Mayor Larsen read into a record the history of the Preston school system and buildings.  Architect Monson estimates that the building will stand fully a thousand years, so that when people awaken on the morning of a thousand years from now and find that these halls of learning can no longer contain the countless aspiring youths, and that the walls and the roof which will have sheltered perhaps a half a million from a thousand snows, are crumbling to mother earth, they can roll off the corner stone and in the sepulcher can be resurrected the voice of one not dead but sleeping—J. N. Larsen will speak and bear record as the man of old.  He will tell how Hans used to shove Peter off the wooden bench in the log school house that stood on the hill, how the opportunities of the young people grew and increased as building after building was erected until we bowed before that mighty monument now on the corner of Academy Square.[17]
[17] Cache Valley Newsletter No. 32, edited by Newell Hart, p. 3

Oxford School Story
     Harold B. Lee, Clifton, who taught at this school in 1917-18 with Velma Sperry and Tressie Lincoln, was also the principal.  The women taught the younger grades, leaving him to focus on the older grades as well as his administrative responsibilities.  Unfortunately a few of the students were older than he, and some of the boys were bigger.  He records:
      “Oxford had the reputation of having a rough crowd of boys, and the threat had been reported to me that I wouldn’t last long in the school as the principal.  In solving the situation, my basketball experience stood me in good stead.  Because of my good size, I taught these big boys, some of whom were older than I, to play basketball, and during the lunch hours, I dressed in basketball togs and played with and against them, but as fortune would have it, I maintained sufficient dignity to win their confidence as their principal, and also win the kind of friendship that has lasted even to this day …
     “While I was there we organized the Oxford Athletic Club, composed of the town fellows.  I played a forward position on the first team and we traveled into all the neighboring towns to play.  This activity gave me some prestige in the town.”
      Along with athletic activities with the boys, Harold recognized that the young ladies of his school also needed attention through some sort of extracurricular activity.  This was accomplished when the eighteen-year-old principal organized and trained a women’s chorus.  The chorus was comprised of ten young ladies who sang at various school, church, and civic functions.  Since there were few entertainments in Oxford and the surrounding rural communities, a chorus such as this was very much in demand.[3]
[3] The Story of Harold B. Lee, Blaine M. Yorgason, pp. 55-57.

School Schedule in the 1930s
      Asael Bell, 35-year veteran teacher in the Eastside Schools, outlined a typical day on the old system:  “The old system required that I teach geography for a 45-minute period to one section of eighth grade children, then go to another classroom to teach spelling to a class of the 7th grade.  Thus, we teachers alternated from classroom to classroom and from grade to grade for seven 45-minute periods each school day.
       On the new system I was now assigned to guide one class section of eighth grade children for a half-day period.  Then another section of the eighth grade came to my room for the remainder of the school day.  I was expected to guide the pupils in planning their class activities in such a way that they could receive training in reading, art, spelling, penmanship, geography, and language or grammar.  This was accomplished by the class members planning units of study which required every pupil to function in some type of committee work such as writing letters to obtain information on some phase of the unit of study, preparing reports, organizing debates and other activities.  Field trips were made into the mountains, to the phosphate mines in our area, to bird refuges, manufacturing plants, the county courthouse, and other places of educational value.  During the half-day when the students were not in a social living class, they were being taught music, physical education, industrial arts, and homemaking by specially trained teachers.

Readers and Grades
     In the early schools, students were divided into “readers” according to their reading ability.  A student could be in First Reader, Second Reader, Third Reader, Fourth Reader, of Fifth Reader.    If you were older and just beginning, you started in First Reader.  There were no grades.   Grades started later in the early 1900s.  First grade was the lowest level and there were no kindergartens.  Kindergartens are fairly modern.  People were still living at a subsistence level, and if there was a farm accident, or someone at home was sick, if it was spring planting or fall harvest, the student had to stay home from school and help.  There were always chores before and after school.

Central Mink Creek Schools
     The Mink Creek area used to be accessible only on a long route by way of Franklin, Worm Creek, and Station Creek.  A shorter road through Riverdale to Preston was later developed.[1]
Mink Creek schools – old in front and new in back.     In the early days the church house also served as the school house.  Ezra E. Larsen remembers the building of the log school:  “The only place the pioneers had to meet in for public gatherings was in homes or in the cottonwood grove where they celebrated.  They didn’t have any other place but homes which were too small, or dugouts, or one room log houses.  So they decided to get together and go to the canyon for logs to build something that could be used for both church and school.  Everyone volunteered to help.  They found a good place in the canyon to get logs.  These were cut and hauled to the saw mill for cutting to desired sizes.  The walls were made solid and stout.  It was built just about where the church now stands.  Home-made furniture was used inside.  It was big enough to take care of the needs of the people at that time; they were very happy with it when it was finished.  It lasted until they built the rock meetinghouse (about 1889).”
[1]

     There was some confusion about whether Franklin was in Utah or Idaho.  A survey of Idaho’s southern border in 1872 revealed that the 1870 Census had erroneously assigned five Idaho settlements in the Cache Valley to Cache County, Utah.   The survey showed that Franklin was in Idaho, in Oneida County.
     Oneida County was organized on January 22, 1864.  It comprised what would later become seventeen different counties.  It was named for Oneida Lake, New York, the area from which most of the early settlers had emigrated.  Its first county seat was in Soda Springs in present-day Caribou County.  The county seat was moved to Malad City in 1866 because of its population growth and location on the freight road and stagecoach line between Corinne, Utah, and the mines in Butte, Montana.  Thus, anyone wanting to establish a school district had to travel to Malad to apply for legal status.
      Early in its lengthy history, Oneida County had the distinction of being Idaho’s largest county by both area and population.  Its initial size was 32,708 mi2 making it the third largest of the 17 counties created by the first legislature of Idaho Territory in 1863 and early 1864.  Franklin County was created in 1913 and separated from Oneida County.  Minor boundary changes have occurred since then.[1]

[1] Oneida County, Wikipedia.  1876 Oneida County Map from Maps of Early Idaho, R. N. Preston, 1972

Back to the school
     The front and side yards of the school grounds were covered with shale.  The shale kept the weeds down and made a rough, but level surface.  As this was also considered part of the play area, many a young student went running to the teacher with skinned knees or elbows.  Also on two sides of the school’s front yard ran irrigation ditches, which were usually full during part of every school year, both spring and fall.  Early in the 1940s the school board conceived the sensible idea of landscaping the area immediately surrounding the building.  The final outcome was a one-hundred percent improvement from the old building.  A wide sidewalk with two graceful curves went from the front turnstile gate to the front steps of the schoolhouse.  Both ditches were rip-rapped and pleasant, rounding curves were placed appropriately along the length of each to enhance their attractiveness.  A curved driveway, providing entrance and exit for school busses not only added to the overall appearance, but was also a safety feature.
     Fill dirt was hauled in and a lovely, green lawn covered all the area that once was covered with shale.  These grassy areas were used for baseball, softball, and various other games in warm weather and for fox and geese in the winter months.
     The building has since been torn down and the children went to Weston and Clifton, presumably for five years until another elementary school could be built.  Over thirty years passed before a centrally located elementary school was built.    
     At one time, the small county of Franklin had six high schools.  They were located in Mink Creek, Franklin, Whitney, Preston, Weston and Clifton.  Four of the schools were equipped and staffed to teach through the twelfth grade.  Whitney and Mink Creek offered only a two-year program.  Oxford’s high school students went either to Swan Lake or Clifton, depending on which end of Oxford they lived.
     The Dayton District had not made any early preparation for educating their children beyond the eighth grade.  Those students wanting to go beyond that level usually found lodging in Preston and attended the Oneida Stake Academy.[1]
[1] The Hills of Home, Dalley, picture from Larsen-Sant Library Collection.

Cedarville School in Weston Canyon, about 1900.  There were three schools in Cedarville at various times.  Two on the north and one on the south.  The south Cedarville school was one half mile west of where the present road crosses Weston Creek.  The school shown here was at the foothill about a mile north of the old Cedarville church.  The new school was about half a mile north of the church.  (Picture taken from The Hometown Album, #199, Newell Hart.  Children are all identified.  Teacher is Sarah Simpson.

Fairview Schools

Memories of Asael and Cassie Bell
     Asael:  I graduated from Albion Normal at the end of the summer quarter, August 5, 1921, and began my teaching career as principal and teacher in the Mink Creek District, No. 10, Franklin County, Idaho, in September.  I acted as teacher of the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth grades.  My salary during the following two years was $150 per month for an eight month school year.  In addition to this I received $10 per month for janitorial services.
     During this period of time Miss Cassie Stephenson came to teach the first four grades in the school district, about one and a quarter miles north of the place where I was teaching.  I was lonely, 24 years old, and seeking for companionship.  Cassie and I began going to parties and dances together and we soon fell in love and were married at the end of the term.
     Cassie:  My school consisted of two rooms with grades 1-4 in one, and grades 5-8 in the other.  I received a salary of $90 a month for eight months.  I boarded with Jennie and Leo Keller and their one-year old daughter.  They kept me from being homesick.  After Asael and I got married he went on a mission and I boarded with his brother Hyrum and family.  They had seven children and not a large house so one more made it a bit crowded.  Darrell and Susie were in my room.  When necessary they provided means of transportation in and around the Mink Creek community and to Preston when I needed to go home.
      My sister RaMona had gone to summer school and had obtained a position in the one-room school of Mink Creek called Klondike, the northern-most part of the town.  We were together most of the weekends either in Preston or staying with each other in Mink Creek.  Asael was home from his mission, and not wishing to impose on Hyrum’s family any longer, I took a position in Winder and taught grades 1-4.  I boarded with Vivian and Jim Taylor who lived just across the street from the school house.  They were kind to me and we have remained friends through the years.

     When the school opened in the fall of 1861, G. Alvin Davy was the teacher.  He was the only teacher for about 70 pupils of every age.  Some of the slates and pencils used in the school came from the slate rock found in the mountains east of Franklin.  There was just one reader for each class and one speller for the entire school, so the students would take turns.  The Almanac was also used. Tuition was paid to the teacher with any kind of produce or cloth, molasses or meat.

     The pupils read in turn as they stood in straight lines or rows before the teacher.  When instructing students in spelling, the teacher pronounced the words, the children then wrote the words on their slates to study them.  They were also given verbal arithmetic in the same manner.  Tuition was paid to the teacher with any kind of produce or cloth, molasses or meat. 
     The teacher for the 1863-64 school year was William Woodward who received $40 a month, collecting his pay from each pupil, which would have been about 40 cents each.  Thomas Smart, William Woodward and S. R. Parkinson were the school trustees in 1865.
     Other early teachers included William T. Wright, Henry Howell, William Howell, Justice of the Peace L. C. Mecham, William Davis, James Hobbs, Robert Stalker, hotel keeper William Fancer, Miss Fancer, Joseph S. Geddes, L. A. Mecham, George C. Parkinson and many others. 
      The school house was used for church purposes on Sunday and for an amusement hall for community activities.  Each Saturday, the straw was removed from the dirt floor and replaced with fresh straw so it would be clean for Sunday.
     In 1863-64, this school was enlarged and a stage built.  As Franklin grew, the log house became too crowded and a rock school house was begun in 1865 and completed in 1867.    It was a sandstone structure with a good split-shingle roof and measured 25 by 40 feet. It accommodated the town until a four-room, brick structure took its place in 1898.
     In 1880 a school was taught by Mr. Durby on the William Head ranch for the accommodation of Mr. Head’s children.  A few boys from the Franklin vicinity attended this school for the novelty of it and to be with their friends.[1]
     In 1898 or 1899, a new brick school house was constructed in Franklin.  It contained four large rooms and was built at a cost of $7,000.  Much of the lumber for these buildings was hauled from Bear Lake by ox teams over a round-about road some fifty miles in length. It was constructed just south of the meeting house.  School commenced in October with 150 students.  More attended after the harvest and autumn farm work closed for the year.  In 1899 there were 90 families in Franklin or a total of 733 people.
     In 1916, Franklin’s fourth school was built.  It had a four-year high school from 1924-1946.  It was abandoned when the Oakwood School in Preston was built.  At this time, the district decided to centralize and have a large, graded school.  Cherryville and Nashville schools were discontinued and the children from that section were brought in horse-vans (1917) to the Central School at Franklin.  Regular school auto-buses began operating in 1928 to convey the students to a high school as well as to the elementary school.
     A community-church school was opened in 1887 and was held in the chapel of the LDS Church.  Charles England was the principal with Miss Lucy Parkinson as assistant teacher.[2] 
[1] This paragraph was taken from A Centennial History of Schools of the State of Idaho, by J. Howard Moon (commissioned by the Idaho School Boards Association, 1988), p. 184
[2] Information was taken from The Hometown Album, compiled by Newell Hart, (picture Nos. 131 and 831); A Centennial History of Schools of the State of Idaho, by J. Howard Moon, 1988, pp. 181-82; Cache Valley Newsletter No.140, p.6 6; The Daughters of Utah Pioneers information, found in Monuments, Markers and Points of Interest in Franklin County, compiled by Myrna Fuller, (Larsen-Sant Library Publication, 2011-12),  p. 2 of Franklin Area.

Weston High School

The Frame School
     From 1902 until 1914 the old frame school just north of the Central School, on 1st East. was used as both a church and a schoolhouse.  This school was replaced by the Central School.[4]   E. E. Ericksen, who attended the frame school, remembered vividly the two thrashings he received while attending there, and the monotony of the school day. 

