under just any,
old kind df method, or no;' method. Possibly the, two
girls belonged to the former ghoup; but they could, not
^haye . been so numWskjilly - aobut arithmetic: if they
had been trained by- the “Ghost”. Elliott method.
“Scholars” | didn’t advance further than they knew, and
if it had taken two-weeks for one to learn that a half
0/3-4 is 3-8, he would hay e/stayed there t.iH he learned
ft, and that fact and the principle by which it is derived
would probably have, forever land a day, been a part
of that pupil’s being. Just as in geometry, each ac
acquisition became the means of solving the. next prob
lem. " Now, it is a matter of fact that I recently ashed
an eighth-grade arithmetic class in a North Carolina
high school what half of 3-4 is and got the wrong an
swer, and never. the right orife—nor were the children
sullen. The teacher said they had their minds, on ^rnoro
difficult work and that accounted for' the failure to
answer. -But what if that mere difficult work naa re
quired that veryl knowledge? _ “More difficult work ’
should require every one of the elementary principles
If it doesn’t, there was no use In ever^ studying the
less difficult. If it does, then, day or night, pn ^a mo
v ' • -• - •• - ;.v* - • V' • » «.
ment’s notice, those ^elementary 'principles should be
on tap. Just as well think of s^ririg without a saw as
of d<ring 1‘niore difficult” arithmetic wm*k-wltnput'those,
necessary tools supposed t^have-been.acquired in the
lower grrules. • j ^
I am "of the opinipp ^hit; the seodpar|fclar!thmetic was
extensively used: oyep the Whole state," but it can bp
confidently said that. .“Ghost”, Elliotlt Was .the master
teacher qf’it ’in the jBputheaatarn, counties. The book
and the jmethod of teaching arithmetic have , long de
parted ^the schools, and a great loss ft is.to the children
of the later generations. No- pupil who had:learned to
analyze.. tha..prdhlen»s ip Stoifl[^a^d's had any
.the^^rahhem^’ -in w&en he peached
stage of his education. Besides, Selfcad* learned a por
tk>n of .the/languag«- 0fi logic- and: eoula.hap^evpjp;
dar iilfvhe-Jbas^Btii«e(l '*£0****?;
v Here I take occasion to say that* I am aura there is
a:-?
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A-, '■ •'•«.**••...
more t time wasted ,■ today in teaching arithmetic than'
would! be sufficient to give the bright children a three'
year-course in Latin, Tots start arithmetic hTthe first . '
.grade. They may Jbe seen at the board adding 1 and 2.
Thobably a fifth of their time,for eight years goes to,.
the study of arithmetic. Yet two yeatrs; from the'age*
of 11 to 13, should be sufficient To ground any bright
pupil in arithmeticf bht allow three, anA that Brakes*
the time allotted to the| subject-for five years wasted.
This time'would serve to give a full hi^h school cq.ur^^
in Latin. And the pupil would .likely k«ow more arith
metic than he knows under the present regime. We
have told in the : Chatham Record heretofore how a. -
prominent gentleman of this state, whose father had.
the Sarne view' da above expressed, began, the Study of
arithmetic' at the age of ten and within six months
joined the class of boys older than he who had begun •
the session in Sanford’s Common SjChool*' arithmetic,
after having studied arithmetic.from two to four years.
And one of the boys in the higher class is one ;Pf th«r ,$r
brighest men in the state.'
j Herbert had never studied arithmetic; Kilt he
iiave to be taught that 2 and 2 are 4. ' There is not «, '
sensible negro boy in the state who would not, at the
age of eleven, know what the first-grade child learnt
in arithmetic. And* certainly,' children do not need r A
Arithmetic for sth'S^ practical purposes befoi-e they are
eleven.
The foregoing observations arei based upon
hood’s^ experience ‘ in the country' schools and an ex-- ''
perience of twenty years as a teacher. Not only did..,,v .
the writer - know his mental arithmetic at 12 years
age, but he had learned it in sessions of school of thred ; .
and four months',; and urider' teachers whd had neyprt
gone to school as much as' the pupils of these days
go by the time they are eleven years old. In fact, thefyR^
writer-had completed three algebras, including
north’s ^id Rybinson’s University Algebra, afid had .4.
"been through”'Jtobinsorxls- Geomefry, -when -ho had been*
to school 53 months. When he had been to school, all *
told, 9d months, which is less than the <5hildr#i attend 7 •
the-city high schools in a course of eleven grades of (
nine montfrs^he had completed every*branch
matics In any school in Nyrth Carolina at that time,'. -
except^ariy liigher course in engineering that may, have,
been provided at the Unfarpfsity arid thyre.aye others atj ^
his aige-that achieved the hame in, less^ time, as -their
studies "were more crowded into the years approaching > < .
maturity, when-time counted for more than if did 'With - ; '
me at ten, to seventeen.- - - y> "'Y^
That is my credential for Eetfipg^p ^ a <»itJht of
methods and achievements tjf .modern way bf teach- ,
ing arithmetic. Let only him" ‘who had achieved s,.
much by«another method ‘or seeh more achieved by thO j
modern method -dare to; ;hdot; at that old scheme which •
made the principles of artthnietic as familiar ^to a boy -
as his abc’s. % ' 4'
CAFT. ASHE'S RECOLLECTIONS OF -
v ■ ' . “GHOST” ELLIOTT ' /, . *’j,;
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"Vi'')
After the foregoing ar^idle had gone to t^e printer,
the : editor asked his friend Captain- S. A. , Ashe if .to
remembered ‘’Ghost”: Elliott. Therv^teran wia#at first*
lost. In the flood of experiences of his, ninety-odd years^ a?
he splashejl around tiir .it; all dame bacjk tt» htfm^-i£nd .att ^ ;
interesting .and enlightening storywas told of. the old^
scholar and educator of the southeast. . ^
•. % .1 ■»*?'
. "When Captain,. Ashe, had got hie beajfjtpg, he toM tfcg.
following experiences^. "1 N <.. ^ V_".
‘ “Iwas a, student at the -JfiVal Academy and; had; '
come to my father's home at Rocky Point. My mother*
told me.that Dr. and Mrs*. MOares had. moved up front
fjr * ‘ ‘ - rS: ~ j- '/S*'* s-.-. »%■ _ j* • j ’*^L... • V-' ■'''
\5rilmingf0h. Feelin|f.it my dujy tqa c&U upon thejie^/
neighborq^^ went_» over to, j^e r Mearee home. -Sobn^ tuai{ v %
old man; dyessed in homespun clothes,. came.’ X' wap)
Utterly surprised at the deference with' Which he. WtSjit*
ed'nSy the aristocratic' 'Mrs: Megres. I could butJ
:er what; manner of man hd v^isLAfter a-whiiei. ; rj
wonder
:;r~
'M
as we sat talking, Mrs. Meaires'Asked the old man.to tell,
about being run over , h^ a train.^, ,JIe instated that . -
she had. heard ,hlpi'^ell.it beforq. But Mrs.: Meeree.,
Would, have -kim tell: it for ^e_ ®ike pf. Xoiidg Sam : , ;
Artie.; ‘ \ ^ ^ r
‘The old than told- how hg- was Walking on the tnrtT^'