Four Generations at Prairie Belle

Four generations at Prairie Belle takes us back to the beginning, when Prairie Belle School District of Greenwood County, Kansas was formed as District #102 in the fall of 1885. The new district received six hundred dollars in funds from the state. The district families elected Isaac Cox, L.T. Grooms and W.A. Barnes to the school board and these members spent every penny of the starting fund acquiring the land, building the school house, buying furniture and supplies and hiring a teacher in order to have the school ready for the spring term in January 1886.

The school site was acquired from Isaac Cox and consisted of a one -acre plot in the south-west corner of Section 9; Madison Township. To get there from the nearest town you drove south of Madison five miles, two miles east and three fourth of a mile south with the school on the east side of the county road. This site was chosen by a county appointed committee to be centrally located in the district.

The school board hired Daniel Focht, a carpenter of Madison, to build a one-room school house for four hundred and fifty dollars. Focht built the school according to the basic plans provided by the state of Kansas. The building was set back a ways from the road, with the door opening onto a landing with a rough flight of three steps facing the west. Three windows were grouped on each of the north and south walls of the school.

The clerk ordered school furniture, including a desk and chair for the teacher and 6 double and 12 single student desks from the Burlington Furniture Company in Burlington, Kansas. The furniture was shipped by rail to Madison, where it was picked up and delivered by wagon to the school. A wood-burning heating stove was bought for eighteen dollars and the clerk spent twenty-five dollars on books.

Clyde Allen agreed to teach but resigned after two and half months and Harry Porter was hired to finish teaching the last two months. Both teachers received thirty dollars a month. Thus the new district struggled through its first year. C. L. Thompson was hired to teach eight months beginning the fall of 1886. Wages were raised to forty dollars a month that year. The school census recorded by school-board clerk, showed nineteen school-age children from five to twenty-one years of age. The students that first full year of school were all from families living on small farms in the area.

The 1886 school census included my husband’s grandfather, John Thomas Martin, twenty years old but John never attended Prairie Belle because of his father’s illness, but made sure his brother, eighteen-year-old Frank and ten-year-old sister Cora went to school. The Martin children's father, Charles Coleman Martin, died of pneumonia that fall on August 16th and their mother, Sarah Ann died the following year also of pneumonia. Both were buried at No. 8 cemetery four miles north of the school. Those children were the first of the four generations of the Martin family to attend Prairie Belle.

All five of John T. Martin's children, Archie Lloyd, Charles Lorenzo or Ren as he was known by in the community, Robert Cecil, Roy and Anna Faye attended Prairie Belle through the late 1890's and early 1900's. John's sister Cora's children, Forrest Edgar, William Vernon and Glen Thomas also attended around 1909-1913, making up the second generation.

Dorothy Mae, the oldest of Ren's family, started to school in the fall of 1921. Dorothy was followed in order by Helen Elizabeth, Vivian Ruth, Zella Irene, Ralph Edward, Clyde Owen and Howard Raymond, who attended his last year there in 1943. Archie Lloyd's three children, Mildred Maxine, Laverna Elnor and Leonard John, attended during the same time as Ren's family, completing the third generation.

Some of the fourth generation attended until the school district closed in 1951 and the students were sent to Madison Grade School. They were Dorothy's two children, Kenneth Orville and Donna Carolyn Stafford, and Zella's four children, Barbara June, Thomas Eugene, Sharon Marie and Marilyn Grace Baysinger.

The first woman teacher, Belle Harris, taught two school terms beginning in 1887. During Prairie Belle’s sixty-six years of school there were thirty ‘school marms’ and only eleven gentlemen teachers. The women taught during both world wars and the depression years. In all, the school district hired forty-two different teachers. They held seven months of school yearly until 1916. That year they added another month to make the traditional eight-month school typical of farming communities in Kansas This allowed farm children to help out at home during spring planting and the fall harvest.

Teachers wages went from thirty a month to one hundred and seventy-five dollars a month by 1949, which shows the good progress of the this farming community through the years. Many teachers ‘roomed and boarded’ with families in the neighborhood. In the fall of 1946 my husband and I boarded the new teacher, Velma McIllivan.

Our son, Owen, was only seven months old so he didn’t get to enjoy the privilege of walking to school with the teacher, but his older cousins made a point of coming by our place about the right time to walk with the teacher. We enjoyed Velma and her young man, Junior Holland, and after their marriage the next summer we become very good friends.

