Commencement

April 3, 1879, Saturday Evening Press

As we've spoken before in this blog, the early days of education in Menasha contained few high school graduates.  Why, the high school's first graduating class was only three years before in 1876.  Here is a link to a post from 2012 showing that, for many years early on, the number of graduates was only in the single digits (and usually exclusively female).  Some years, there were no graduates at all:

https://menashabook.blogspot.com/2012/06/menasha-high-school.html

And notice how the graduates had to recite and read essays for the audience.  With a class of just three, all were able to perform.