But while many enemies of common school education were blocking the way, an unheralded champion was to appear, whose identity was not generally known for several years after he took the field, and whose services entitle him to first place among all who have striven for the advancement of learning in Indiana. This was Caleb Mills, a native of New Hampshire (1806) and a graduate of Dartmouth (1828) and of Andover Theological Seminary (1833). In 1831 he had made a tour of the Southwest in the interest of Sunday-schools, and the social and intellectual conditions that he found had deeply impressed him. It was a kind providence that led him back to Indiana in 1833, and that gave to his adopted State the benefit of his sympathy, intelligence, and spirit to the end of his life. Among his classmates at Dartmouth were Milo Parker Jewett, who helped to mould the common school system of Ohio, and later became the first president of Vassar College, and Edmund O. Hovey, associated with Mills as a founder of Wabash College, and long a member of its faculty. Others of his Indiana contemporaries may have appreciated the gravity of the situation as fully as he, but it was left for Mills to sound the alarm and lead the charge. In the first year after he entered the State it was averred by a reputable witness that “only about one child in eight between five and fifteen years is able to read.” Dr. Joseph F. Tuttle, the honored president of Wabash College for nearly a third of a century, described the condition of affairs in these words:-- “In 1840 there were 273,784 children in the State of school age, of whom only 48,180 attended the common schools. One-seventh of the adult population could not read, and a large proportion of those who could read did so imperfectly. In spite of the constitutional provision of the State and the famous ‘sixteenth section,’ the common schools of Indiana were in bad condition. As late as 1846 the State rated lowest among the free States as to its popular intelligence and means of popular education. Even the capital of the State did not have a free school until 1853, and then one was kept open only two months.”[34] The census of 1840 showed the illiteracy of Indiana to be 14.32 per cent. The return made by Illinois at this time was but little better, while Ohio, on the eastern boundary, showed only 5.54 per cent of illiterates. Omitting Illinois and Indiana, the illiteracy of the Northern States was only one in forty; in Illinois and Indiana it was one in seven. In twenty-two counties of Indiana the average illiteracy was more than 26.5 per cent. Montgomery County, the home of Wabash College, returned at this time one-fifth of her adult population as illiterate, and Putnam County, the seat of Asbury College, returned one-sixth of her adult population as belonging to the same class.[35]