     “I earned two severe thrashings from Mr. Flack for doing something I should not have done, and for which I am now ashamed.  What were they?  Well, I tried to straighten the lopping ear of Alf Casperson which suggested to Mr. Flack, an effort on my part to ridicule my seat-mate’s personal infirmity.  Upon another occasion I pointed out with my finger the smug fit Mr. Flack’s pants were, right at the point where the back changes its name.  He was embarrassed and I was whipped in public.  I meant no harm in either case.
     “My second year in school I was repeatedly slapped by Miss _____.  I don’t remember her name,  but it was for doing nothing but looking around too much.  She also promised me a dunce cap which she never delivered.  And so those first two or three years of schooling I learned nothing, not even good behavior.
     “I had no friends in school.  I was a lonely little Danish boy, ridiculed alike by teachers and pupils.  The days were long, sitting on benches without desks, no paper or lead pencils, only slates with slate pencils.  There was no fun for me within the school building or on the outside. I was happy only when the day ended and I and my sister Eldena walked two miles to our house on the sand ridge.  This came to me as a relief from the monotony of the school room.”  (Mr. Ericksen later learned to love education, and earned a doctorate degree in philosophy at a Chicago University.)[5]
     The frame school is barely perceptible in the picture of the Central School, p. 4.
[4] The Hometown Album, No. 669.             [5] Cache Valley Newsletter No. 163, p. 5

 "For further information and photographs of the schools, see the Larsen-Sant Library publication "Franklin County Schools" available at the library."

     By virtue of having the only piano in the building, it was the east room which received the most use.  LDS Primary classes received released time and were held in the school house for many years.  Opening exercises were held there as well as all rehearsals for school musicals.

     The school usually had at least one musical production each year which involved all of the students.  Sometimes it was a pageant at Christmas time, sometimes an operetta in the spring.  In any case, most of the rehearsing was done at the school and when the production was ready, it was presented to the public in the church house because the school had no auditorium.

Story from Treasureton School
     1910 or 11 – Alvin Crockett, Charles Shumway and Tom Williams were the school trustees.  There were two teachers.  Father was the principal and a Miss Lumandeer, from Blackfoot, taught the lower grade.  One winter, while father taught there  we moved to Treasureton to live.  Each Friday after school it was my job to drive Miss Lumandeer to the Oxford depot where she caught the train and went home for weekends.  I used a sleigh whenever possible and took some of the other students along for the ride.  (Earl McClurg, student, from CVN #131, p. 5]

Memory of Harold Conlin
     The lower district schoolhouse in Treasureton was located near that stream between Myrl Workman’s place and the present highway.  I went to that shack back in the 1920s.  But by then it had been moved just south of the Treasureton church—and it was used as a three-year high school.  The block grade school was north of the church.  I attended there all three years.  Other students I remember were Ted Paskins, Dock Barger, Orson Sant, Alvin Atkinson, Fred Hess, Kerm Shumway, and the teachers were Mr. Harding (from Willard) and Enoch Nelson (from the Clifton/Oxford area).  “That old shack had a long life,” Harold mused.  “After they quit using it for a high school it was moved half a mile north of the church.  Melvin Kirby bought it for his hired man, Alton Lyon, to live in.”

     I was the editor of the Mink Creek High school newspaper, which had a total circulation of about 50.  That included the fifth, sixth, seventh, and eighth graders as well as the high school.  At that time we had only two years of high school in Mink Creek, and there were 20 students in it.  I was thrilled to be the editor of the school paper, and immediately changed the name of  it from “the Maple Leaf” to “The Hard-to-Digest.”  I don’t think the teachers ever did appreciate that, but I refused to call it anything else.
     I ran it off on a temperamental mimeo machine that the school had and put out several issues before I let it die.  One item from the October 1945 issue reports:  “Blair Seamons had an accident a while ago.  He was riding down Capital Hill on his bike and it hit some loose gravel.  Blair was thrown from his bike and broke his arm.  It seems to be well now.”
     There were other thrilling bits of news in the Hard –to-Digest.  The March 1946 issue carried this item, which was about the biggest thing that happened that year:  “The Student Body rabbit ear contest closed on March 1st.  Dean (Pearson) and his team won with 159 pairs of ears.  Bill’s (Crane) side had 79 pairs.  We had a big party that day.  Mr. Hardy (he ran the old Mink Creek store) presented the winning side with a box of chocolates.  Bill’s side gave Dean’s side a party last Monday.  They served chili and ice cream.  Everyone had a swell time.”  Not exactly deathless journalism!
     I was fascinated, too, by the December 1945 issue which told about the high school starting rehearsals for “Little Women.”  The Hard-to-Digest reported that there were four more girl parts than there were girls, so four boys dressed up as girls.  (We had seven girls and 13 boys in the high school.)  That was a play to remember!   (Cache Valley Newsletter No. 65, edited by Newell Hart, pages 4-5.)
     My senior year a bus was started to Preston High from Mink Creek.  There was a heater in that bus, but I think it was just for show.  No number of coats could keep out the chill in that traveling refrigerator.  Our first period teachers were unnerved by our blue cheeks and usually let us sit by the radiators until they were sure we would live through the hour.  (Cache Valley Newsletter No. 102, edited by Newell Hart, p. 7.)
      I remember too well standing in the blizzards waiting for the school bus, hoping it would come before you were buried like the snow-mounded mailbox next to where you stood.  The furnace in the Mink Creek school house never did function too well, and at recess there was always a race to the radiators where the first arrivals sat until the bell rang again.  If you were one of the lucky ones you at least took a warm fanny back to your seat; if not, you sat there wondering if the teacher would notice if you set fire to your speller to warm your feet.  

Treasureton School

Candy stripe siding on the inside of the school.

THE ROOSEVELT SCHOOL
Note:  Lincoln and Roosevelt were later combined into Linrose—“Lin” from Lincoln, and “Rose” from Roosevelt.
     The first families to settle in the Roosevelt-Lincoln area established homesteads in the early 1900s.  “Eight or nine families with several children each, came to the John Prout Davis farm.  School became quite a problem!  The parents decided they needed a schoolhouse.  John and two other men were appointed to look into the problem.  They traveled three days by horse and buggy to the county seat in Malad.  The men went three different times during the year.  Finally they were told if they had a piece of ground they could build a school.  John said, “I’ll give an acre for the school.”  The men were further told they could not accept it as a gift; to be legal, John would have to sell it and to set a price on it.  He charged $1.00 for one acre on the southwest corner of his farm.”  (From the History of Linrose Ward)
     The Roosevelt school, the area’s first public building,  was at first a small frame building on the east side of the road.  Carl Frew remembers attending school there 1905-07.  His first teacher was Mary Hulet (Coburn) and his second was John McClurg.  He recalled that other teachers following them were Claude Hawkes and Joseph Thomas.  In or about 1915 a brick school was built on the west side of the road, just across the street.  It had two classrooms and two basement rooms.  This was discontinued after the end of WWII.  Lincoln had similar schools, a frame building followed by a brick building, on the west side of the flat.  It was discontinued earlier than Roosevelt’s  (see map).
     When the Linrose Ward was organized in 1922, the old frame school was converted into a chapel.  It was remodeled 20 years later.  Still later, after further alterations, it was called the Westwood Center and used as a catered social service by spencer and Thora Winn.  Still later it was converted into a private residence.

     The first permanent white settlers in Franklin County came in 1860.  They thought they were part of the Utah Territory.  As most settlers that followed them, they were members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.   In this church initially, there was no separation of church and state.

Example of square brick school. 3 floors

Weston School District No. 10 sometime after the school was built in 1894. Picture from The HomeTown Album.    

     Commenting on the picture (above) in 1971, Newell Hart stated: “The picture shows a bell tower.  This must have been one of the most beautiful bell towers of any building in Cache Valley.   The foreground is full of kids and teachers, all dressed like 1913.  The dormer windows have since been sliced off; the graceful arches at the steps have been removed to make way for an empty square entrance; the balcony above has been bricked into a room; the surrounding poplar trees have long since disappeared; the tower is nowhere in sight.”[10]
     The Cache Valley Newsletter No. 5, p. 4 mentions a Central School class picture from 1916.  The class was the 2nd B Grade--28 students--and the teacher was Mae Nelson.  Students are identified, but the picture was not printed in the newsletter.
     On Saturday, April 28, 1973, a spirited auction was conducted from the entrance.  Hundreds of items, free blackboards to beat-up but very good upright pianos, were bid on by a large crowd that stayed all afternoon.  Newell Hart bought eight of the historic doors, eight feet high, with a three-foot transom above.  “Mrs. Dalley’s door still has the metal number “1” on the center panel, and there it shall stay,” commented Hart.
[10] Picture:  CVN No. 33, p.8; commentary in CVN No. 32, page 2

STORY FROM WESTON GRADE SCHOOL
     Note:   Back in this day,  boys’ high top leather boots came with a pocket-knife holder on the side.  Every boy had a pocket knife, and they were allowed at school.  The boys played mumblety-peg with them at recess.  (See section on playground games.”]
     “Dingle, Dingle, dingle … the teacher’s hand-bell was being rung by Nellie Thomas.  She was calling for the children to assemble in front of the Weston grade school.  She was insistent upon neat, orderly rows of boys and girls. [children marched into class in this era.]  This was the beginning of the school year.  It was early September and I was seven years old.  Joseph Thomas, Miss Thomas’s brother, was the principal.
     “Our 1905 school year was well under way in Weston.  We were engaged in a project of making tops from spools.  Nellie had suggested that we make them for Christmas presents.  We had many sizes of spools and some very beautiful tops were being created.  I was working on several and had them neatly arrayed on top of my desk.  ____________ sat on the desk ahead of me.  He deliberately persisted in knocking my tops off from my desk onto the floor.  After retrieving them several times I placed my pocket knife blade against his ribs and told him if he ever did that again I would stick my knife in him.  He obliged by raking his elbow across my desk and swishing the tops to the floor.  I shoved my knife blade forward and it cut through his clothes and the blood began to spurt.  It frightened me so badly that I jumped up and ran from the room and hid in the basement of the old Weston Mercantile Store.  They took the boy up to John A. Kofoed, who was the town dentist and handy man doctor.  He bandaged ________ up and pronounced that he wasn’t hurt badly, for which I was very grateful.”  [Earl McClurg, in Cache Valley Newsletter No. 131, edited by Newell Hart,  p. 4]

     The Oxford two-story stone school.  The first district school (above) was erected in 1891 (Oxford history says 1911) and had two rooms to educate eight grades.  Carl Smith was the principal and teacher of grades 5-8.  Mrs. Pelky taught the first four grades. It was the most impressive building in town.  The picture above was taken on a Friday afternoon.  The sleighs brought in several loads of Clifton students for a spelling match. [1]

[1] The Hometown Album. 

      After 1963, the students were bused to Preston for all grades.  The building was torn down in 1970-71 by Hugh J. Geddes & Sons.  The materials were used in other buildings on the farm.   The building had a gym in the basement.  The hardwood from the gym went to Newell Hart who used some of it for the Academy stage. The Banida School was also used for church meetings for a short time.
     Duke Robinson on the Banida School gym floor:  “The old Banida gym floor!  Oh boy, I sure remember that.  I played M-Men basketball games on that floor.  I remember once we were out there playing the Banida boys.  Mutt and alf Dixon were on our team, and Slivers Anderson played on the Banida team.  It was a rough game and slivers crashed so hard into Mutt that he knocked him square into the old pot-bellied stove.  Mutt really got branded with that fancy Banida stove design—and for all I know he’s still go it.”[1]
[1] Cache Valley Newsletter, No. 103, edited by Newell Hart, p. 9.

Riverdale Schools

     The water was so deep in the spring that rock paths were built and students wore knee boots.  Sometimes the mud and water were so deep it went over their boots.  They would hang their wet wraps around the stove and pile shoes and boots around it to dry, and they would all hover around to get warm.  Mud was so thick on the floor that when it was swept it created a thick cloud of dust.  At one time, Vernon Thompson was the janitor.  He and his sisters heated water and took it to the schoolhouse in milk cans to scrub the floor.  He received $4.00 a month.

Mink Creek schools – old in front and new in back.

  Memory of R. Leo Rallison
       I was eight years old when I began school at the North Fairview School.  The school at that time was a one-room log building with a dirt roof.  One teacher took care of all the grades.  My first teacher was Iris Read (a sister of Tom Read).  She was the best teacher I had.  When I was 14 I was in the 7th grade.  In January of that year my youngest sister, Martha, was born.  Mother, who had been helping me with the chores, became very ill and was taken to Logan for treatment.  That left me to do the chores so I had to quit school and only had a half year in seventh grade. (CVN  No. 68, edited by Newell Hart, June 1974,p. 4)

       When the early pioneers were a little better established on the land, the parents turned their attentions to providing a school building for their children.  It was usually the first building in the community. These could be in a stable, a granary, or in a log building, many of which had dirt floors and sod roofs.   There was an outdoor privy behind the school.   These were one-room affairs and one teacher taught every age and ability.  Sometimes the teacher was younger than some of the students.  The older boys were generally discipline problems.  Curriculum included religious and moral training, along with reading, writing, and arithmetic.   These one-room log structures also served as the church on Sunday, and the place for all civic meetings and activities.  These buildings were the center of the community.

Klondike School
     As mentioned above a Klondike school, most likely a one-room school, was built on the northern end of Mink Creek.  It was also part of the Mink Creek School District. The Hometown Album locates it four miles north, and the predecessor of, the Kellertown/Dogtown school.  Another source says it was six miles north of Mink Creek .  It is not clear if the Strawberry and Klondike Schools are the same or different.

   From my first year in school I decided I would be a teacher.
      Mrs. Gerrard was a strict disciplinarian.  She didn’t spoil any of us for she never spared the rod—in her case a large strong hand and arm.  Once she knocked me out of my seat with a broad swing of that arm.  All I did was paint the sky of my water color scene different than she told me to do.  Another punishment was to have to sit with the big third grade boys.  She made it seem like an awful disgrace.  I’d sit there and cry.  It was years before I felt comfortable sitting by a boy.

