"Reflections Upon My Pedagogic Career"
......by Aaron SEITZ, Walkerton IN
The LEATHERMAN-BAKER Reunion, Ohio,1902

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen:
[excerpts] It was only after the chairman of this organization had insisted quite a while that I should say something here, that I consented ....

The chairman of this meeting is a peculiar man; knowing him, and the composition of his make-up as I do, I know that when he sets for the accomplishing of an object, it is useless to attempt to resist him. He is a combination of BAKER, LEATHERMAN and SEITZ. In selecting a subject for me, he suggested that perhaps a little talk on the recollection of my school teaching days would be interesting.

Speaking of school days reminds me of my first days as a pupil in school About 42 years ago, I commenced attending school in what was known at the time as the GRUBB School House, known more recently as the BAKER School. The teacher of this school was Hon Michael BAKER, and for a number of years in succession, he was the teacher of that school, and the school was largely composed of BAKERs, LEATHERMANs, GRUBBs, SEITZs and TABLERs. The other pupils in that school were very few. In thinking of my own career as a school teacher, I have often wondered how Mr BAKER got along with that school He had, as nearly as I can remember, eighty scholars crowded in a little bit of an old school house, that stood only a few yards from the old father BAKER place. I attended school a few terms in other places, but the last that I attended was taught by John Leatherman BAKER, and so what ever blunders I make, I attribute largely to BAKERS and LEATHERMANs. When I was 19 years of age, I had mother to load up my dinner bucket, and I started for the Auglaize School House. Taught there four terms in succession, and there some of my pupils were LEATHERMANs. Taught the BAKER School four terms, later the RIDGE School, and every term, either had BAKERs or LEATHERMANs. Taught three terms in the same school house in Kansas and there had a descendant of the BAKERs and LEATHERMANs.

Prof N.R. BAKER was a pupil of mine at one time and think I had several other BAKERs and LEATHERMANs. We used the front row of seats for the recitation seating. One of them was broken, but we could place it back and by the scholars sitting very still, it answered very well, but for some reason unaccountable to me at the time, we could not keep the seat in its place. We had a seat near the front for mischievous scholars, and that seat was nearly always occupied by Prof N.R. BAKER, and a long time after that I learned that Prof BAKER had a little stick which he had slipped in there and he would slide that seat out. Now that is the kind of good little boy Prof. BAKER was, when he was my pupil.

When I taught the last term at the Auglaize school, there were no fewer than seven that thought they knew as much as I did, and I have often studied over that matter and I have concluded that they were about right. There was Albert and Lewis HARROD, Emma SMILEY and Miss Ruth STEVENSON and Josie HUDSON who all had certificates before the term closed, and some of them were as good as mine.

I could talk a long time to you this evening. I see old pupils of mine all over this audience, and I have pupils who have filled nearly all positions from the page to the legislative halls.
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NOTE: Aaron's father