Some of the other farming children attending during those early years were the Barnes, Groom, Long, Overholt, Wolford, Cox and McClinic families.

Those twenty seven Martin children that made up four generations really lived the old song "School Days, School Days those good old golden rule days." In those good old days the students were all crowded together in that one room at Prairie Belle. Times were hard during those years with no electric power for the lights, heating or air conditioning that we have grown to expect in our schools today. The school children in that farming community didn't realize they were encountering hardship to gain an education. They had warm clothes and plenty of home-cooked meals. Compared with the day-in and day-out farm work at home, school was an enjoyable experience.

The interior of the school house was very plain with three rows of desks, six to each row during large enrollment. Each desk had a shelf underneath for books and papers. There was a round hole for ink containers, in the upper right hand corner. Dorothy remembers when she started to school, bottled ink was being sold for the first time, at the local drugstore in Madison where her folks bought her school supplies. The new style ink bottle with a screw-on cap didn’t fit the hole in the desks. Dorothy was glad because she had heard about the ink well routine the boys seemed to have fun with girls braids and she didn’t want her mother cutting her braids off.

The teacher’s desk was on a small platform with the large blackboard on the wall behind it. Two free-standing, glass-fronted book shelves were also on the platform. Above the blackboard was a large picture of George Washington and a map case made to let the maps be pulled down like a window blind. The map case was purchased in October 1927 at the cost of ninety-eight dollars and fifty cents. That same year the school board bought a seven dollar wall map of Kansas and paid forty-two dollars for a planetarium. In 1931 a sandbox table was built and window shades and another bookcase were ordered from Sears & Roebuck Company.

In the early thirties the school switched to a ‘Warm Morning” coal stove to make the non-insulated room with so many north windows at least bearable in the worst of winter weather, when temperatures hovered around zero. This stove had an outer shell around it. Part of the teacher’s job description included being janitor and they built the fire each morning. They also carried in the coal and carried out the ashes and cinders. The wood and later coal was stored in the shed built in 1898 by John T. Martin in the southwest corner of the school yard.

Students helped the teachers by doing simple chores such as sprinkling the floors with that odd smelling, red stuff called sweeping compound, that gathered dust & dirt up as you sweep. The boys usually pumped and carried in the drinking water. The girls dusted the erasers and washed the blackboard. Everyone took turns raising and lowering the outdoor American flag and ringing the hand bell at the beginning of class in the morning, each recess and after the lunch hour.

My husband, Clyde, had a story about an unusual accident he had at school that required a trip to the doctor’s office in Madison for stitches. Clyde related it this way, “One lunch hour it was my best friend’s turn to ring the bell. I slipped around the school and crept up behind my friend and jumped at him yelling BOO. Well, I scared him so bad he slammed the bell back over his head and connected with my head, resulting in a bloody mess and two extremely excited kids.”

Clyde also remembers walking a good mile to school. That was a quarter mile east and three-quarters south. Of course, he usually shortened the distance by cutting across the pasture, through the creek and under the railroad bridge. With weeds, bull nettles and cactus to worry about and fences to crawl through it wasn't the easiest route. With snakes, cows and sometimes high water to avoid, it wasn't the safest route either. With three older sisters and an older brother, my husband undertook the shorter stretch to school with an experienced group.

Dorothy remembered, "When it was raining, Grandpa Joy, would come over and take us to school with his horse and buggy. Later when Mom and Dad had four or five more kids we really crowded the buggy." Then she added, "Dad had a wagon but seldom had time to take us."

Boys in those days had 'great adventures' just going to school. After a heavy rain the small creek could be up, making crossings hazardous. When the water went back to its normal shallow banks, it always left new objects behind in the debris to be examined, identified and collected as treasures.

The study of fossils or minerals hadn't reached the scientific collection stage in those days, at least not in a mid-west country school. Those little treasures became “pocket clutter” to be admired and shared with friends.

If the daily train was on time, these daring “kids” would be under the railroad bridge when the train rumbled across, dangerously shaking the wooden trestle. Counting the train cars was a favorite past-time and could cause the kids to be late for school.

The girls chased colorful butterflies, flitting in the meadow flowers, and the boys chased and caught grasshoppers. They saved the grasshoppers in old flat tobacco tins to scare the girls with later. Bird nests, once located, were checked daily. As fearless as these youths were, they knew that if the farmer's bull was in the pasture, they’d better go to school by the road.

