Individual One-Room School Histories of Liberty Township
Chaplin School is believed to have been built around 1874 on land bought by the school trustees from James Walker for $50.00. It was the only rock school in the Liberty township. The school was named for a man called Chaplin. The building was used as a school until 1949. Church services and community club meetings were also held in the building. The property is now on land owned by Forrest E. Waters and was used for storage until its collapse.
The origin of the Franklin School is currently unknown. The school burned down in the early 1930s and was rebuilt and used until it dissolved in 1951. It is currently the home of Mr. & Mrs. Russell Nash.
The beginning of the California school is unknown. However, it is currently standing on property owned by Louis and Henry Vollmer. The school's last teacher was Joyce (Spangler) Neubauer. It is believed it was the first township school to dissolve around 1930.
Pleasant View, popularly called the Brick School, is believed to have been built before 1850 by Mormons who left the area after a religious conflict with the Dunkards. the building was used at times both as a church and school. The school was dissolved in 1951 and its last teacher was Etta (Breckenridge) Johnson. The school was destroyed by a tornado in 1960 and all that remains is the small foundation and the front step. Mr. & Mrs. Lawrence Knuffman live on the property, and Mr. & Mrs. Ronald Kurfman own the ground.
The Lost Prairie School was originally known as the Union School (before 1857) and was located in Section 3 before it was rebuilt in Section 2. The school was built in 1877 on land sold to the Trustees by David and Susan Nations for 17.50. The school was closed about 1946. It is currently owned by Lloyd Brewer of St. Charles, Mo. It is in poor condition and being used for storage.
The first church in Liberty township was located where the Seigel schoolhouse was located. The origin and closing of the Seigel school are currently unknown. However, the building is now part of the home of Mr. & Mrs. Albert Mayfield. Built in 1869, it was a small log building. John Gorman, F. H. Barnard and William Gordon were the first directors and Mary Kelly was the first teacher. The first schoolhouse burned down in 1876 and a new and larger one was built on this site. this building stood for thirty years until 1906, when the present school building was erected. It was used as a school until 1947. It is currently used as the East Union community Club Center. In the year 2001, Terry Volbracht owns the land on which the building stands. The East Union Community Club meets there monthly. The last teacher of the school was Ruth (Gramke) Cramsey.
The Hickory Grove School, also known as the Log school or Hickory Flats, was built in 1865 as a log cabin building. The log building lasted as a school until it was replaced in 1934 by a frame building. This remained a school until around 1944. This building was torn down with a modern home constructed on the foundation of the school. It is currently the home of Mr. & Mrs. Eugene Salmons. The last teacher of the school was Alice (Gramke) Clark.
Read more about this topic: Liberty Community Unit School District 2, Liberty, Illinois School History
Famous quotes containing the words individual, one-room, school, histories, liberty and/or township:
“Liberty, as it is conceived by current opinion, has nothing inherent about it; it is a sort of gift or trust bestowed on the individual by the state pending good behavior.”
—Mary McCarthy (1912–1989)
“... my mother ... piled up her hair and went out to teach in a one-room school, mountain children little and big alike. The first day, some fathers came along to see if she could whip their children, some who were older than she. She told the children that she did intend to whip them if they became unruly and refused to learn, and invited the fathers to stay if they liked and she’d be able to whip them too. Having been thus tried out, she was a great success with them after that.”
—Eudora Welty (b. 1909)
“It was Mabbie without the grammar school gates.
And Mabbie was all of seven.
And Mabbie was cut from a chocolate bar.
And Mabbie thought life was heaven.”
—Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)
“I read, with a kind of hopeless envy, histories and legends of people of our craft who “do not write for money.” It must be a pleasant experience to be able to cultivate so delicate a class of motives for the privilege of doing one’s best to express one’s thoughts to people who care for them. Personally, I have yet to breathe the ether of such a transcendent sphere. I am proud to say that I have always been a working woman, and always had to be ...”
—Elizabeth Stuart Phelps (1844–1911)
“The West is preparing to add its fables to those of the East. The valleys of the Ganges, the Nile, and the Rhine having yielded their crop, it remains to be seen what the valleys of the Amazon, the Plate, the Orinoco, the St. Lawrence, and the Mississippi will produce. Perchance, when, in the course of ages, American liberty has become a fiction of the past,—as it is to some extent a fiction of the present,—the poets of the world will be inspired by American mythology.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“A township where one primitive forest waves above while another primitive forest rots below,—such a town is fitted to raise not only corn and potatoes, but poets and philosophers for the coming ages. In such a soil grew Homer and Confucius and the rest, and out of such a wilderness comes the Reformer eating locusts and wild honey.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)