     One afternoon I finished my painting in art class and decided to decorate my face.  Mrs. Gerrard told my mother that she happened to look down at me and I had two red rings around my eyes, purple around my mouth, and a brown nose and blue cheeks.  She sternly  ordered me downstairs to wash my face.  I had to scrub with soap to get the paint off.  She told my mother it was the funniest sight, that little red-headed girl with all that stuff on her face.
     Once at school I got in a fight with a girl.  We were playing a game and she walked over and said, “Go on, get out of the way; I’m going to be in charge from now on.”  Then she gave me a big shove.  I couldn’t take that, so I shoved her back.  She shoved me again.  While we were doing this scrapping there were some boys watching.  I was embarrassed to think that I’d be fighting, and I wanted to cry and run home.  I picked up my books and started to go out the door.  One of the big boys spread his arms and legs across the doorway and said, “You’re not getting out of here.  Go on and fight some more; that’s fun to watch.”  I took the heel of one of my books, backed up, and hit him in the eye with it.  He didn’t expect anything like that, and since his arms were spread out, he didn’t have time to react.  He grabbed his eye and moaned, “Oh! Oh! Oh! You little heathen!”  But I had started out the door for home.
      The next morning as we sat in school, the teacher looked down and the boy had a big, black eye.  “What happened to your eye?” he asked.  One of the other boys said, “Sadie hit him in the eye.”  Of course the teacher didn’t believe that for anything.  Mild, quiet, little Sadie hit that boy and blacked his eye?  So I got away with that.
      Other grade school teachers were Lanie Taylor, Verena Henderson and James L. Williams.
      Later I attended school at Utah State University to become a teacher.  Just before the Christmas holidays, my mother [in Clifton] sent me word that the 3rd and 4th grade teacher at Clifton elementary was going to resign because she was having a baby.  I applied to the school board and got the job.  I was scared but happy.  I visited Arlene Anderson’s room and got her schedule in mind.  When the holidays were over, I was a full-fledged teacher with two grades and about 30 pupils.  I loved it.  My starting salary was $80 a month.  I lived at home and was able to help my father by paying the home payment of $25 a month.  My little sister, Jean, was in my class as well as two twin cousins, Rex and Ross Sant.[2]
[2] From The Sadie Book:  The Story of Sarah Jane “Sadie” Sant, pp. 36-39..

    Two other schools are mentioned in the Hometown Album.  “Egypt’s old school was built in February 1890 and used till 1914.  The picture [left] was taken in 1919 long after the fancy picket fence and turnstile gate had vanished.  This was two miles east and a quarter of a mile north up Jitney Lane [approximately 300 North on1600 East[2] on the east side of the road.[3]  It served as both a church and a school. The building measured about 18x33 feet and about 20 feet from the ground to the peak of the roof.  It was a frame building with wood siding on the inside and outside.  The windows were low on the wall so it was easy for students to look outside.  After the brick school and 5th ward church were built, the school was repurposed and moved to Arlando Larsen’s father’s home on north 1600 East.   It was converted to a chicken coop with white chickens on an upper level and Rhode Island Reds on the bottom level.  The building is still standing, with an added lean-to and is covered in metal siding.  Current owners are Bob and Wendy Hanger.[4]
[2] Interview with Arlando Larsen, April 21, 2019.  In pointing out the spot, Mr. Larsen placed the location of the school on the east side of 1600 East, where the ditch goes under the road.  In 2019 there is a lone tree close to the ditch. 
[3]The Hometown Album, No. 567.            [4] Details about the school’s dimensions were supplied on a tour of the school which is now on the Hanger Ranch, and in interviews with Bob Hanger and Arlando Larsen.

The Nashville and Cherryville Schools
     Located north of Cub River on the opposite side of the river from Franklin, about seventeen families had a log school house there in the 1860s.   A small school was also located in Cherryville. 

     During the years 1938-1942 the population had increased to the extent that another room was needed, so permission was obtained to use one of the basement rooms in the new church house as a school room.  This required the hiring of three teachers for a few years, until the spring of 1942 when many people moved away to go into government jobs and war industries.  The population decreased until only two teachers were needed.  One teacher had three grades and the other five grades.

​Oneida Stake Academy Campus, left to right: Nelson Gym, Mechanical Arts Building, Oneida Stake Academy Building

Memory of Allen Shipley
     Verlo Petersen and Fred Lund were going to school in that school house.  Verlo burned Fred on his neck with a match and Fred went and told Mr. Schow.  Mr. Schow called Verlo in and told him to hold out his hand so he could hit it with a ruler for punishment.  Verlo pleaded and begged.  “Oh, please don’t do it!  Oh, don’t hit me—I’ll bring you a dollar the next time I come to school.”  But his crying didn’t do any good.  Mr. Schow broke a ruler on Verlo.
     Mr. Schow was a pretty mean teacher.  I would hand in my lessons and he would tell me my writing was like chicken scratching.  Lila Clayton stood right up to him one day in class and said right out, “Allen’s parents are deaf and dumb and they can’t hardly teach him anything.”  Of course that’s the way it was, but Lila didn’t mean it exactly the way it sounds.  Anyway, after that Mr. Schow was a pretty good teacher. [8]

 Cleveland School

     Later, school was held in a two-room structure that again served as the church house.  It was located across the street east from the current West Side High School.  The village board, not having offices of its own, also held their meetings in the building.  It was heated by a pot-bellied stove which did keep the students from freezing in the cold winter months, but was never very adequate.  Those sitting right next to it were nearly roasted, while those in the back seats could hardly feel the heat.  One teacher taught all the grades and usually did a superb job.  This two-room structure continued to serve five more years as a school until 1914 when a large, modern brick schoolhouse was erected for the elementary grades.   The city officials continued to use this building for their meetings for a time.  The building was ultimately torn down and the ground used for farming. 

Schools

Preston Schools

The Egypt frame school is one of the few remaining frame schools in the county.

     The Jefferson School was built in 1914.  Reports vary on the cost but it was between $55,000 and $85,000; 1,000 students and 25 teachers.  The Jefferson stood on the Academy block, on the corner where the Larsen-Sant Library now stands.  For the cornerstone laying ceremony, “students and teachers of the Central school marched in systematic order to the new building, Principal Condie leading.  Prof. Engar led the Academy band in several fine selections.  Mr. Condie then gave a report on school conditions.”  The cornerstone box held a sample of the work done in each grade, Christmas editions of the local newspapers, autograph of each child and ages, one copy of the state course of study, a history of the Preston schools, photographs of the present faculty, the Academy, the Central, the new building. Main Street, the first band of the Independent District #2 of Oneida County.[18]
[18] The Hometown Album, No. 531.

[6] Arlando Larsen interview.           [7] All details about the Egypt brick school came from an interview with Arlando Larsen, April 21, 2019.  Mr. Larsen was born in 1931 and grew up in Egypt.  He still lives there in 2019.
[8] CVN No. 54, p. 2​

Example of a rectangular school - 2 floors.

Example of a frame school.

      Asael Bell, Weston – My mother died giving birth and my father was killed in an accident.  I went to live with my sister and her husband.  During my stay of four years, 1910-1914, my school life was a somewhat haphazard experience.  They were struggling to make a living.  The new land had to be cleared of the sagebrush and service berry bushes before the grain could be planted.  Then my brother-in-law went away to shear sheep in order to earn a little money.  I operated the plowing outfit, which consisted of three horses hitched to a two-way plow.  My sister had to assist me in harnessing the horses, as I was too small to do this alone.   There was no time for learning during the spring planting or fall harvesting seasons.  For three successive years I remained in the seventh grade because the teacher, who taught all eight grades, quit in February of each year and went back to Pocatello.  He couldn’t cope with the eighth grade boys.  Therefore, without giving notice to anyone, he left after receiving his January paycheck.

R. Leo Rallison Life Story
     I was eight years old when I began school at the North Fairview School.  The school at that time was a one-room log building with a dirt roof.  One teacher took care of all the grades.  My first teacher was Iris Read (a sister of Tom Read).  She was the best teacher I had.  When I was 14 I was in the 7th grade.  In January of that year my youngest sister, Martha, was born.  Mother, who had been helping me with the chores, became very ill and was taken to Logan for treatment.  That left me to do the chores so I had to quit school and only had a half year in seventh grade. (CVN  No. 68, edited by Newell Hart, June 1974, p. 4)

      In 1919, a new yellow brick school building was erected on the flat located about the center of Winder.  This building had two school rooms upstairs and a stage and an amusement hall downstairs.  The downstairs could be divided into two parts to create another schoolroom—simply by hanging some doors.  This school also served as a church until 1952. 
      The Roscoe School District and the Winder School District consolidated into one school district about 1926.  The Winder School was discontinued after the 1959-60 school year and students were bused to Preston.

     In 1889 the headquarters of the stake were moved to Preston, and the school was also moved to Preston.  In 1890, the school found temporary quarters in two rooms of a Preston furniture store owned by J. A. Head.  J. G. Nelson was called to be the principal.  He described the first day at the Preston store being postponed for lack of furniture:  “In due time benches were brought from Franklin.  I made two blackboards from ordinary lumber and covered them with slate cloth.  Each day school opened with devotional exercises.  The first hour was devoted to subjects pertaining to the gospel, and all students were under obligation to take it.  Standard works of the Church were used as texts.  All secular branches followed the rest of the day.”
     The stake school board soon recognized that a school building was necessary.  Dimensions were planned for a 48 x 64 foot building, three stories high, which would accommodate 300 students.[20] The location chosen was directly behind where the current Preston High School Building now stands.  The building was paid for by financially struggling parents who were living in poverty at this time.   The building is a monument to their sacrifices.   It was dedicated in 1895.
     The city block where the new school was located soon became known as the Academy Block, as the school was later joined by the Nielson Gym, the Mechanical Arts Building (where the new Preston High School gym and cafeteria are presently) and Cutler Field.  Jefferson Middle School was also built on the Academy Block.
     In May of 1975, the Academy Building was honored by being entered onto the National Register of Historic Places.[21]   The building has since been relocated to the corner of First East and Oneida Streets.  It is the only remaining academy building.
[20] For the complete story of the Academy, see “The Forgotten Voice of the Oneida Stake Academy”, by Fred Woods, in the Larsen-Sant Library.  The above information was taken from this source.          [21] The Oneida Stake, No. 29. 

Memories of Carrie Knudson at  age 92
     We had two school houses in Fairview, one east and one west of the town’s main corner.  Ina Whittle Egbert was my first teacher.  Our school was down west.  This was before the two-story brick school that my children went to.  Our school was made of wood.
     Our school was also the church.  We had to dismiss school on Thursday for them to hold fast meeting.  We’d go out and play ball during the meeting.
     I also attended the school east of where we lived, on the north side of the road.  Emma Bybee was the teacher.  And we had a school in the north district, too, about half way to Preston.  The first one was rock, and then they built a brick one.  Both buildings are still standing.  The brick one was made into a home, and the rock one—just south—is their garage.  We had lots of school houses, but not many kids.
     I remember the slates.  I used to spit on my slate to erase.  It got so it didn’t smell too good, but that’s the only way I could rub it out.

Memories of Bernice Olson Rasmussen
     My first teacher was Torval Keller. He always used to stand in the door with a ruler and if any of us were a minute late we’d have to hold out our hands to have them whacked.  It’s the only time I can remember being punished at school.  All the grades were in one room.  We had readers—first reader, second read, third reader and so on.  We didn’t call them grades.  The teacher I liked the most was a Mr. Fisher from Oxford.  I was in the fifth reader then.  I didn’t have far to go to school—just up the lane and across Birch Creek.  When you come up from Preston and turn up to go to the church house, my dad’s home was the first one you came to.  (CVN No. 150, p. 4)

     At this time four schools were operating in this fast growing town.  They included a public, a Congregational, a Methodist and a Mormon.   About this time a Miss Virginia Doz of New York was principal at what was known as the New West Academy which continued until 1887.  

     The school was built by Oliver Millard and Albert E. Johnson at a cost of $10,000.  It is reported that the cement blocks for it were made by John Baker.  The ground floor had three classrooms plus a library, the top floor had a hardwood floor, a ceiling a little low for basketball and a grand stage for plays.  It was heated by a coal furnace and an ornate bell tower adorned the roof.  In 1939 restrooms were added plus the graded mound east of the building with cement lettering of OXFORD set into the south side. Grades 9-12 went to Downey.
     In addition to a good basic education, the school was used by other organizations as a meeting place, including the Reorganized LDS Church, the city of Oxford held all civic meetings, basketball games, boxing matches, LDS meetings during church remodeling, plays and programs, melodramas by Glen Taylor’s company, roller skating, dances, and even a manslaughter trial.
     Dances in Oxford were a family affair.  Mothers laid their babies on the benches to sleep while they and the youth danced the night away.  The last dance held in the school was in October of 1951 when the LDS Mutual sponsored a Halloween dance.
     In 1944 the last school was closed for classes.  The elementary grades attended in Swan Lake for one year.  In 1945 Weston’s High School burned down.  The small towns along the west side of Bear River formed a new school district #202.  Thereafter Oxford children attended school at Clifton Elementary and the Westside Jr.-Sr. High schools.
     The building was empty for many years, then a private party bought it and it is still in use as a cow shelter and feedlot.[2]
[2]  History of Oxford, compiled by James Boyce.

Dayton Schools

     Egypt’s brick school was built in 1914.  It was two miles east of Preston’s main intersection, on the northeast corner where Glade Moser lives now on 1600 East.  Below is the class of 1917 standing next to the building.[5]
[5] Ibid. No. 568.

     Oxford is one of Idaho’s oldest communities.  Settled shortly after Franklin, It was initially surveyed in 1864.    At this time Oxford was in the Territory of Utah, and was located in what was known as Round Valley.  Later Oxford was in Oneida County, Idaho, which included twelve of the present southeastern Idaho counties and extended from Utah to the Montana State line.  The county seat was originally at Soda Springs, but was moved to Malad in 1866, and later to Oxford.
     In the 1880s Oxford was a boom-town, one of the largest in the valley, and was considered “The Dodge City” of the area.

