Don't Know Much about 19th Century Pedagogy

You may have received the email. It goes something like this :

Remember when our grandparents, great-grandparents and such stated that they only had an 8th grade education?

Well, check this eighth-grade final exam from 1895 in Salina, Kansas, USA, discussed in the e-mail. It was taken from the original document on file at THE SMOKEY VALLEY GENEALOGICAL SOCIETY and LIBRARY in SALINA, KS, and reprinted by The Salina Journal. I had heard that rote memorization was popular back then and this might explain the history section and the geography section. The arithmetic part looked interesting and rather challenging as did the orthography section. Writing a 150-word composition as just one part of the grammar section was intriguing.

I am not sure if it is a real document or Net hoax. I did visit a related site for information but was never able to find the answers that might have been acceptable to the late 19th-century school marms giving this exam.

Note: The homophones--or is that homonyms?--in the orthography section are as follows: cite, site, sight; fane, fain, feign; vane, vain, vein; & raze, raise, rays. Also note that 8th grade and eighth-grade were written exactly as they appeared in the email.

Enjoy!