Clyde remembers, "All the boys wore denim overalls with ‘neat’ bib pockets with blue or gray chambray long-sleeved shirts. In the spring and summer we rolled our sleeves up when it was warm enough.Or Mom cut the sleeves short when the elbows wore out." With a grimace Clyde added, "In winter we wore the famous one-piece 'long-handled' underwear with a 'trap-door'in the back. They were awful scratchy sitting all day in them because they were made of wool or had wool in the cloth for extra warmth."

Clyde went on to say, "Most of the time I wore a jacket made from denim material with a blanket lining that buttoned up the front. Mom and Grandma Joy knitted extra warm stocking caps, mittens and long scarves that we could wrap around our necks and faces when we faced the cold north wind and snow." Hand-made sweaters were worn under the jackets in extremely cold weather. In muddy or snowy weather the kids hunted up their heavy, rubber, four-buckle overshoes. Dorothy related, "We thought Dad was so crabby, because if there was a cloud in the sky, he made us wear them. I believe I was in high school in Madison before we had gravel on any of the roads. Probably in the early 1930's."

Over the years many changes were made. In the early years drinking water was hauled from the nearest farmer's well. In September 1909 a well was dug in the school yard but very little water was discovered. The school board’s only alternative was to turn the well into a cistern by cementing the sides and the bottom. Rain water ran off the schoolhouse roof into a charcoal filtering system that drained into the well. The cistern used a string of small, rectangle, tin cups on a chain that carried the water up and out the spout into a tin bucket as the handle was cranked around and around.

Since there was no electricity or running water during the school’s years, "outhouses" were a must. Clyde remembers the outhouses being in opposite corners of the east fence line. There were no sidewalks, just dirt or mud paths depending on the weather. When snow was on the ground the boys stomped out paths for everybody.

These outhouses were uniquely constructed with a large drawer beneath the two-hole seats. In late summer before school started, neighborhood boys were hired to pull the drawers out and drag them to a nearby farmer's field and dump them. After a hot, dry summer the contents weren't offensive anymore.

In August each year people in the community were hired to prepare the school for the fall term. Clyde recalled while in high school he earned ten or fifteen dollars to clean the school yard and felt lucky to be hired, “We started by cutting down all the tall weeds and then mowing. Then we knocked down all the wasp and hornet nests we could find in and around the outhouses, coal shed and the school itself. After the wasps and hornets settled down,” Clyde continued, “we cleaned the cistern by pumping out all the remaining water and climbing down inside to clean all the debris out. Then we had to scrub down the 15 ft. deep sides and the 8 ft bottom. If it didn’t rain before school started, someone in the neighborhood would haul loads of water until it did rain.”

Clyde added, “Usually our moms and big sisters cleaned the inside of the school.” The treasurer’s records show the female half of the cleaning crew received $5.00 for sweeping, washing windows and curtains. The treasury records also showed our family’s heritage of school board members, beginning with John T. Martin who was treasurer for many years from the time his oldest son Lloyd started to school in 1896. His second son, Ren, took up the treasurer’s position in the early 1920s and Ren’s son-in-law, Tom Baysinger, was the treasurer when the school finally closed. The treasurer’s books were still in the family when I started this research. Then the family presented them to the Greenwood County Historical Society to be included with their school files.

In 1935 the school steps and platform were replaced with a cloak-room with a door facing the south. A small window was added on the west wall of the cloak-room for additional light. Teeter-totters and swing sets were added when money allowed. Across the front yard was a unique, eye-catching fence. The posts were big, flat slabs of limestone rocks. They were buried deep in the ground and stood about four feet in the air. The fifteen posts were two feet wide and three or four inches thick. Someone drilled two round holes in each. Then two-inch iron pipes were threaded through the holes.

This fence was still in place in 1943, though the pipes were bent in places from years of kids jumping up and down on them. I found no record about who or when the fence was put up, leading to the assumption that it was a neighborhood project that required no expenditure to be recorded in the treasurer’s records.

Sometime during the early years a double row of maple trees was planted around the border of three side of the school yard. In 1908, the current teacher, Fred Gilbert, reported to the county that there were 132 trees, all maple, surrounding the yard. Maybe this was a community project also. They must have had bad times, because in 1916 Alvy Cox was hired by the school board to "grub" them all out.