     The first settlers in the “Rushville” settlement came in 1865.  The first school was taught sometime in the early 1870’s in a log cabin and the first teacher was Lucretia Maria Marler.  Another school was taught in Rushville by Henry H. Howell in the lean-to of his home.  He had previously taught at Franklin and Oxford and continued teaching for three years.  Other early teachers were Elizabeth Henderson, Amelia Howell, Martin P. Henderson, Chloe McNeil Howell, and Elizabeth Henderson.
     The old Rushville and Clifton school districts were consolidated, becoming District 11 of Oneida County [later Franklin County].  The new district bonded to obtain money for the new building which was completed in 1903.  It was called “Longfellow School.”  The construction was under the supervision of A. D. Henderson.  It was built of red brick and sandstone block and was the pride of the community.  It was located where the current church now sits.    At least three generations of children were educated in this building and for many years it included a four-year high school.   The upstairs auditorium was also used for town dances.  The building was torn down in 1952.[1]
[1] Information for Clifton Schools was found in The Oneida Stake:  History of Southeast Idaho, compiled by the Preston North Stake,1987; and The Hometown Album, compiled by Newell Hart, Picture No. 291.

     Logs were cut and hauled from Deep creek Canyon to build the school.  The completed building consisted of a single large room with a dirt floor covered in straw, a sod roof, and large sandstone fireplace in the east end.    The door was made of logs split with a broad axe.  Windows and frames were made with handsaws and pocket knives.  Two 8x10” rectangles of glass were purchased in Salt Lake City and served as the only windows. The building faced west with the door on the end and a single window on each side with a small window near the door.  The student benches were made from pine slabs, flat side up, with legs of maple and birch. Whenever it rained, the children were excused until the storm was over as the roof was not waterproof.

     In 1918 the kindergarten and first grade were on the main floor.  There were two teachers, Miss Belnap and Mrs. Barlow.   Mary Dalley, first grade, was a much beloved teacher, and is mentioned in several personal stories about the Central School.  Her class was in the basement level.  Third graders went to the top level with Miss Green.  Fourth graders went to the Jefferson.
     If the weather was stormy the children went down some steps into a room in the basement.  This is where they played and had lunch (Reny Jensen fondly remembers peanut butter sandwiches from home.)[9]    The Central school was always crowded which is why the Jefferson school was built.
[9] As quoted in CVN No. 137, p. 9.

The First Basketball Game at the Academy

     “That spring, just before school was out, we had a work day and a celebration at the Academy.  Walter and I were working on something in the yard when Lawrence Baird from Lewiston came to see us.  He told us he had promised to get a basketball team from Lewiston to play the Academy team.  He said he only had one other fellow besides himself.  He asked us if we would help him out.
     “Clyde Packer had gotten a basketball court ready in front of the building, so the four of us went to talk with Clyde about it.  Clyde decided to let Lawrence have Herm Nuffer to play with Lewiston.  Sam and Clyde Packer were the forwards on the Academy team and Herm and I were the guards on the Lewiston team.  Herm and I had an argument as to who should guard Clyde.  I persuaded him to try it.
      “I think the score was about 34 to 4 and Clyde made most of the 34 points.”
     From Clyde Packer:  At the commencement exercises of 1907 Principal John Johnson asked me to arrange for some athletics.  I was a freshman.  We made a basketball court out on the ground and played a basketball game.  Because of this incident Harrison R. Merrill called me the Father of Basketball at the Oneida Academy.”    
      Note:  Clyde went on to create immortal traditions at Oneida Academy, as player and coach.  In 1916 he was all-American while attending the University of Utah.  Frank Gilbert, who played with him at Oneida, said recently, “Clyde Packer was the most natural basketball player I ever watched in action.”  (From CVN No. 68, edited by Newell Hart, June, 1974, p. 4.

Presbyterian School
     At one time the Presbyterian school was taught in William T. Wright’s home.  In 1880, the Presbyterians built a frame structure located just south of the main corner, west side of the road, where the highway used to make a turn and go downhill and under the railroad trestle.  It was used for church meetings, but also for school.  The Reverend Calvin Parks of Logan visited at intervals to deliver sermons.  Later, Reverend Renshaw served as the preacher.  Miss Hodge taught about three weeks, then Maggie Shirley, daughter of Reverend Parks, taught here.  Other teachers were Mr. Martin, Miss Noble, Miss Simons, Mrs. Tillie Stalker, Miss Clark, and Miss Elliot.  Some teachers were imported from as far away as Philadelphia.  Many Franklin kids went to school there, not just Presbyterian children.  Enos Holden and Carl Frew were among those who went there about the turn of the century.  The building was not used after 1908 for school and church. 
     It later became the old Diamond Stud tavern.  It had a large stallion painted on the front.  

Jefferson School
     The Southeastern Advocate, a Preston newspaper, ran this headline on January 14, 1914: “Central Celebrates.  The Laying of the Corner Stone of New Mammoth Building; Interesting documents Inclosed in Box; Mayor J. N. Larsen speaks in the Year 3000 A.D.”  The program consisted of school songs, selections from the Academy band (led by Prof. Engar), speeches and patriotic airs.  Of all the exercises the greatest interest was centered in filling the box, which was placed within the corner stone, with all kinds of photographs, speeches, text books, newspapers, coins, fashion plates, phonograph records, and instructions.

Oneida Stake Academy
     The Oneida Stake Academy has a distinct “Mormon” history.  During the 1860s Protestants and Catholics found that establishing their own schools was the most effective way to save Mormon youth from what they felt was “delusion.”   In the 1880s the LDS Church found it necessary to counteract this scheme and thus the Academy system was born.  Instruction went out to each stake to form a board of education and to form a church school where religious education could be part of the curriculum.  As a result, thirty-three stake academies were established between 1888 and 1909 from Canada to Arizona.
     George C. Parkinson was the first man to preside over the Oneida Stake Board of Education.  He had recently returned from serving eleven months in the Boise Penitentiary for hiding one of his polygamous brethren in the cellar of his co-op store.
     As Franklin was the headquarters for the Oneida Stake, the board decided to have the school in Franklin.  No buildings were available so they procured the two ground floor rooms in the Thomas Lowe Dance Hall.  Samuel Cornwall of Salt Lake was hired as the principal for the first year.  Students numbered about one hundred.

Mink Creek Area Schools

Oneida County     

​Franklin Area Schools

Pictures of students in the 1911 and 1913 (above) classes at the Cleveland School are shown in the Hometown Album, Nos. 815 and 816, compiled by Newell Hart.  No other information on the school could be located.  Students and teachers are all identified.

     School was first held in a one-room, log structure which was hauled up from Weston in the early 1880s and placed on the spot where the current ballpark grandstand is.   Miss Annie Boden, the teacher, taught all grades.  It was the first public building in Dayton.  The log structure also served as the church on Sundays.

The “new” Clifton Elementary School was built after the Longfellow School was torn down.  It was located east of the old school on the school block.

WINDER SCHOOL 

Yellow Jacket School
     Near the main road above Preston, a mile and three-quarters north of the bank corner and a block west is where the old Yellow Jacket school was located.  Some of the teachers were Mary and Nelly Thomas, Joseph Thomas, and Agnes Dalley.
     The school was painted yellow and reminded people of the yellow jacket wasps that were common in the area.   Thus the name.  Jim McQueen attended this school beginning in 1897. 
     Agnes Dalley was the teacher.  She drove an old horse to school.  “My hands would get so cold.  I’d take along a little bundle of hay for the horse and the bigger boys would feed for me.  Then it would be muddy.  Oh! the mud.  The wheels would just be covered.” The kids got their pistols and shot the initials A.D. [for Agness Dalley] somewhere on the building.[16]
[16] CVN No. 138, p. 3

BIBLIOGRAPHY
All publications are in the Larsen-Sant Library Local History Room
A Centennial History of Schools of the State of Idaho, by J. Howard Moon (Commissioned by the Idaho School Boards Association, 1988), p. 193.
“A Short History of Oxford,”  by Annie C. Hatch
Cache Valley Newsletter (CVN), Nos. 1-170, by Newell Hart.
Interview with Bob Hanger, April 21, 2019.
Interview with Arlando Larsen, April 21, 2019.
Maps of Early Idaho
St. Joseph to Mapleton:  100 Years of Mapleton History
The History of Banida
The History of Fairview
The History of a Valley
The Hills of Home:  A History of Dayton, Idaho, by Don and Cleone Dalley, 1992. pp. 54-59.
The History of Linrose
The History of Mink Creek,  pp. 60, 82-83
The History of Oxford, compiled by James D. Boyce.
The History of Riverdale. p. 148.
The History of Weston, by Jay Schvaneveldt
Information from Daughters of Utah Pioneers, found in Monuments, Markers and Points of Interest in Franklin County, compiled by Myrna Fuller, 2011-12
The Story of Harold B. Lee, Blaine M. Yorgason, 2001
The Hometown Album, compiled by Newell Hart, 1976.
The Old Yellow School House:  Story of the Winder School
The Oneida Stake:  100 Years of LDS History in Southeast Idaho,  Preston North Stake, 1987
The Sadie Book:  The Story of Sarah Jane Sant (“Sadie”) Fuller (not in library)
The Trail Blazer, Daughters of Utah Pioneers Publication, re-issued with additions by Newell Hart, 1976
Whitney Centennial, 1889-1980, Whitney’s First 100 Years, pp. 129-130.S

Memory of Morton Cutler and Paul Larsen
     Our older brothers—Nels and Elvin—won’t appreciate this story, but Paul and I once broke into the Central school.  We pilfered a few choice items—crayons, chalk, pencils and the like—and hid them across the street in our hay barn.  We hid the stuff deep in our tunnel system, which I’m sure my brother Orvid remembers.  Then our older brothers, Elvin and Nels, crawled in our tunnel to look over our loot.  They admired our cache so much they decided to go try it too.  Paul and I watched from a safe distance, and we saw them break in with perfect timing:  in time to get caught!”

Memories of Cassie Stephenson Bell
     I started school when I was seven.  Guy, Loran and I [siblings] rode a horse, usually Old Net, a broad, kindly work horse type, the four miles each way.  In winter we were bundled into ankle-wrist length woolen underwear, long woolen stockings, sweater, coat, overshoes, cap, scarf, and mittens.  Look at a traditional picture of an Eskimo and you’ll have an idea of how we looked; quite a contrast to the sleek, neat, and beautiful winter wear of today.  There was no problem at home to get me into the outfit, but it was quite a job for Guy and Loran to dress me in all this paraphernalia at the end of the school day.
     My first teacher was Edna Johnson Merrill, wife of Harrison R. Merrill, who was on a mission in Ireland at the time.  She was refined, kind, understanding, and I adored her.  This was a one-room school.  Later we went to a two-room school farther down the canyon.  In this school the two rooms were divided by sliding doors and an opening at one end where a huge wood-coal burning stove attempted to heat both rooms.  The time I remember best was when Guy and Loran were in the “big room” and RaMona, Alta and I were in the “little room.”  The teachers did their best but there was a lot of commotion and a great deal of “horseplay” by the older boys.
     The main punishment was for a teacher to expel one or two of the offenders.  The rule was that those expelled were to see the trustees and get permission to return.  My father was a trustee most of the time and firmly believed that the teacher was always right.  This attitude presented some problems but helped to keep the wild Stephenson kids in line.  We would bribe each other to keep tales of misconduct from our parents.
     There were very few books besides the regular texts—no materials for arts, crafts, or extra reading, so it is no wonder that there was secret pinching, note writing, girls braids in ink wells, snowballs down backs, etc.   However, there were good times, too:  spelling bees every Friday afternoon with girls against boys or choosing sides.  We Stephensons must have applied ourselves in some areas as we were always the last ones to be spelled down.  For different holidays there were special programs, the main one being at Christmas time.  Plays, recitations, songs, and pantomimes were prepared and presented for parents and friends to enjoy.  There were games, refreshments, and Santa Claus with gifts for each one.  Boredom and resentment were forgotten.
     As we children approached high school age our parents were anxious that we have the opportunity of further study.  So during the year 1916-17, Guy, Loran and I lived in Preston with Grandmother Stephenson during the week days of the school year.  This was my first time away from home and I was homesick and miserable most of the time.  In the fall of 1917 the entire family moved to Preston rather than to arrange for boarding places for several children.
     School buses were unheard of in those days.  We lived that winter in a house at south First West.  (CVN No. 157, pp. 6-7).

     In 1929, this school was consolidated with the south end school.  Now schools were very much improved.  Instead of a slate, large black boards were used, better seating and better equipment was had for the benefit of the students.  School wagons hauled the children to and from school, the first ones being run by Ed Cole and Clarence Bodily.
     In 1948, the eighth grade went to Preston to school, followed by the seventh grade in 1949.  In 1956 the little red schoolhouse was closed and all children were bused to Preston.  The property was sold in 1963 to Vernon P. Cole and the building was torn down.

     Information and pictures taken from the History of Fairview    

      While August Nuffer was on the school board in the 1890’s, a school was built in the upper end of the district so the children didn’t have so far to go to school.  Harrison R. Merrill was the first teacher.  This school house was built by the efforts of the people of the upper part of the district, and while it was not the first school in the community, it was the first school house built in Mapleton Ward.[2]
       In 1910, a new two-room schoolhouse was built on the hill by the side of the road and church was also held there.[3]  In the 1944-45 time period, the building was vacated for school use and the kids went to Preston.  The old school house was turned into a very popular dance hall.[4]
[2] St. Joseph to Mapleton:  100 Years of History, 1891-1991, Mapleton Centenial Committee (1991), p. 4              [3] The Oneida Stake, p. 152                    [4] St. Joseph to Mapleton:  100 Years of History, 1891-1991, Maple Centennial Committee (1991), p. 6

     When finished, the building was 16 x18 feet with a pine floor and dirt roof.  The walls were chinked and plastered; there were windows on the east and west sides, and a door on the south end.  The teachers who taught in this building were Mary Heller, Eli Lee, Francis Brown, Louise Spongberg, Fannie Biggs, and an Englishman by the name of Blair.  This building remained as it was until 1884.
     That year it was torn down and moved to the new town of Preston with the original logs being used in the Second Ward church building located just behind the old Grand Theater.  When that building was torn down in 1929, the DUP purchased the logs from the little school house and rebuilt it in the Benson Park to be used as a relic hall.  School children and DUP camps donated $271.17 for the project.
     In 1950, relics were moved to the Franklin Relic Hall because the school house roof was falling in and chinking was gone between the logs.  Bob Gibson, Harold Egbert and city employees removed the old roof.  Todd Greaves put on the new roof which was then tarred, and the old plaster was removed and metal lath nailed between each log.  Norman Carlson donated work and material for re-chinking.  Hansen Glass donated windows and Abe Hansen donated labor to put them in.  The inside was finished with wallboard.  In June of 1972, a new asphalt roof was put on the building by Sidney Biggs, Ralph Millar and Reed Magleby.  Desks and blackboards were also put in the little building.      As the logs began to rot, the building was dismantled.[3]
[3] Information from Daughters of Utah Pioneers, found in Monuments, Markers and Points of Interest in Franklin County, p. 

