Growing Beyond Their Dreams

Wherever small centers of population sprang up a school soon followed. This was due mostly to the fact that the student population had to walk to school so often there was a country school every few miles.

Early schools even into the early 1880s held two terms one in summer and one in winter. Each term ran from three to four months. A woman would often teach the summer term and a man the winter term. More boys attended the school in the winter term than in the summer. Quite often it took the discipline of a man to handle some of the more difficult older boys.

There were good and very bad teachers. After all many of the teachers only had a country school education themselves. They were all single and often very young. Some teachers weren’t strict enough some too strict.

Herbert Quick, recalled that when he was less than five years old, he was sent to school about forty rods from his home in a little white schoolhouse on the head waters of Pine Creek. He recalled, “In my class of two, struggling with words of two and three letters, was a little girl named Maggie Wade, the daughter of a family just then rather poorer than most of the rest of us. Maggie was a naughty little girl. She had been in school two or three terms, but was sullenly rejecting everything in the Pierian spring except the alphabet. I remember now, as well as though it were yesterday, that the teacher, a young woman noted for her thoroughness in both instruction and discipline, asked Maggie to spell the word ‘Sky.’”

“Maggie couldn’t or wouldn’t manage it. Then the teacher asked me to spell it for Maggie. I did so. The teacher told Maggie that she ought to be ashamed to have a little boy spell that easy word for her who had only last week learned his letters. Maggie grew sullen and stubborn. She refused to spell the word even when told. She spelled it ‘ski,’ ‘kys’ and every other way but the correct one. Then the teacher grew very angry. She let Maggie look at the word in the book. Still Maggie refused to spell it.”

“Then the teacher whipped her. I remember she sent me down to the banks of Pine Creek to get switches, thus giving Maggie time to think it over. When the switches came, the little creature was scourged until she spelled the word. The whistling blows fell cuttingly on the thin, faded and ragged calico over Maggie’s back and shoulders until the child finally gave in, her will broken by pain. She was never the same intractable girl afterward. My mother always contended that her will was broken so that she was basically harmed. I do not know. I only know that, at least a fortnight after the whipping, Mrs. Wade came to visit us, bringing her daughter with her. She complained to my mother because the teacher had whipped Maggie so hard, and she bared the child’s back for inspection.”

“The willow whip had drawn great welts across the back and shoulders. These had risen, turned red, and after two weeks were still purple, with greenish borders. My mother dilated, with indignation.”

“’If that was my child,’ said she, her eyes blazing, ‘I’d–I’d–’ and then she hesitated for a word–’I’d raise blazes with her! She and I couldn’t stay in the same school district! A man that would whip a slave like that ought to be hung!’”

“I was four years and some months old when I started going to school in the Pine Creek schoolhouse, along the state road between Waterloo and Steamboat Rock–this state road being a wagon track across the prairie, without bridges or other improvement. My brother Charles thought I ought at least to know my letters before entering school, and tried to teach them to me; but I remember having a fit of stubbornness and refusing to look at the mysterious things. The teacher Maggie Livingstone, who was known as a good teacher, but strict. She it was who whipped Mrs. Wade’s little girl, whereof I have spoken.”

“I became immediately the fair-haired marvel of this little school. The alphabet lasted me less than a week, and I romped through the ‘a-b, abs’ which followed it… For some reason there had been no school in our district that winter, and so we had a six-month term beginning early in the spring and ending in the fall. Before it had closed, I had finished the Fourth Reader, and could read anything in print, with due allowances for mispronunciation. In this little domain of learning, I was the wonder of the school, and grew to be the possessor of something like celebrity.”

“I was not often the victim of Miss Livingstone’s strictness as a disciplinarian; but I did not always escape, notwithstanding the fact that I was known as an ‘awful good boy.’”

“One day Miss Livingstone’s beau came to see her, and she was unavoidably called out into the entry at the front. She appointed a monitor to report to her any disorder while she was settling something with her admirer. I was seated with a boy named Charlie Robinson. We were studying our spelling lesson, and Charley began looking around and whispering the words loudly as he could. I followed suit. When Miss Livingstone returned and called for a report, the monitor told her that Charley Robinson and Herbie Quick had been talking loud. Whips were sent for. I was selected to take the first lashes on my back, covered only with a cotton shirt. Now I was the greatest crybaby in the school, and she must have expected me to burst into tears at the first blow. But no; I sat stolidly and took it–white faced, I have no doubt. You see, I was aroused at the injustice of the thing. Not merely because I was being whipped but technically I had not talked out loud; I had only whispered my lesson audibly. I was naughty, but not guilty as charged. One switch after another was broken over me, and still I did not cry or weep. If Charley was to have anything like his share, the teacher had to attend to him or send for more switches; and so she left me still unconquered. Charley broke into loud wails at the first stroke. He yelled and shed copious tears, and when she let up on his back he still made the welkin ring.”

“’Be still, Charley!’ she commanded. ‘As big a boy as you are, you ought to be ashamed to cry so. I whipped Herbie much harder than I did you, and he isn’t crying!’”

“At this speech of something like commendation, I was broken. I did more than burst into tears–I exploded into spasms of weeping and moaning. I could not stop. Miss Livingstone tried to command a cessation, and then to comfort me. I was inconsolable. If I for a minute succeeded in gaining control of myself, my wrongs and humiliation would return upon me, and I would break up the session by convulsive sobs, until the teacher finally had to send me home. After that she was afraid to punish me.”

“I suspect that this episode did her no credit in the neighborhood, for it was her last term there. Yet to her excellent instruction I owe much.”

Attendance by the students was haphazard at best, and teachers often served but one term and then moved on. Curriculum was set by each teacher, and often limited to their knowledge. Sometimes a student might learn the same lessons from two or three teachers before another came along and advanced the class. This was due greatly to the fact that teachers didn’t stay long.

The first school in Steamboat Rock opened in the year following the town being laid out, in 1856. It began in a very small one-room log cabin that had been built in the previous winter by Sanford Baldwin, when his first home across the river had burned. This was the second house erected on the town plot and was located at approximately the site of the present Post Office.

The first teacher was Lizzie Kadoo. Unfortunately we know little more than this important lady’s name.

One can imagine that in 1856, the village was no more than a few settlers’ cabins in a wooded area between the river and the open prairie.

Some citizens as mentioned earlier had organized a literary society. At their meetings they discussed literary topics. They must have brought their own books, since there were no libraries. These same citizens were more than likely instrumental in seeing that a good school was established.

Soon the school became several school districts. By 1880 there were eight schoolhouses in Clay township outside of Steamboat Rock. Seven of these were frame buildings and one was of stone. The average cost of construction of these one room structures was $700.

Between the period of the one room cabin school in Steamboat Rock and the first real school building there must have been intermediate steps to accommodate the growing school population. No doubt overcrowding was experienced from time to time.

On July 25, 1865, while J.H. Robinson was secretary of the school board, Clay Township purchased a lot from C.B. Cunningham. and a new school was built. There is no information as to what type of building was erected. It must have had several rooms for additional grades and more than one teacher. There are several snapshots of a simple two-story building on the lots where the present Post Office and former cafe was located. It is believed that this building was the second community school. If information is correct this building served the young settlement for only four or five years.