Blog #4 One-room
Schoolhouses
One-room Schoolhouses Buildings
By Julie Hanks, Ph.D. aka Jesse J Elliot
The
one-room schoolhouses not only reflect the importance 19th Century
Americans placed on education, but they also reflected the regions, the people,
and the available resources at these school sites. While the established
Eastern United States were already building brick schools, the one-room
schoolhouses of the West tended to represent the materials most accessible in
those areas. Most often the arid areas
of the Southwest used adobe, the prairies often used sod, and the schools with
access to trees or the railroad used lumber.
Thanks
to the many organizations and researchers interested in recording our past,
many of these schools have been restored or at least photographed for posterity.
In some areas the old schoolhouses have been restored and now serve as museums,
community centers, and even tourist centers or shops.
has miraculously survived the weather and time. The school has not been restored but remains as it
was. Generally the land reclaims adobe structures, but this surviving building not only illustrates an
adobe school, but in its current state, it is also a history lesson on how to build an adobe structure
(still used in isolated and poor areas as homes or shops).
Unlike
Encinoso, the Virginia City, Montana, school is still in use--but not as a school. Restored and
modified, the old one-room schoolhouse now serves as an Artisans shop in this
trendy town. It’s a beautiful log cabin that once served its children well.
Another schoolhouse, totally
different from Virginia City’s, is the Sula School House, in Montana, recently restored by
the local Sula Historical Society and the Trapper Creek Job Corps. The building
was sanded, painted and restored. Volunteers came from the community to help.
". . .all the wood we're using came from
the East Fork. . .which I'm pretty sure the schoolhouse was originally built
with wood from here. People may not be able to tell the difference, but it's
important to me (Bill Reed, the man spearheading the project)." None of the volunteers minded the work--as long as it was completed by opening of duck season. http://ravallirepublic.com/news/local/article_e1aaee62-7796-11e0-aec9-001cc4c002e0.html
Unfortunately no restoration is
available for sod schoolhouses. Few if any sod schoolhouses remain. Here are
two photos of sod schoolhouses in Nebraska.
One is particularly interesting in that the teacher is a man—by the end
of the 19th Century, women dominated the western schools. The photo
is taken 1890 in Thomas County, Nebraska. The other sod schoolhouse is taken
in western Nebraska. Note the construction of the second building. No
ninety-degree walls there.
Other building materials were rock
such as limestone and sandstone, bricks, and untreated logs. The author of one
of my main resource describes his excitement when he comes upon a limestone
school built in 1896 in Chase County, Kansas.
Not only was the school beautifully constructed in limestone, but so
were "the two privies, flanking the school" (Rocheleau, 2003,
p. 56
& 57).
I could go on and on, but I’ll leave
it to the reader to follow up on other one-room schoolhouses. There are many reference
sites, and each contains its own treasure trove of information. However, the sites I used most frequently for
this month’s blog are listed below.
Erickson, D. (2011) “schoolhouse being restored by historical
society” in Ravalli
Republic, May
5, 2011.
One Room Schoolhouse Center. Online, ongoing site:
http://oneroomschoolhousecenter.weebly.com
Rocheleau, P. (2003).
The One-Room Schoolhouse: A Tribute to a Beloved National Icon.
St. Martins Press: New
York.
Sod One-room
Schoolhouses (photos). https://www.google.com/search?q=Sod+one-
room+schoolhouse&client=safari&rls=en&tbm=isch&imgil=JZCKCmPh56Yq3M%253A%253B3xyruyAOoC71hM%253Bhttps%25253A%25252F%25252Fnapersettlement.oncell.com%25252Fen%25252F136-architectural-tour-origins-of-the-one-room-schoolhouse-73871.html&source=iu&pf=m&fir=JZCKCmPh56Yq3M%253A%252C3xyruyAOoC71hM%252C_&usg=__-08ZD6SkhRy-v7iwXqV5AfYDROY%3D&ved=0ahUKEwjy3b6Azc_TAhUT8GMKHYARBmsQyjcIMg&ei=maMHWbKtCZPgjwOAo5jYBg&biw=1215&bih=642#imgrc=VNXn47tEawFicM:
See you next month with a one-room schoolhouse
curriculum.
Another great piece of history. Loved the information and photos. Always had a fondness for small schools. Doris
ReplyDeleteThank you. Sorry the text was scewed. Tried to fix that without success. Funny, I was coming home from visiting my son in Palm Springs. We stopped at a rest area that had some historical photos of Starkey Flats and the Linne School, both one-room schoolhouses in the middle of no where--formerly farming communities!
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