First church, first school: 1858–1876

THE INSTITUTIONS ARRIVE AT TOWNSHIP PACE

The town's institutions were built in the order frontier towns built them — a schoolhouse, then churches, then a graded school: the first school building in the township was erected in Walkerton in 1858; it was removed to its present situation in 1876, and a graded school was added (Chapman, pp. 733–735; Howard, pp. 290–291). The first church edifice was the Methodist Episcopal, erected in 1859 — for long known, from the pre-town seat, as the "West York Mission Church"; the Baptist church followed in 1870 and the Roman Catholic in 1876 (Chapman; Howard, same pages). The Presbyterian society was organized on 5 February 1876 with sixteen members — the date carried in Endly's account, as Howard prints it — and its present edifice was dedicated on 12 June 1904. Howard's 1907 count of the town's worship is five organizations: Presbyterian, Catholic, United Brethren, Methodist and Seventh Day Adventist (Howard, pp. 316–317). The congregations' full courses are the Religion section's; the schools' — from the 1858 house through the "substantial brick school" and "first class high school" Howard found in 1907 to the John Glenn School Corporation that serves the town today — are the Schools section's. The Story of Walkerton section carries the firsts and the dates, because they mark the town's conversion from a railroad plat into a community that built for permanence in brick.