Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Laclede County Rural Schools
Last time I listed a number of rural schools from the Greene County area that were present on a 1940s topographic map but that have long been gone. I have a similar map showing the southeastern part of Laclede County and a small chunk of western Pulaski County, and it, too, shows a whole slew of rural schools that no longer exist. The ones in Pulaski County are Prospect School, Fairview School, Cave Spring School, and Bellefonte School. The Laclede County schools listed on the map are Prairie Creek, Similin, Rippy, Crossroads, Stockdale, Brownfield, Mt. Salem, Oakland, Nurse, Simpson, Morehouse, Nelson, Harmony, Heard, Barnett, Delto, Franklin, Fairview (not to be confused with the school by the same name in Pulaski), and Success (not to be confused with the Success School in nearby Texas County, which, the last I knew, was still in existence. As far as I know, all of these small, rural schools in Pulaski and Laclede no longer exist. Again, if anybody out there attended one of these schools or knows anything about any of them, I'd be interested in hearing from you.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
6 comments:
I was looking through some old family photos and found one that was of Fairview School. It was a group picture that included my grandparents and was dated 1898. I don't know for sure, but suspect it was Laclede County, as my relatives were from around Morgan and Lebanon. If you are interested, I could scan the photo and send to you.
I would be interesting in seeing it only if you thought it might be the Fairview School in Pulaski County, because I think some of my ancestors might have gone there. If you're pretty sure it's the Fairview School in Laclede County, I'm probably not interested enough for you to go to the trouble.
Are the Prairie Creek or Rippy schools a few miles south of Hazelgreen? Just curious. I know where the Rippy Cemetery is but never saw the remains of any structures that looked like a school.
The Prairie Creek School was just a few miles south of Hazelgreen on or near Prairie Creek (not far from Pulaski County line). Rippy School was a few miles southwest of Prairie Creek School near Abo except that Abo is on the east side of Osage Fork River and Rippy School was on the west side.
Brownfield, Crossroads, Harmony, Heard, Morehouse, Mt. Salem, Nurse, Oakland, and Simpson were all small rural schools that grouped into the Gasconade C-4 school district after it was formed in 1952 (According to the book "History of Laclede County") with the last one to join the district being Oakland in 1964. In late 1962, construction began on a new modern school building called Gasconade Elementary. The building, which consisted of 2 bathrooms, 4 classrooms, an office, and a cafeteria was built on the site of the old Nurse school off Highway 32 in Falcon. It opened in January of 1963 and as best as I can tell, Harmony, Brownfield (where my family attended), and possibly a few others combined and students moved to the new Gasconade Elementary at that time. Over the next several years, the small rural schools closed and became absorbed by Gasconade, where I teach now! The building has been added on to over the years. Sometime in the 1970s, a lower hallway was added which added a library and an additional 3 classrooms. In 1993, the gymnasium was built along with a concession stand, and in 2003, as part of the 40-year anniversary celebration, an additional 2 classrooms and 2 small offices were added along with a foyer type area.
Thanks for the additional info. I was not aware of exactly when these rural elementary schools consolidated. Roughly speaking, the consolidation process across Missouri started in the fairly early part of the 1900s, accelerated in the late forties, reached a peak in the fifties, and then tapered off but continued into the sixties and even beyond that, I imagine, in some instances. The consolidation of small high schools followed a similar pattern of gradual acceleration and then tapering off, but the consolidation of high schools tended to come a little later (probably didn't reach a peak until the late fifties and the sixties).
Post a Comment