Jacob R. Rightsell
Jacob R. Rightsell was superintendent of the Little Rock School District from 1871-1874 and 1884-1905.
Rightsell was educated in the public schools of Mattoon, Illinois, and then attended college at the Illinois Normal School. He graduated with high honors from that institution in 1868. Rightsell arrived in Little Rock in 1870 after accepting a post as Little Rock's Peabody School principal. He was named superintendent of the city's twenty teachers and ten schools in December 1871.
From 1875 to 1880 Rightsell occupied a position at the House of Representatives' Library in Washington, DC., before returning to the city as principal in Little Rock schools. By the mid-1880s the school system had grown to fifty teachers. He regained the position of city superintendent in 1884, a position he held until 1905.
References
- The City of Little Rock: Guide to the "City of Roses" for Visitors and Citizens (Little Rock, AR: Guide Publishing Company, 1890), 20.
- Goodspeed's History of Pulaski County, Arkansas (1889).