The Kellertown/Dogtown School
     Located at the junction of Strawberry and Mink Creek roads, it was built in 1916 and discontinued about 1936-37.  This was known as the Kellertown School or the Dogtown School.

     Built about one-half mile north of the two-room school, still on the east side of the street, the new school house was two and one-half stories high with six large classrooms and a full basement which was partially above ground, giving the appearance of a three-story building.  One half of the basement was called the boys’ basement with the other half being known as the girls’ basement, both sides having a restroom and a large play area.  

The Winder, yellow-brick school.

Glendale School

The Early Schools
     The first community school in the Preston area was held in 1877 in Robert M. Hull’s log granary.  It was located east of the present site of what was the Franklin county sugar Factory, about two and one-half miles down the state highway from Preston.  It had one window and two doors.  Verena Foster, age 16, was the first teacher.  She taught during the late summer and fall of 1877.  She also taught one term during 1878.  During that year the snow was very deep and the weather so severe that Miss Foster’s place was taken for a time by Ralph Johnson, an eastern man.  He taught the school in the home of James Chadwick.  This place was located just across the street from the granary school house.  Mr. Johnson was a very well-educated man for that time, and the children fared well under his tutelage.  Maggie Sharp taught in Joseph Sharp’s home during the fall of 1878.  During the winter of 1879, Joseph Sharp replaced Miss Porter and taught in his home near the present T. D. Alder home.
     During this time, there was an average enrollment of about fifteen pupils.  Most of the students at that time were fortunate enough to have at least a slate and slate pencil if it were nothing more than a chip taken from the slate rock or a broken piece of slate.  As for books, however, they were not so fortunate.  One teacher recounts that there were two books in the first school which meant that the children must stand in rows before the teacher and each take a turn reading a paragraph from the precious text as it was passed down the line.  Snatching and pushing were not infrequent if the one reading should read past his allotted few lines.  As a form of punishment, the “unruly one” was made to stand up with outstretched arms holding weights of some kind, or stand with a dunce cap on his head.
     In the winter, the school was heated by wood burned in the low Franklin stoves.  Many of the students who had to walk or ride several miles felt frequently that the heat was inadequate to thaw out their chilled bodies and frost-bitten feet, ears and hands.
     For a number of years, there were no regular salaries paid to the teachers.  A tuition was paid at the rate of one dollar per month for each child, if the teacher could collect it from the parents.  At times, Miss Foster received her pay in cheese and meat.  Joseph S. Sharp gave one teacher a quarter of a deer to pay the tuition for his three sons for one school term.
     With the coming of the train in 1878, the children were filled with awe and quite enjoyed going out to see the train go by each day.  They were thrilled with this great horseless monster.
     As to other thrills and experiences, hardly a week passed by that large bands of Indians did not come to the well for water and begged for “biskit.”  It goes without saying that the first sight of an Indian sent the children hurrying into the school for protection.  The Indians were not always unfriendly, but it seems they were not to be trusted.  Tramps also were not uncommon.  A tramp is “a person who travels aimlessly about on foot, doing odd jobs or begging for a living”[2]
[2] Online dictionary.

Riverdale School Story
By Verlene Henry Rex
     I picked up my paper recently and was idly leafing through it when a name in the obituary column caught my eye.  Howard LaMar Smith.  For a moment I was stunned.  He had been my sixth grade teacher; and since he had seemed old then and still hadn’t retired when I graduated from high school, I vaguely had gotten the impression he would live forever.
     My mind wandered back over that school year.  We Riverdale kids went to the two-room school located next to the church.  The first, second and third grades were referred to as the little room, and fourth through eighth grades as the big room.  If the teacher for the big room, who was also the principal, was on the ball, we would have a good year of school; if he wasn’t up to snuff, the kids became mischievous and it could be bad news.
     Mr. Smith, well, he was more than on the ball.  He had a way of making suggestions that became rules and everybody was happy about them.   We had a rule about chewing gum—we didn’t do it.  If caught, the guilty party would have to draw a circle on the blackboard at nose level and hold their nose in it for an hour. 
     It was that rule that made one Thursday a memorable day.  Rumps got caught chewing gum.  His real name was Patrick Theodore Ramsbottom.  After all the derivatives had been tried out, Rumps was the name that stuck.  Maybe it was the trial of living with that name that made him the person he was.  He was the kind of bully that you were glad when you were on his side, but inside you always hoped someone would get the best of him.  He wasn’t necessarily mean, just overly pushy.  And nobody made him do things like stick his nose on the blackboard, even if he was chewing gum.
     Nobody except Mr. Smith.
     By the time we were dismissed for morning recess, Rumps was hopping mad.  Going out the door he said to the guys if he ever got a chance, he’d whip the ____ out of Ol’ Smitty.  His language could get a little colorful at times.  What he didn’t know was that Ol’ Smitty had followed the boys out the door.
     “You’ll get your chance,” Mr. Smith said.  “At one o’clock, right after lunch hour.”
     Excitement grew as word about the whipping spread.  It seemed like noon hour would never come.  But it finally did and after much discussion as to who would win the whipping bout, one o’clock finally came, too.  The general consensus seemed to be that Mr. Smith had taken on a challenge he may have reason to regret.  But I dare think there were many, like myself, who secretly hoped he’d win.
     We all gathered ‘round while Mr. Smith cut two switches from the boxelder tree.  He handed one to Rumps and they stood eyeing each other for a few seconds.  Then they were at it.  Or at least Mr. Smith was at it.  Boy did he make that switch sing a tune!  And Rumps was dancing to it.  After a minute of trying to get away from that switch, Rumps was ready to give up; but Mr. Smith just kept going.  Finally he stepped back and asked Rumps if he wanted to try it again.  Rumps shook his head.  For once in his life, it seems, he had had enough.
     Mr. Smith put his arm around Rumps’ shoulder and said, “Patrick, go get the balls and bats—let’s play ball.”
     And we did, all afternoon.  That’s how it was with Mr. Smith; we studied hard and we played hard.
     I think that day did something for Patrick; at least that’s what everyone called him after that.  He wasn’t pushy anymore, either.  You might say his regard for people, and peoples’ regard for him, moved forward in a positive way.  He seems to have done all right for himself.  A couple of weeks ago I noticed an article in the paper telling about his being named the president of some corporation in Houston.  I wonder if Mr. Smith happened to read it before he died?  (CVN, 135, pp. 1-2)

Mink Creek School 1905-1906, at the junction of Birch Creek and the road below the church, was used by 1896.

         Geographically, the original borders of Winder extended from Bear River on the south to the clay hills on the north, a distance of about eight miles.  Its west border includes the little mountain and goes east about five or six miles to the hills that slope into Riverdale.  In its earlier history Winder was comprised of three distinct sections, each known by a different name.  The northern end was known as “Roscoe” which was the Roscoe School District at the time.  The center part was known as “Poverty Flat.”  The southern end was known as “Battle Creek.”  These latter two designations comprised the Winder School District for many years.  “Battle Creek” is still distinguished by that name at times.
         The first settlers in Battle Creek came in 1863.  The settlement of Poverty Flat began in 1892.

    Treasureton’s first settlers came in 1868, settling on the east bank of Battle Creek.  This started the flow of settlers to this area.  The early settlers went to Clifton for school and church. Children stayed with friends and relatives.  Within a short period of time, a room was provided in various homes for school.  Billy Rhodehouse was probably the first school teacher.  In 1882 a school and church combination was built.

     In the 1920s there was a two-year high school as well as the elementary grades.  The Treasureton School District was well financed because of the taxes paid by Utah Power and Light for lines which passed through the community; but equalization of taxes in the county ended the district with all the east side becoming District No. 201.  In the fall of 1949, it was decided to send the students to Preston; thus, all that was left was the abandoned two-room stone building and a lot of happy memories.  The building was torn down after two or three years.[1]
     There was a Lower District School in 1901.  This was at Dave Sant’s place, now the Ray Sant farm (1970s)—north of Workman’s.  There was a gravel pit below this school.  The upper district school was at the Treasureton school/church site.  There was also a Rose Hill school a few miles north of the present Calcite mine[2].  This school was combined with one in the Grace area because only eight students were enrolled.
[1] The Oneida Stake, pp. 233-34      [2] The Hometown Album, No. 499

School Experience of Lillian Perkins
     J. G. Nelson taught school in Winder during the winter of 1905-06.  L. A. (Laren) Bright attended school there the same winter I did.  When I talked to him he said, “Oh yes, John McClurg taught school in Winder after J. B. (and he called him Stiff Finger) Nelson, which was during the winter of 1905-06 as I remember.”  He attended school there from the first year that little school house was built and named most if not all, the teachers who taught there.  That was the winter I was 8 years old and the first year I attended school, as we lived five miles from Clifton out on a dry farm and my parents didn’t send me to school before [I was 8].  It isn’t likely that I would forget who my teacher was, and especially that stiff finger which always seemed to be pointing. ( CVN No. 62, edited by Newell Hart,  December, 1963, p. 9; See also CVN 59.)

     For the early homesteaders, where to have school was a problem because they had no building.  Calysta Strickland, who was a teacher, solved the problem by inviting the children to come to her home where she taught them.  
     As more and more children came, something had to be done.  Joseph Hall built a new log stable on his homestead.  About the time it was finished, there was a great need for a school, so he invited patrons to use his new stable for this purpose.  This they gladly did and benches were made from slabs by the parents and the stable was fixed up as a school house.  Urminina Griffeth was the teacher at this school.
     In 1876-77, a new school/church house combination was built.  The settlers all donated for the purpose.  Amelia (Parmelia) Drury Matkin was the first teacher in this building.  Located three-fourths of a mile west of the church corner, it was built of logs into a long, one-room building with low windows.  The school faced east.  It was heated by a central stove.  A long bench hewn from logs with wooden pegs for legs ran along the front end where classes sat for recitation.  A bowery was built on the north side.  In the summer the young boys hauled green bows and piled them on top to furnish shade for all gatherings. 
     Charles Gilbert and Henry Bodily were appointed to supply the drinking water for school.  They carried it from the well on the James Hyde farm south of the school.  They used a long stout stick with a nick cut in the center where they hung the bucket full of water.  They each took an end of the stick and carried it back to school.  It was kept on a bench and a dipper hung above it that was used by all for drinking.
     Church was held here too, as well as dances, parties and entertainments.  During the time that the Mormon people were disenfranchised because of polygamy, no school was held at the building, but children were taught by different men who lived in the ward.
     The next school was a rock building somewhat larger and much better equipped for school.  It was located 1¼ miles west of the church corner.  In 1967 it was still on the Royal Wilson farm.   Another rock school was built a short distance east of the church corner.  Some grades were held here and others at the west school house.  Janitor work was done by the teacher and many a student who had to be “kept in” after school helped with the cleaning.
     The children walked or rode a horse to school.  In bad winters, those who lived a long distance from school were brought in sleighs or wagons by parents.
     In 1908, a red-brick school was built with four large rooms.  A two-story building with many windows was a welcome change.  It was many years before the four-rooms were filled with students.  Mr. R. J. Hammer and Miss Albertie Griffeth were the teachers.

Central School 1904-1973
     The Oneida Stake Academy building was completed in 1894; ten years later the Central was built in 1904; another ten years, 1914 and we had the Jefferson.  [6] 
     Work was begun on the Central School sometime after August, 1903—the month bids were called for—and finished in late 1905, a year later than expected.  Thus the old sandstone plaque in the open balcony, above the former archway entrance, read 1904.  Contract price by Joseph S. Geddes and C. J. Jensen was $16,135.

     The photo below was taken just after the Central school was completed in 1906.  The old frame school is barely visible on the right. The school was located on the present Ireland Bank corner on First East and Oneida. The contract price was $16,135.   The bell tower was removed in 1920.  Among the 1905-06 teachers were Ella Hulet, Edna Johnson, Olive Hansen, Rae Rogers, Mary D. Daley, NellieThomas, Mary Thomas, R. Leigh, May Eames, and Lizzie Thomas.  Pay was $40 to $50 per month.​
[6] Cache Valley Newsletter No. 32, edited by Newell Hart, p. 2

THE SILVER STAR SCHOOL
     Built in 1897, the name of the school comes from the beginning days.  Performing In a school play, a young girl wore a silver star made of lead as part of her costume. 
     Harold B. Lee, Principal, age 17:  “I was employed to teach my first school during the winter of 1916-17 at the Silver Star School, about five miles south of Weston, Idaho [near the Utah border].  Here in a one-room school, I had some real experience.  With about twenty to twenty-five pupils, I had most of the grades represented from the first to the eighth grade.  My program consisted of twenty-eight classes each day.  So conscientious was I that I would count the youngsters on the grounds, and if they were all there, I would ring the bell, although it was many times not much after 8:30 a.m.
     “This one-room school was the community center where all dances were held.  A banjo, violin, and a portable organ served as instruments in an orchestra.  The dances would go until midnight, when a halt was called while the women prepared their coffee, cake, and sandwiches, and the men went outside to get their whiskey and beer which had been hauled from Utida, the state line, and kept for the occasion.  Following this interlude the dance continued until daylight.”  [The Story of Harold B.Lee, Blaine M. Yorgason,  (Ogden, Utah, 2001), pp. 55-57.]   The photo was obtained on the internet.

