Education in Highland County began under early national ideas favoring public schooling, including the Land Ordinance of 1785 and the Ordinance of 1787, which declared that religion, morality, and knowledge were necessary to good government and the happiness of mankind and that schools and the means of education should forever be encouraged. Soon after new settlements were established, schools were usually set up in homes. In the 1800s and early 1900s, the county had more than 150 one-room school buildings, generally about five miles apart so that students could attend school within two and a half miles of home. The first school in the Greenfield area met in the log cabin home of Judge James Moody and began to educate his nine children. In 1810, the first building used specifically for school purposes, a log structure, stood on Lot 16 at the northeast corner of North and Washington Streets, and that same year a log cabin on South High Street in Hillsboro also provided space for a subscription school. Governor Allen Trimble of Hillsboro is credited with founding Ohio's school system, and in 1822 he established a commission to study the feasibility of common, or public, schools in Ohio. In 1825, after public pressure, the Ohio Legislature passed a .5 mil tax on property to fund public education. In 1868, Union School opened in Hillsboro with approximately 410 pupils.