Mount Pleasant's First Schoolhouse

TIFFANY, GRANTHAM, VAN ALLEN, BIRD

Posted By: Pat Ryan White (email)
Date: 4/19/2018 at 06:13:36

Mount Pleasant’s First Schoolhouse

Reminiscences By A Henry County Pioneer, P.C. Tiffany

The place of public meetings was in a log hut about 16 x 16 feet square which had been built for a schoolhouse the year previous and the settlers were proud of it. The seats were rude benches without backs. This schoolhouse was the first one for a large circuit of country. John P. Grantham, afterward a prominent figure in Henry County political circles, then a young man with more brains than money, taught school. The building stood exactly west of where George C. Van Allen’s residence is on West Washington Street, who in conversation since said that since he had owned the place, Grantham pointed out the very spot of the cabin and they found some of the stones that supported it at the corners. I think that the next school building and “meeting house” combined was the main part of the residence where Dr. Wellington Bird lived at the corner of Main and Madison streets opposite the Baptist Church.

[“The Dial of Progress”, Mt. Pleasant, Iowa, Thursday, July 6, 1899]