     Basketball was introduced at the Academy in 1907.  This is the earliest known photo of an OSA team, that of 1908-09.  Standing:  Sylvan Weaver, Lonnie Carver, Clyde Packer, Sam Packer, Louis Nuffer, Herman Nuffer, Bert Gooch.  Front:  Coach Joseph Jensen (he went on to the Logan college--pre-USU) as coach and spent many years there), Bill ‘Nig’ Nuffer.   Picture from the Hometown Album No. 675.

     In the early days, children either walked to school or rode a horse.  Homes were far apart, transportation was slow, and the few roads were difficult to traverse.  Thus, there were many schools established in Franklin County (see map).   There was a school district per school.  Each school district was run by a school board of three of four trustees.  Schools were built within walking distance central to the area.
     As populations grew and people moved in who were not members of the LDS church, schools and churches were held in separate buildings.  Frame schools with wood floors and shingled roofs began to appear.  These usually had one or two classrooms, depending on the area, with one teacher for the lower grades, and a principal/teacher for the upper grades.  Most children did not attend school beyond the eighth grade, because they were either needed to help on the farm, to work somewhere else, or because no further schooling opportunities were available.  A person who completed the eighth grade was considered well educated.

1950's lunch box

     When the first schools were established, the community of Preston and its environs extended from Bear River on the west to the foothills on the east and from Worm Creek on the north to the Thomas ditch (now the Lewiston canal) on the south.[1]  Franklin County was part of Oneida County at that time.
[1] J. Howard Moon, A Centennial History of Schools of the State of Idaho, (commissioned by the Idaho School Boards Association, 1988), p. 183.  Information on the early schools also comes from this source.

     During the 1930s some of the women in the ward prepared a hot kettle of soup at home and took it over to the school house at noon.  Along with the sandwiches the students brought from home, this constituted the first school lunch for Riverdale pupils.   In 1947 the school obtained permission to serve hot lunches in the basement of the church house, and also to use the kitchen.  Cooks were then hired to fix a hot meal for the students.  Elaine Smith cooked for the school for some time and then Wanda Hess cooked from about 1950 to1960 when the school was closed and the students all went to Preston.  A Parent-Teacher organization was organized which helped greatly with the hot lunch program.
     Three trustees and a secretary made up the school board (the school was operated as an independent school district) the trustees hiring the teachers and overseeing and maintaining the buildings and grounds.  Nearly everyone in the ward took their turn as a trustee.
     In the fall of 1948 the schools in the county consolidated and the Eastside District #201 hired the teachers and placed them in the schools and also owned the buses and hired the drivers.
     After the students were consolidated into Preston, the school building was vacant until 1974 when it was taken down and the lot cleaned.[1]
[1] History of Riverdale, p. 148.

School Experience Of Earl Mcclurg 
     “In 1908 my father was hired as the school-master at Winder (Battle Creek).  Green and Caldwell Taylor and Orin Roper were the school trustees.  Mary, Emma, Larson and Leland Bright, Jim Taylor and his twin sisters, Heber, Nettie, Lillie and Jennie Winn, Leslie and Naoma Seamons, Rosella Hogan and brothers, Johnnie and Ethel Bench, Marion Winn, Earl, Jennie, Martha, Gladys and Vietta McClurg, Marley Winger, and a Loftis boy were a few of the students.
     “My sisters and I did the janitor work for the school, sweeping, dusting, cleaning off the blackboards and tending the big old pot-bellied stove that heated the room.  We came early on wintry mornings to fire the old furnace up and get the room warm.  For this we were paid five dollars a month.  The $45 for the season was divided equally among us and placed us in a very stable position financially.”   [“School Days in Franklin (Oneida) County at Turn of the Century,” by Earl McClurg,  from Cache Valley Newsletter No. 131, edited by Newell Hart, p. 4.]

 Memories of Heber E. Winn
        “…the old Battle Creek school was just north o Bear River bridge, approximately three-eighths of a mile.  Well do I remember that old school.  It was the first one I ever attended.  The building was log, two rooms, one story high and extended north and south along the road that reached down to the river.  There was a pond running parallel to it along the west side; it was about one-half mile long and it was an excellent skating pond in the winter.  It’s where I learned to skate.
      My first recollection was when I was about six years old.  My mother got me ready in the morning and started me out for school.  Pretty soon I became lonesome and returned home crying.  My mother quizzed me on why I returned home and I said, “You never introduced me to the teacher.”  So I didn’t go to school that winter.
      The next winter I went and I was the youngest one in school.  The older boys and girls were rather rowdy and sometimes caused problems because of lack of discipline.  One of the older boys was herding sheep along the side of the hill.  One day the students all vacated and ran off and spent the afternoon with this sheepherder.  I was the only one in school that afternoon but the teacher and I got along quite well and finished the day out.
      One day one of the older boys committed a slight misdemeanor and the teacher locked him in the coal shed.  The large girls began to whisper back and forth to each other; one raised her hand and asked permission to “go out.”  She’d go outside and dig dirt with her hands, or whatever she could find to dig with, from the outside of the shed and the boy would dig from the inside.  When she got tired she would go inside and up would go another hand.  The second, third and fourth girls continued that process until finally they succeeded in digging a tunnel through which the prisoner made his get-away.
      A young lady by the name of Emmaline Marler from Clifton came to teach school; she taught two or three years.  She and her sister lived in part of our home during the school season.  She married Cel’ Merritt.  She was an outstanding model young woman and gained the respect of everyone.
      Just before the holidays she would end all of the students outside for a few minutes.  One of the older girls would stay with her and when we returned there would be a pile of nuts and candy on our desks.  Jim Jensen was one of the teachers of that school; the boys had become more rowdy and they hired a man teacher to handle the boys.  He managed them very well and they went through the year all right.  They nicknamed him Bumpy.
      The number attending that school was about 15 students, comprised of:  the Joe Allen family, Jim Martin family, winn family, Ed Fuell family, and the Jensen family.  Besides being used for a school house the building served as a meeting house for the church, a recreation center, and finally a family residence of Oscar Seamons.  I don’t know of any pictures of the school.”   (CVN No. 162, edited by Newell Hart, p. 10+)

Etta Simmons Robbins, from Weston
     In the summer of 1900, Teachers’ Institute was held at Malad, Idaho for those wishing to take the examination to teach.  Certificates issued were for first, second and third grades.  I attended the Institute and obtained a second grade certificate.
     Later I took the examination in extra subjects and received a first grade certificate which would enable me to teach in any county in Idaho for three years.

Virginia Merrill Simmons
     I began teaching when I was 17.  Superintendent Condie asked a few of us to teach in1923.  We’d just graduated from Oneida Stake Academy, the first year it was changed to Preston High.  I had one summer of training—you could do that in those days—and I taught up in Mapleton.  The building was that cement block school up on the hill.  It isn’t there any more.  And that’s where I got my start, up in that beautiful canyon that the Merrills always call home.   (CVN No. 125, p. 8-9)

Cassie Stephenson Bell, from Mapleton/Preston
     At that time (19-teens) a high school graduate could go to summer school for eight weeks and receive a teaching certificate for one year.  Our parents encouraged Loran and I to go to school at Idaho Technical Institution, Pocatello. [Formerly prospective teachers went to Malad.]  About the middle of June we registered.  I lived at a girl’s dormitory, and Loran lived at a men’s.  There were other girls there from Preston so I enjoyed this experience.  The courses prescribed for a teaching certificate were:  methods in reading, penmanship, arithmetic, grammar and elementary composition, geography, American history and government, physiology and hygiene, instruction in Idaho civil government and school law, Idaho course of study for elementary grades, and school management.  Yes we crammed.  I successfully completed the term and obtained a teaching position at Kellertown Mink Creek school [one of four elementary schools in that area].  This position was obtained through the influence of Asael’s [my future husband] brother, Hyrum Bell, who was a trustee.
     The following summer, after I married Asael, I again attended summer school at Pocatello and went back to Mink Creek to teach in the fall.  I boarded with Mabel and Hyrum Bell.  The summer of 1924 found me again at summer school.  For this term the teaching certificate was in force for three years instead of just one..

Memories of August Nuffer
     The first school that was held in Mapleton was in the winter of 1886.  Bishop Perkins let the people of the community have a school room and so they all got together and employed Hyrum Johnson as their teacher.  Everyone from seven years up to 30, married men and young ladies, went to school there all in one room.  Some came from Franklin and Nashville.  I was feeding cattle for Harrison Thomas that winter and lived at the Olive Sweet home.  She had to board me as she was living in their house, and they paid $150 for my schooling and a 45c book.  Besides the feeding I had to chop all the wood for the family.  I was 15 years old.    
      In 1899 I was called as second counselor to Bishop Edward Perkins in the Mapleton ward.  I was chairman of the school board for six years.  While on the board I had a schoolhouse built in the upper end of the district, with Harrison R. Merrill as the first teacher.  After that the children of the upper end did not have so far to go to school.  The children in the lower part of the ward met in the old meetinghouse.   O. J. Merrill was the ward clerk and also the clerk of the school board.  (CVN No. 63, edited by Newell Hart, January, 1974, p. 3)

 Memories of Dr. L. V. Merrill  
     The school house was down south of where the church is now—just one big room—all the classes were in it.  The only teacher I remember is Julia Southerland who was from Georgetown.  All the Merrill kids and the Naefs went to that one-room school.  Sometimes we’d walk along the stream banks to school to make it more interesting.  (CVN No. 143, edited by Newell Hart, p. 5.)  

     In 1916 a new red brick school house was built which was adequate to accommodate all the students.  In winter when the snow was so deep, the trustees would get up before daylight and drag a sleigh sideways to clear the roads.

    In the North End School, students brought their own lunches until 1924.  Then the PTA furnished one hot dish a day.  Soup, hot chocolate, stews, puddings, or noodles were some of the dishes.  Meals were cooked by Myrtle Choules at her home and students were sent there at noon to carry it back to the school.

       Because of the distance between the scattered homes and poor roads, two schools were operating in 1878.   Hans Rasmussen was teaching school in the meeting house and Charlotte Keller taught in a log cabin about two miles north of the first meeting/school house.  The teachers were paid by assessing each child fifty cents per three-month term.  Anna Keller was the next teacher to teach in Mink Creek.  She was the first teacher holding a teacher’s certificate.  Families were moving in quite rapidly and by 1882, a school district was established. [2]
[2] All information for these schools came from the History of Mink Creek, The Oneida Stake, and the Hometown Album.

     It was during this time that the Oneida Stake Academy was established in Preston.  An LDS Church institution, the Academy provided a high school education for area students.  Those who wished to attend high school from the outlying areas usually boarded with someone in Preston during the week and went home on week-ends.

The Riverdale block schoolhouse.  This picture was taken in 1914.

WESTON SCHOOLS
     The first school in Weston was built in 1869.  An 18’x30’ log structure, John Clark was the first teacher.  It was replaced in 1892 with the school pictured on the previous page.   Nine years later in 1901, the Weston schoolhouse was remodeled and two grades of high school were added.  In 1922 a new high school was built on the signal flag hill.  [Previously, this hill had been used to send signals to Richmond.  Flags were used for this purpose.]   That same year Weston High School’s basketball team won the state tournament, the Intermountain tournament, and went on to participate in the national high school tournament, losing by one point.

Egypt Schools

Oxford Schools

The first Preston school building as it looked city park.

     Egypt, the area north of Preston, (originally 5th Ward) was used by early Franklin settlers for the summer grazing of livestock.  The first homestead home was built in 1866.  As more settlers arrived a school was needed.  During this time period Preston, Egypt and Whitney areas were almost one, and they share the story of the first school.  Other details are included in the Preston and Whitney School stories.
     The first meetinghouse/school was built of logs up to the square on the farm of Ann Lundgreen.  As still more families settled in the area it was decided the building should be in a more central location.  It was moved to the south end of the Soren Peterson farm, about one half mile east of Worm Creek, where it was finished in 1879.  It had a dirt roof.  Currently there is a DUP monument marking the spot east on 4th South.[1]
[1]The Oneida Stake, p. 205. 

Glencoe School

Dayton School Story
     An amusing drama was played out in the first-grade room when a young man tried to rescue his beloved from the clutches of the irate school principal.  The boy and girl were part of the cast of the operetta being presented by the school that year.  The whole student body was in the east room practicing for the upcoming production.  The girl in question became unruly and was reprimanded by the principal who was also the music director.  She took exception to the reprimand and called him an SOB.  This turned out to be a very poor choice of words which she soon realized.  She broke ranks and ran for the safety, she thought, of the girls’ basement, the principal in hot pursuit.  The boy’s part in the production required him to have a sword, and he came into the action when his passion for the safety of his girlfriend prevailed over his good judgment.  He hastened to the window, cast his sword out and then climbed out himself and scaled down the 12-foot wall with the intention of rushing to her side, the sword as his weapon for her defense.  Unfortunately, he wasn’t able to reach her side because one of the teachers had prudently locked the front door so he could not get back into the building.  Only a few know how the conflict was settled or what retribution was administered.  However, these facts are certain:  no one was injured, no property was damaged or destroyed, and the hot-blooded suitor was left to cool his heels on the front steps in sub-zero weather with only his sword to keep him warm until the bell rang.

This picture of the Yellow Jacket school was taken from the Hometown Album.

