West Liberty History 1838-1938

Source: One Hundred Years of History
* Commemorating a Century of Progress in the West Liberty Community * WEST LIBERTY, IOWA
LOG CABIN HISTORY

Chapter XXIII

BUZZARDS GLORY

All this time the upper settlement on the west Wapsie had been without school privileges, and the children were growing up in ignorance, or with such book knowledge as they could obtain at home. This condition moved Albert G. Smith to take the initiative in erecting a suitable building for school purposes. He offered ground for the site and his share of material and labor to erect a house. By his efforts, in 1840, trees were felled and hewn for the building, but in the meantime Smith sickened and died and the work came to a standstill. But the following season it was again taken up. It was of hewn logs, a full story high and boasted a board floor, a shaved shingle roof, a lathed and plastered ceiling, and chinked with lime mortar. The dimensions of this palatial building were sixteen feet each way, outside measurement. The furnishings were a row of slab benches next to the wall on three sides of the building, in front of which were long desks, and another row of slab benches in front of them for the juveniles. The other end of the room was occupied by a blackboard and the teacher's desk, while in the center of the room was the stove, a huge box-like affair that consumed wood out of all proportion to the heat engendered. Instead of a chimney, the pipe extended up through the roof, where the dew and rain soon rusted holes in it and where a spark one day escaped, setting fire to the roof. It was a pitiful little blaze, likely to soon go out, but some of the larger boys mounted to the roof by means of a rail for a ladder and kept the flame alive while some of the smaller pupils ran a quarter of a mile for a pail of water, and , on their return, the application of a few cups of water extinguished the conflagration and saved the building for further usefulness.

This house stood on the hillside, on the open prairie in the northwest quarter of section 33-79-4, near the southeast corner of the present Downey cemetery, where it remained until 1858, when it was torn down and moved to section 18-78-4 and there rebuilt and occupied as a dwelling by John M. Gibson and family for many years. In this school house in 1850, school was called by Susan Collins and has the following enrollment as pupils: Frances, Martha and Elizabeth Hawkins; Sarah Jane, Andrew and James, children on Andrew Brisbane and Sarah Jane, daughter of William Brisbane; Susan and Eugene Smith; Kate, John and Mary Jane, children of Eliza Whistler, and Oran and Lavinia, children of John Whistler. While used as a school building it was the scene of many an interesting gathering, being utilized as a public hall where spelling schools, literary societies, church services and Sunday schools were held, and occasionally visited by itinerant showmen of various sorts. The winter of 1857-8, the writer attended school there when there was an enrollment of 42, and the average attendance was very good; so an idea may be formed that there was no waste room in that building. The district lived under the cognomen of " Buzzard's Glory." By the removal of that building there passed away one of the picturesque landmarks of those times and customs. Within its walls there had met, as pupils and teachers, those who afterward became well known in the councils of the state.

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