Recipes for Living Schools

School day, school days;

Dear old golden rule days;

Readin' and writin' and 'rithmetic

Taught to the tune of a hickory stick.

You were my queen in calico,

I was your bashful, barefoot beau;

You wrote on your slate, "I love you so."

When we were a couple of kids.

The first school house built in Jackson Township in 1856, was known as the Lewis School. It was built of logs and had a large fireplace at one end. When this building was no longer used for a school, it was moved 3 miles north and changed into a residence. The first teacher was Elihu Gardner. A year later a school was established in Ottawa. This, also, was built of logs, with a fireplace in the end. Some of the stones and sticks of which the fireplace was built became displaced, leaving a hole through which small children could slip outside. The older children would induce the little ones to slip out and gather gum from the rosin weed that grew on the prairies. The children carried the gum in their mouths and distributed it to the older ones when they returned through the hole in the wall.

A large girl named Alice Adams did not get along very well with the teacher. One day he slapped her with a book. She grabbed him by the beard. The slapping, pulling, punching and wrestling went on until the little children were terribly frightened.

In these schools there was no regular course of study, and not even an adopted set of text books. One child might bring a reader, one an arithmetic, and another a speller regardless of text or grade. Some had no books at all, but borrowed from the more fortunate ones. The teacher asked little Joe Adams where his book was. Joe answered, "I haven't any. My papy's gone to Californy. When he gets 10 cents he is going to send it back to me and I'm going to get a spelling book." True to promise, the spelling book materialized.

In 1861, a third school was organized. It was a frame and had two windows on each side. Most of the seats in this school room, as in the other schools mentioned, were made of split logs with sticks fastened through them to serve as legs. There were no backs to the seats. The floor was swept with a broom made of hazel brush. Water for the children to drink was carried in a pail from a house almost 1/2 mile distant. The water was passed from child to child, by one carrying a long dipper. Each child took a sip and passed it on to the next one. If a child must wash his hands, someone poured a little water on his hands and he wiped them on his handkerchief, if he had one. In the absence of a handkerchief, a shirt sleeve or a petticoat was brought into requisition.

But this schoolhouse boasted of two pieces of furniture which the others did not have, namely a cast iron stove and a blackboard! The stove was not very steady on its legs and sometimes fell over when the children wrestled around it too much. The blackboard was about 4x9 feet. The chalk used was common carpenters' chalk. The eraser was a piece of sheep skin with the wool on it.

The old building became a garage on the McDonough farm.The first teacher was Miss Carrie Burrows, who afterward married Bos' Reese. Later the family moved to Nebraska.The school meeting which organized this school consisted of two men — Alex Wilson and John McDonough. The first named voted for the second man for director. The second returned the compliment by making the first secretary. Unfortunately the records of these early schools are all lost. The only means of verifying the statements is the memory of the old students.