 Transportation
      Most children walked to school.  Some were able to ride a horse, but three or four children from one family might show up at school on the same horse.  In the coldest months of winter, the family sleigh was used.
      The first busses used for transporting students were horse-drawn wagons carrying a factory built body.  The district owned two of these up-to-date contraptions.  They were rather box-like, oblong bodies with windows all around.  Benches were built along both sides and the driver of the horses sat inside.  In the winter, the body was loaded onto a bob sleigh and a small stove was installed.  In at least one instance, the larger of the two “busses” was used as a combination hearse and passenger coach.
      These horse-drawn busses were eventually replaced by motorized busses.  These consisted of a wood frame covered with canvas and mounted on a flatbed truck.  This outfit was owned and operated by an individual who had a contract to transport students to Preston.  Later, contractors bought used busses from other districts. 
      The first factory-built yellow bus owned by the district was purchased the summer of 1936 and carried the first group of Dayton students to attend Weston High School that fall.
      Dayton students continued to attend high school in Weston until 1945 when the Weston building burned to the ground.  Then students from Weston and Dayton were bussed to Clifton and crowded into their already inadequate building.  This make-do arrangement continued to 1949 when the West Side High School was built and the entire west side consolidated into one district.[4]
      In the 1930s, grades 9-12 in Oxford went to Downey.  Dan Hatch’s Chevy truck, with a canvas cover was the first school bus from Oxford to Downey.  Belton Hatch may have driven it.  The second truck was owned by Bill Crowshaw;  his son Ernest drove.  It was covered somewhat like a sheep herders wagon.  In 1934 Idaho’s District #2 bought a 35 passenger bus.  Vern Henderson went to get it.  He picked up the chassis and drove it 50 miles sitting on the gas tank to another plant for the body.[5]
[4] Dayton Schools            [5] Oxford Schools

The Log School
     In 1877, the location of most of the homes was east, southeast, and south of Preston. [Text Box: The first Preston school building as it looked city park.]   As the population increased in these areas, the people decided to build a school and meeting house.  Under the direction of E. R. Lawrence, who was presiding Elder of the Worm Creek Branch, logs were brought from the canyons and the building was put up to the square during the winter of 1878-79.  It was located about two and one-half miles east of Preston on the place now occupied by James H. Jensen.    Early in 1879, a dispute arose among the settlers that the building was not centrally located and some would have to walk further than others.  So the logs that had been built up to the square, under the direction of Nahum Porter, were moved a mile west where the DUP marker now sits (east on 4th South).  

Memory of Stan Hawkes
     Mark Cafferty was the guy who delivered packages and other stuff in his one-horse dray.  He had one hook arm.  He lived across from the school.  He had a cow that kept coming on to our campus.  She was spoiling our sittin’ grass.  Guys from our chemistry class put a little salt on her tail.  That is, we put on some carbon disulphide, the stuff they used to put on rodeo bucking horses to soup ‘em up.  It’s illegal now.  It evaporates so fast it burns their skin, drives them crazy.  Anyway, that cow took off like lightening and was back in her own corral across the street in no time.  The cow was cured.”  (CVN No. 80, edited by Newell Hart, p. 3

     In 1914 the common school district which had been changed from District No 38 to District 5, was bonded to build a new school house.  This building was a 44 x 40 feet,  two-roomed, white brick structure which at that time was a great asset to the community.  From that time on grades one through eight inclusive were taught with enrollment sometimes reaching as high as forty-five students.  The school district was consolidated with the schools of Franklin County in 1949.  The pupils were transported to Preston and Whitney by bus.[1]
      In 1959 the vacant building was put up for sale.  The Presbyterian Church bought the building and it was moved 12 miles to Preston through the empty Glendale Reservoir.  It now sits on the corner of 206 East 200 North.  An addition was built in 2005.
[1] The Oneida Stake, pp. 139-140.

     In 1909 the school board consisted of George H. Carver, president; Nephi Larson, secretary; R. P. Stokes, Dr. A. R. Cutler, Joseph Johnson, and George D. Casto.  The principal was J. W. Condie.  The phone number was 133.  The faculty can be seen in Hometown Album #832.[7]
     “In 1914, the school board members were George H. Carver, J. N. Larsen, Nephi Larson, Dr. Allen R. Cutler, and Atty. A. W. Hart.  There was great excitement when the Jefferson cornerstone was laid.  (Stan Hawkes says all the Central kids put their names in the depository).  In the spring of 1913, the Central kids staged a demonstration, marching 800 strong all over town with banners demanding a new building.  The Central housed all eight grades and handled 900 kids!”[8]
[7] CVN No. 169, page 1; information taken from Central school letterhead.           [8] Ibid. quoting from the Southeastern Advocate, a Preston Newspaper

WESTON GRADE SCHOOL                  

     In 1874, Joseph Perkins left Franklin and settled on Cub River and built a house.  He was the first settler in the region known as St. Joseph, then Mapleton, and is now called Cub River.

     The first school in Mapleton was held in the winter of 1886.    Bishop Perkins let the people of the ward have a place for a school room.   The area people employed Hyrum Johnson as their teacher.  All the people from seven years up to 30, married men and young ladies included, went to the little one-room school.
      Later the first church building, nicknamed the “Scout House, was used for a school.  Children from one end of the canyon to the other attended this school. Some children traveled distances of up to six miles.  This was a long distance, and in the winter it was almost impossible for them to get to school.

     Information about the Battle Creek and Banida Schools came from The Hometown Album, by Newell Hart,  The Oneida Stake, :  100 Years of LDS History in Southeast Idaho,, 1987, pages 95,252-253; and A Centennial History of Schools of the State of Idaho, by J. Howard Moon (Commissioned by the Idaho school Boards Association, 1988), p. 193.

Picture No. 131 from The Hometown Album.  From left:  Franklin’s fourth school, the third school, and the old opera house.  The fourth school was built in 1916.  Franklin had a four-year high school here from 1924-1946.  The third school was built before the turn of the century.  James Ira Young states in his History of Franklin (pages 225-6) “A new brick school house was constructed in Franklin in 1899.  It contained four large rooms and was built at a cost of $7,000.  It was constructed just south of the meeting house.  School commenced in October with 150 students.  More attended after the harvest and autumn farm work closed for the year.  In 1899 there were 90 families in Franklin, or a total of 733 people.

      In 1893, School District #38 was organized.  Mary Thompson was the first teacher.  Classes were held in the one-room church 22 x 30, at Glendale. 
      In 1901, one end of the log church house was removed and an additional frame building 16 x 34 feet was built on to it, forming a “T” making more room for church and school.  It remained a one-room school, grades one through seven being taught. 
      In 1910, with Thomas Perkins as principal, the trustees approved the dividing of the school into two rooms by drawing a heavy curtain across the room, thus making two classrooms.  Leland I. Auger was the first teacher in the primary grades one through three.  His services were given free of charge to the district.  In1911, Alta J. Auger became the first paid teacher in the primary grades.

Winder Area Schools

Memories of the Clifton School by Sarah Jane “Sadie” Sant Fuller, 1931-32
     I turned six years old in 1915 and started to school in September.  I stood in awe of the teacher.  Her name was Sarah Gerrard and I had her for my first three years of school.  She was from England and spoke with a strong English accent and had a beautiful singing voice.  I had a great fear of failing into the “donkey class” as the slower learners were called.
      Mrs. Gerrard always had singing in the morning.  She drilled us soundly in phonics for at least three months before we were taught to read.  The thrill of my first reader was wonderful.  I took it home every night.  Lining up my little sisters and brother, I “taught school.”  My sister Nona learned the entire story of the “Little Red Hen Found a Seed” word perfect.  When she started to school the next year, Mrs. Gerrard was amazed that she could apparently read so well.  Then she asked Nona to read the story backwards starting at the end and saying the words.  Nona stopped and thought for a moment, then she said, “The little seed found a hen.”

Memories of Reny Jensen
     I started in kindergarten in 1918.  I had two teachers:  Miss Belnap and Mrs. Barlow.  Miss Belnap later married Dr. Allen R. Cutler, Jr.; Mrs. Barlow lost her husband Wilford in World War I.  Sometime later she married Claude Hawkes, who taught school at the Jefferson.  I hope I have this correct.
     In the first grade I had Mrs. Mary Dalley.  Downstairs we went to the second grade.  My teacher there was Miss Wakley.  Then upstairs (top level) to the third grade, I had Miss Green, and from there we went to the Jefferson for the 4th grade.[11]
[11] CVN No. 137, p. 9

The Strawberry School North of Mink Creek
     The original log structure of the Strawberry School was replaced during the early 1900s with a small frame building.  It was east of the Lars Nelson home.  A sketch made by Edna Steffenson Casperson (a former student of Miss Simmonds) shows fences, a straw stack, a stack yard, and shrubbery by the little school, with high hills in the background.  The school was west of the present highway. 
     Before Miss Simmonds, the teachers were Nettie Pratt, Margaret Grave from Weston, and Chancey Barney from Blackfoot.  Others who taught after Miss Simmonds were Bernice Dudley from Clifton, Mabel Purkey, Ella Hawkes, and May Underwood. 
     Much of the success of the current school system can be attributed to the integrity of those who received the rudiments of learning in the “one-room school houses” of more than century ago.  (CVN No. 106, edited by Newell Hart, August, 1977,  p. 1-4)

Consolidation

     The east room on the first floor held the first and second grades.  It also had the school’s only piano.  The seventh and eighth grades were on this same floor in the room on the west side of the building.  This was usually the principal’s room also.  The third and fourth grades met in the room between the east and west rooms.  The other classes met on the second floor.  Sometimes there would be only one grade to a room and sometimes there would be a vacant room.  If there was a vacant room, it generally was the middle room on the second floor, and it could be equipped with basketball hoops and used as a gym.  Each of the classrooms was large and spacious and the halls of the school were also large enough to allow coat hanger space, as well as adequate circulation space for the students.

The Banida School

CEDARVILLE SCHOOLS

     The first school house built in Riverdale (1882) was built by donations from parents.  It was built on the property now owned by Jack Thomas, and was located west of his present home.  This was formerly the Vernon Jensen Home.  It was a one-room building made of logs which the settlers brought from the canyon.  This building also served as a church house and for recreation.  It was heated with a wood-burning stove.  The floor was rough boards and when one floor would wear out and get knotty, another was laid on top of it.
     Charlotte Keller of Mink Creek was the first teacher of the lower Riverdale section.    Double desks were used and the writing material was a slate.  Anyone from six to twenty years of age who wished to attend was welcome.  There was no class division, all would go in one group.  In order to graduate from the eighth grade they would have to attend the school in Preston to complete their work.  Students were able to go to school only when it was best for their parents to let them go.
     The children living on the north side of the river would have to ford the river to attend.  In the winter when the river was frozen, they could come across on the ice.  In the spring when ice was breaking up and the runoff was heavy, it was almost impossible to cross.
     William T. VanNoy taught school at the Falls.  Martha Nelson, daughter of William G. Nelson conducted a school in her home.  This was attended by her brothers and sisters and a few neighbor children.  Benjamin Edwards kept school one winter in the old Vail home which stood in the field west of the old Eli S. Forsgren home.  By this time the school at the Falls and the Nelson home were both discontinued and all the children on the north side of the river attended here.  Thereafter the only school in the valley was held in the lower Riverdale section.
     About 1900 the school building as moved to the north side of what is now the church house lot.  This seemed a more central location for the entire membership of the ward.  Here it was used for the same purposes as before until a church house and a school house were built to replace it.  It was moved to the Wren Wright place on the south corner of the James Woolf property.  Later it was moved down to the Oren Packer place.
     In 1909-10 a new cement block school building was built.  It had two rooms with a hall between which was used for the entrance as well as a cloak room.  This building was heated with a big pot-bellied stove in each room.  The last few years it was heated by an oil furnace with a blower that heated both rooms with forced hot air.  

     Two teachers were hired and the grades were divided with four grades in each room.  This made it possible for students to graduate from the eighth grade and then enter high school in Preston.

School Lunch
     The pioneer children brought their own lunch from home. It might be something as simple as a piece of bread spread with lard, or an apple.  Children during this era loved apples.  They were lucky to receive an orange at Christmastime.  Lunch was carried to school in a bucket.  Sandwiches were wrapped in a cloth.  Children brought their own lunch to school until the 1930s.  Women then prepared a pot of soup at their home and carried it to school at noon to go with the sandwiches.  It wasn’t until later that kitchens were built in the school buildings and a cook was hired to feed the children a hot lunch.  Many students still brought their own lunches.   Lunch pails were very popular in the 1950s.  If you were lucky enough to live close to the school, you went home for lunch.

Weston Area Schools

Consolidation
     In the early days, there were several school districts—one for each area, and sometimes one per school.  Districts operating in this era were Banida, Clifton, Dayton, East side (Egypt), Franklin, Fairview, Glencoe, Glendale, Mapleton, Mink Creek, Riverdale, Rose Hill, Silver Star, Treasureton, Weston, Weston Creek, Whitney and Winder.  Gradually, as transportation improved and district costs increased, districts began to consolidate.  Finally, students were bussed either to an East Side School District school, or a West Side School District school.
     On December 29, 1971, the East Side and West Side held a school election.  There was a single issue:  should the two districts merge and have but one high school for the entire county?  West Side High and Preston High would have a new name … except that the proposition failed.  East Side said yes, the West Side said no.  both sides had to have a majority.   “We’re not down to one – yet,”  observed Newell Hart.”[3]
[3] CVN No. 27, edited by Newell Hart, p. 2

Difficulties Staying in School

BANIDA SCHOOL
      School in Banida was first held in the one-room church house.  Ione Maughan was the first teacher; she was succeeded by many others. 
      The Banida District School was built in 1915 and was used until the spring of 1963.  This school had two rooms with a recreation hall in the basement.  All the heating was done by coal stoves.  Gasoline lights were first used; then carbide lights were installed; finally, electricity provided the power.  The first eight grades were taught in the upper two rooms of the school.  In 1924-25 and 1925-26, the ninth and tenth grades were taught in the recreation hall by J. Bert Sumsion of Springville, Utah. 