A typical school day at Prairie Belle started by raising and saluting the American flag. The students sang 'America" and the teacher would call the roll for attendance. Everyone coveted a perfect attendance record almost as much as a good grade. With all eight grades combined in one room, individual study was difficult as there was always another grade reciting. Older pupils helped the younger ones with classes of reading, writing, arithmetic, grammar, geography, Kansas and United States histories. This gave the teacher much needed assistance and helped the older students gain experience in leadership.

Two recesses cut into the study time and allowed the pupils time to play many group games of keep-away, softball, relay races or just simply 'I got ya' tag during the spring and fall months. When snow fell they made two circular paths with crosswalks in the snow and played fox and geese. Prairie Belle students never played 'hide and seek' as there were no place to hide in the farming area where the school was located.

Swings and teeter-totters kept the younger students occupied during recess. In cold weather the students could either read a good book, choose to play checkers, dominoes or put jig-saw puzzles together. The younger students created sandscapes for make-believe adventures in the sand box.

These country kids, who ate breakfast and did their farm chores before daylight, looked forward to the lunch hour. They carried their noon meal in lard or syrup buckets that were round with a tin lid and a wire, bail handle. Sometimes a sandwich and cookies were just stuffed in a jacket pocket. You can imagine the results. Those yummy sandwiches of ham, egg salad or just fried eggs and bacon were probably so good because they were made with fresh home-baked bread and butter.

Clyde remembers he sometimes took sandwiches of butter and jelly. His mom made the jelly from wild sand plums, elderberries or grapes found growing along the creek banks and fence rows. Clyde's favorite was his mom's oh-so-good apple butter. Cora made the butter from the 'windfall' apples, picked up from beneath their own trees before the birds got them. The better apples were canned or dried to be used in pies, cobblers or fresh apple cakes.

Once in a great while, when the family ran out of bread before the next baking day, cold pancakes went to school all rolled up with jelly inside. Hard boiled eggs with a wax paper twist of salt was a common sight and smell. But when fried chicken or wild rabbit showed up in someone’s lunch, there were lots of offers to trade for just plain sandwiches. Dorothy recalled "stew on the stove" when everyone would bring a vegetable to add to the pot even the teacher. "It smelled so good and it was fun."

Fresh fruit was rarely available but home canned pears, apples and peaches tasted just right. Baking days produced lots of cookies, cakes and pies as well as gingerbread. The rarest treat of all was graham crackers stuck together with frosting. "All we had to drink was water and lots of it carried in from the cistern in the school yard. We used a long handled dipper to dip our drinks from the bucket" Clyde’s sister, Dorothy, remembered.

In 1928 the community bought a water cooler to put the water in and everyone brought their own cups but the water still had to pumped from the cistern. Dorothy concluded, "We ate at our desks unless the day was extremely cold, then we huddled around the stove. On hot days the teacher went outside with us to eat in the shade of the only tree!"

The pupils eagerly awaited the special school days of Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and Kansas Day. The teachers planned specific activities to honor the birthdays of George Washington and Abraham Lincoln. Then the students began counting off the days through Valentine, Easter and May Day until the best day of all, the last day of school. One former pupil remembered, “The last day of school was celebrated with a sizable picnic. Our families came and brought all kind of good food.” Then he added, “After lunch the afternoon sped by with many kinds of athletic competitions. We ran hundred-yard dashes, relay and three-legged sack races. The older kids showed off with high and broad jumps.

Families were more involved back then as school programs and events provided the only community entertainment, except for Sunday school and Church which were held at the Prairie Belle church one-fourth mile north of the school house. Box and pie suppers were organized to raise extra money for needs of the school. Window screens and curtains were bought and four Aladdin Lamps and the water cooler were some of the luxuries obtained with these funds. Romances started at these community events many times ended in wedded bliss.

The beginning of the end came in the 1940's when farming styles changed. More land and bigger machinery were needed just for farmers to survive. The end result were farm families living further apart, making less families and students in the district. With less tax money coming into the district, it was decided by the board to consolidate and Prairie Belle closed its doors at the end of the spring semester in 1950 with only seven pupils to bus to town.

On Saturday, the 20th of January, 1951 the school house and land was sold at public auction. The combined selling price was six hundred and forty-one dollars, about the same amount of funds they started with back in 1885.

Story ID:	814
Written by:	Gail Lee Martin (bio, contact, other stories)
Organization:	Kansas Authors Club
Story type:	Only Here
Location:	Greenwood County Kansas USA
Year:	1986
Person:	Martin family