Little White Schoolhouse

Ripon’s Little White Schoolhouse is famous for being the site where the Republican Party was founded in 1854. But, in fact, it has repeatedly been the central focal point and symbol of Ripon’s connection with the nation and its development.

The school was built in 1853 as part of the national public education movement. Within a year it was the site of the establishment of the first Republican Party organization in the country. It was later the home of a future Democratic Governor of Wisconsin, and one of the state’s most famous authors.

The schoolhouse is also important to Ripon’s own character as a community of active citizens. Ripon has repeatedly demonstrated its ability to play a role in national developments far out of proportion to its small size. Ripon not only took the lead in creating a national political party to oppose the extension of slavery, it played a leading role in the abolitionist movement in the state. Later in the Civil War, a Ripon military unit captured the president of the Confederacy, Jefferson Davis. In the late 1800s, Carrie Chapman Catt, who became instrumental in securing the right to vote for women, was born in Ripon.

The chief goal of education in one-room schools in America in the 19th century was to produce active citizens. Ripon’s one-room schools did this so well that active citizenship is still a major characteristic in Ripon today. It is this spirit that has motivated Ripon citizens to preserve their schoolhouse in 1908 and again in 2005.

Wisconsin was the leader in the public education movement in the Midwest. Although early schools in the territory were supported by student tuition payments, by 1848 when Wisconsin entered the Union, the public school movement had gained enough support that provisions for local tax-supported schools were placed into the state constitution. Necessary supporting legislation was passed in 1849, making Wisconsin the first state in the Midwest to provide for free public education. The local schoolhouse was increasingly seen as a community center, the logical place to hold meetings related to important community matters, as well as local social events and entertainments.

Initial settlers in the Ripon area were the Wisconsin Phalanx, a communalist organization inspired by the ideas of French socialist, Charles Fourier. The Phalanx arrived in Ripon in 1844 and promptly established an elementary school for its members.

In 1850, Ripon citizens began a second school district and authorized funds to build the Little White Schoolhouse, which began operating in October 1953.

In March 1854, town leaders, led by Alvan Bovay, who were angry with Congress for passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Bill organized a meeting toward the endorsement of a new Northern Party. On March 20, 1854, the group met in the new schoolhouse, and in the end Bovay and his allies prevailed in creating a new party that opposed the expansion of slavery into the territories being opened to settlement. They chose to call it the “Republican Party.”