Early Schools of Mills County, Iowa

Pleasant Grove - Silver Creek
Pleasant Grove Class, c1929

Front Row: Lucille Abel, Carol Dashner, Ruth Lookabill, Lorene Abel, Dorothy Cook, ?? Abel.
Middle Row: Edna Cook, Everett Grudle, Elmer Edlund, Eric Edlund, ?? Abel, Billy Zanders.
Back Row: Lorraine Dashner, Delpha Donner, Wilma Custer, Eldon Grudle, Jessie Frazier, Jennie Edlund. (Photo courtesy of Karyn Techau)

News Article excerpt about Pleasant Grove School, date unknown.

Lee Donner and an Opinion man were eating pumpkin pie the other day when the subject of the conversation drifted to county schools. Lee has "grown up" in Mills county and can tell tales of old times in the county that would cause one to laugh till his sides ached. "I remember out at the Pleasant Grove school there used to be a great grove on the south side of the road when I was a boy," he said. "They held picnics there and reunions and all that.

The present grove is very pretty but in the old times it was quite thick with trees. There was an old soldier's reunion there one day. Among us boys was Merrill Johnson. Merrill used to be a great kid for having his own way. He was one of the larger boys and taught us how to be manly, how to chew tobacco and all that.

Merrill on the occasion of the reunion climbed up one of the large trees near the speaker's stand just at the point where the orator of the day was getting in his work. He had arrived at his most eloquent flights, when all at once the attention of the crowd was called from the orator to the sight of a boy hanging to a limb just over the speaker. It was Merrill Johnson. His pants were torn and there he hung, not able to go forward or backward. Merrill had a mouth like a saucer and a voice like a fog horn, and it was a laughable sight. Some of the men had to hurry for a ladder, and they got him down while the perspiring speaker glared furiously at the disturber of his great effort."