Corry's school history began when Corry began. In 1863 the town was incorporated as a borough, after succeeding from Concord Township. In the winter of that year the new borough government acquired its first school building on Concord Street, which had been built the previous year by Concord Township, and John L. Hatch was the first principal of the Concord Street School. For a time this school sufficed.
Corry became a city in 1866. In 1870 the school population was rapidly increasing and a new high school was needed and begun at Congress and Wright streets. It was named the Hatch school, in honor of John L. Hatch, Corry's first teacher. It was finished in 1871 at a cost of $30,000. At the beginning, and until 1869, the schools of the town were of the ungraded order, teaching the three Rs in the old-fashioned hit and miss way. In that year J. H. Manley, president of the school board, compiled and arranged a graded course of study for the schools, which was published and regularly introduced. Upon the completion of the Hatch school in 1871, the graded high school course was introduced. The Concord school, the first and the oldest of the school properties of the town, was replaced by a handsome brick four-room building in 1884.
John L. Hatch was a teacher, farmer and dealer in stock and real estate. He was born in Springwater, Livingston County, New York, on December 14, 1831. Mr. Hatch was the owner of about twenty-five acres of land in Wayne Township, and six acres in Corry, where he lived. He was an official member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and was one of the eight members present at its organization in 1862, that being the first Protestant denomination organized in Corry. He served also as Secretary of the Corry School Board of Directors during the first eight years of its existence, and was on the building committee for three of the largest schoolhouses in the place, one of which, the Central High School, which was named in his honor the Hatch School. He was also a member of the City Council a number of times.
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| Hatch School (1936) |
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| Hatch School (1936) |
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| Hatch School (1936) |
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| Hatch School (1936) |