Ann Hansen describes her early schooling:
     Young and old went to school together, and sat in big double desks.  You might long for something to read besides the textbook, but there was nothing for you.  School whippings, the dunce cap, and the water bucket with a dipper for all were the order of the day.  The teacher was supposed to be a paragon of knowledge, and a master disciplinarian and was often challenged by bullies.  He kept the fire going in the big pot-bellied stove where those who sat near it roasted, and those in the far corners froze.  The three 4’s were taught with no frills.  A spelling match was held every Friday.  Whisper medicine, a concoction of bitter herbs, was given with the same spoon to all who merited it [those who giggled or talked].  You raised one finger when you wanted to go to the outside toilet.  Dropouts during the working season were common.  One who graduated from the eighth grade was truly educated.  You fought to survive, and in spite of all, you were a happy youngster. (CVN No. 129, p. 4)

Mapleton School

     The school had four rooms:  a small room for grades 1-4, and the big room for grades 5-8 on the east, a small gymnasium on the southwest corner, and a small apartment for the principal on the northwest corner.  The principal’s room had the only indoor toilet.  The school was heated by a pot-bellied stove in the aisle [hall] between classrooms.  The stove, which used both wood and coal, was maintained and filled by the principal.   There was also a water fountain in the hall.  Students had to go outside to go to the bathroom.  There were two outhouses, one for boys and one for girls, on the north side of the school.  The doors to the outhouses opened out, so it was easy to bar the door and lock someone in.  Students were always counted when they came in from recess, so if one student was missing, the outhouse was checked first.
     On the east side of the school was a small playground that included a merry-go-round, teeter totters, and a giant stride.  Students also played games like Annie-I-Over [who could throw a ball over the top of the school to the other side?) and marbles.
     Arlando Larsen’s teachers in the 1940s were Francis Goodlieb, principal and teacher for grades 5-8, and Mrs. Wright who taught grades 1-4.  How did the teacher manage to teach four grades at once?  According to Mr. Larsen, there were three to five children per grade, and each grade sat in a separate row.  At the beginning of the school day, the teacher would make assignments and get everyone working.  Then she would work with each class individually.  Students not getting individual attention were expected to work quietly on their own.  However, “we had what we called a ‘peanut bust.’  Everyone brought peanuts to school, and when we thought we had studied long enough and needed a break, we threw peanuts at the teacher.  This usually got us a ten-minute recess.”[6]
     Lunch was supplied from home and usually consisted of a sandwich plus whatever else was available.  In the 1930s, a government program helped furnished a hot meal to supplement what was brought from the household.  Cooking the meal from her home across the street from the school, Eudora Holiday prepared a large amount of soup or barbeque, put it in her children’s wagon, and hauled it across the street to serve the students.  Dishes and utensils were supplied at the school and kept in a cupboard.  An hour was allotted for lunch.
     Transportation to school was provided by “Jack’s pony” as they called it, which meant everyone walked. One man in Egypt had an army command car which would accommodate eight people.  It was called the “Egypt jeep.”  This vehicle was the “bus” for high school students who attended in Preston.  “My twin brother Arlo and I always had farm chores in the morning, and usually missed the bus, so we ran all the way to PHS,” said Mr. Larsen.  “After graduation we were both on the track team at USU.  I guess we got a lot of practice just getting to school.”     Over Christmas break in 1944, the brick school caught fire and burned to the ground.  Mr. Goodlieb and Mrs. Wright had to find teaching jobs elsewhere, so students in grades 1-7 went to school in Whitney.  However, it was thought important for the eighth graders to finish the year and graduate so they could go to high school the next year.  Beatrice Johnson and Mary Keller, both trained teachers, taught the five eighth graders in the basement of the 5th ward church from January to May.  All five students were able to graduate and move on to Preston High School.[7] 

        The history of educational services began here with the arrival of the first settlers.  Franklin was the first permanent settlement in Idaho.   Established in 1860, educating the area children soon became a priority.  In the early days everyone lived in the “fort” where all the houses faced inward.  The first year the school was in the home of Hannah Comish who was the teacher.  This was the first white school taught in the state of Idaho.  Her home was located on the east side of the fort where she taught about 20 pupils.   The school term lasted only three months in the winter as the children’s help was needed to help establish the new settlement.  This school in her home was necessary while the community started a log school in the fall of 1860, which was completed in the spring of 1861.

Teaching In A One-Room Log School House In Idaho
By Etta Simmonds Robbins, originally of Weston
     In the summer of 1900, Teachers’ Institute was held at Malad, Idaho for those wishing to take the examination to teach.  Certificates issued were for first, second and third grades.  I attended the Institute and obtained a second grade certificate.
     Later I took the examination in extra subjects and received a first grade certificate which would enable me to teach in any county in Idaho for three years.
     I applied and obtained a school at Strawberry Canyon, located seven miles north of Mink Creek community.  It was horse and buggy days.  I had not taken into consideration the remoteness of the place.  Few houses could be seen as one traveled the rough road from the town of Mink Creek.  In stormy weather the mud, hub deep, clung to the wheels, only to drop in great heaps by the roadside; great clouds of dust obscured the vision in dry weather.  In winter, snow piled up in great drifts and to a considerable depth.  On either side of the road were many ravines and hills, and tucked away in secluded spots were small farmhouses often overflowing with healthy, happy children.  The families were chiefly of Scandinavian descent.
     The time arrived to begin the school after traveling all day in a “white top buggy.”   We arrived at the Lars Nelson home.  School was to begin the next morning and after breakfast I was taken to the one-room log school house on a hillside.  It looked as formidable as a prison to me.  This was to be my first experience as a pedagogue and there was a great struggle within me as I bade good-bye and my folks drove away.  I was left to take charge.
     Strange children eyed me with apprehension and I noticed that several of the children were larger than I was.  I learned later that, owing to the fact that a very strict man had taught the school the year before, and ruled with an iron hand, some of the older pupils had decided to manage the school to some extent. 
     The interior of the room was similar to many school houses in remote places.  The walls were roughly hewn logs white-washed with lime.   The central heating system was a large pot-bellied stove which stood in the center of the room.  Its heating capacity was sufficient to keep the room comfortably warm during the bitter cold days, if continually refueled with the mahogany wood cut and hauled from nearby canyons.  Billows of smoke swirled out into the room when the door was opened, and soon transformed the white-washed walls to a drab gray.
     On either side of the room were two small windows; at the right of the one door on a small bench was kept a large bucket of water carried from the creek that meandered its way at the foot of the hill.  By the use of a long-handled dipper thirst was quenched with never a thought of microbes or mixing of germs.  Along the wall left of the door two tiers of large nails had been driven into the logs on which to hang wraps.  A blackboard extended along the opposite wall.  A small desk held a large school ell and several extra books.  On both sides of the room were two rows of desks or seats.  The large pupils occupied the larger back ones, towering above the smaller children in the first rows.

     A rapid segregation transformed the students into separate personalities with their individual ways and features.  My work became more interesting as I perceived the interest taken by the children.  The grades ranged from first to seventh.  It required planning and ingenuity to manage all the grades and give each pupil time and attention.
     Teachers were expected to be just, patient and extremely self-disciplined; often when under stress, the blackboard served as a safety valve, and as I put work on the board I gained composure.  The pupils in the Strawberry School were very normal children and youths, sometimes good, and at times not so good; but never very bad; each had his or her own personality. (CVN No. 106)

Seven High Schools 
      At one time, the small county of Franklin had seven high schools.  They were located in Mink Creek, Franklin, Treasureton, Whitney, Preston, Weston and Clifton.  Four of the schools were equipped and staffed to teach through the twelfth grade.  Whitney and Mink Creek offered only a two-year program.  Oxford’s high school students went either to Swan Lake or Clifton, depending on which end of Oxford they lived.[2]
[2] Dayton Schools

Memory of Elva Taylor (Tanner): 
     “I went there beginning in 1902 and attended three years.  My girlfriend and I got our hands stung there once.  I was a giggler—we were sitting in those double desks—and the teacher came and made us both put out our palms.  We got swatted so bad we both had to stay home from school the next day.”
     Her teachers were Nellie Spidel for first grade, and Joseph Thomas for second and third grades. 
     After it closed, the school was moved to the Eames corral and used for storage.

     In the early 1900s, square brick schools with three floors were popular.  The basement levels had indoor toilet facilities and had one large classroom for the beginner classes.  The second floor was for the middle grades and the third floor was for the upper grades.  Several teachers were now employed.   There was no such thing as school lunch;  children still brought a lunch from home.

The Longfellow School in Clifton, Idaho shortly after its completion in 1904

Oneida Station School
     A small school operated at Oneida Station as part of the county system.  It later combined with Mink Creek.

 Memories of Lael J. Littke   
     I started school in the old yellow school house that is now full of hay bales.  We rode to school in a horse-drawn bus, then, which rode on wheels  during the fall and spring but which was switched to runners in the winter.  The first and second graders had the room in the basement of that old schoolhouse, and my first year was the last year that room was used because the water poured in through cracks in the walls when it rained and threatened to drown us in our seats as we concentrated on Dick and Jane.  I remember one of the most exciting events of my early years was when we dramatized “The Three Billy Goats Gruff” in that schoolroom and the bridge under which the Troll lived (a long bench) actually spanned a substantial pool of water.  (It lent reality to the production.)
     The next year we had a motor bus and the first and second graders went to school in the Scout Room of the church since the new red schoolhouse was not quite finished.  It was in 1938-39 that we first went to the red schoolhouse, and I’ll never forget the thrill of that year because the new school actually had lavatories inside, something not a great many of us had in our homes at that time.  No longer did we have to trudge up the hill and shiver in those cold privies while the boys pranced around outside screaming that they could “see.”   (CVN No. 62, edited by Newell Hart, December, 1973, p. 5)

The Weston Grade School was remodeled in 1901.  Picture from The History of Weston, by Jay D. Schvaneveldt

Teachers in the later years in the area were Marie Danielson, Ester Danielson, J. Neff Booth and his sister, Tira Wilson, Mary Evans, Howard Peterson, Marlow Woodward, Gladis Forsgren Johnson, Zenas Black, Eualiah Crane, Weslie Mitten, Virginia Hawks, Orlena Foots, Elaine Westerberg, Sarah Westerberg, Deveral Hurst, John Olsen, Marian Jensen, Enoch Nelson, Leo Rallison, Owen Casperson, Cassie Stephen Bell, Daline Draper, Valor Ransom, Ramona R. Crane, Miss DeWinter, Deveral Turner, Golda Crane, Don Nice Crane, Karen Crane, and others.

Teacher Training 

The memories of the Academy in the CVN are so numerous that hopefully they will be compiled in a separate book.  

THE NORTH END SCHOOL
     The first schoolhouse in the north end of Fairview was a one-room log building.  It was located two miles north of the church house corner.  Built in 1878, all grades were under one teacher.  Some of the first teachers were Mr. Jensen, John Flax, Rose Goodwin, and Geneva Taylor.  The benches were cut from logs with wooden pegs for legs.  A barrel-shaped stove stood in the center.  The children wrote on slates on their knees.  Later benches were made for two with shelves to hold books.  The windows were low and sometimes students were expelled for looking out.  Myrtle Choules remembers that parents hung old clothes up for curtains to the windows and later they were painted.

Early Schools
     As in all newly settled towns, establishing a school was a problem.  The building of homes and clearing land for planting had to take precedence over the building of a school, as survival claimed the time and energies of the earliest settlers.  Indian troubles caused frequent interruptions and sometimes moves to another area.    But, parents wanted their children to have an education, so the earliest schools were held in private homes.  Generally, in this area, school was only held for three months in the winter.  The rest of the year, children were needed to help out on the farms.

STORY FROM THE ROOSEVELT SCHOOL
     “One Christmas time they were having a program at my father’s school at Roosevelt.  He took our family in the sleigh through the deep snow.  While we were attending the program the deep snow slid off the roof of the school house and buried the horses and sleigh.  Everyone ran out of the building and began to dig out the horses.  Soon it was all righted and we were able to drive home afterward.”  (Earl McClurg, in Cache Valley Newsletter No. 131, p. 4.)

      The 1930s school buildings were brick, but were rectangular instead of square.  There were usually two floors.   School plays were held in the largest classroom.  There might be a principal’s office.  This is when school lunch started, but it was usually cooked off-campus and brought to the school.
     With the improvement of roads and transportation, schools and school districts began to consolidate.  West Side children went to Dayton, and Eastside school children went to Preston.  All outlying schools were either torn down, or used for other purposes. 

Pictured above is the class of 1916.  Hazel Evans was the teacher.  Top:  Della Oliverson, Anona Porter, Della Peterson (near teacher), Vilda Bennett (near teacher), Carolyn Oliverson, Katherine Nielsen.  Center:  Myron Day, elmer Chatterton, Otto Gregory, _____, _____, Delbert Sharp, Ezra Woolley, LaVon Chatterton, Ophelia Long (by wall).  Front:  Elbert Oliverson, Gilbert Oliverson, Lillie Burbank, Arminta Burbank, _____, Dursteler, Mike Day, Clifford Nielsen.[1]
[1] The Hometown Album, No.820.

Memories of Horace Owen
     I was going to the Central School about 1919 and my second grade teacher was Marguerity Dalley (later Mrs. Charlie Ainscough).  Well, one day a snowball smashed against the window by the teacher’s desk.  Miss Dalley had had that kind of trouble before and so the kids watched eagerly as she approached the window—but there the action stopped and the kids were left to wonder why.  The culprit was no kid; it was Charlie Ainscough.[12]

[12] CVN No. 67, p. 10+

THE LINCOLN SCHOOL
     Located on the Dayton to Weston road, “the old building was a frame school, about 30’ x 50’.  The entrance was in the center of the gable end, facing east.  It was used as a church as well as for school.  Dances and other activities were also held there.  A baseball diamond was situated near the school building.  The school was north of Joe Coburn, Jr.’s house (see map), a lane west, a little more than a block to the school house.  The school house had a rock foundation and as it was built on the slope of the hill, facing east, the foundation was higher (or appeared higher) than the west end of it.  Three or four steps led up to a board platform at the entrance.  I am not sure, but I believe it was painted red.  Sagebrush surrounded the old school.  Mary Hulet was a teacher there.
     It was later replaced with a brick school which was south of the old building and closer to the highway.  (Letters from Earl McClurg to Newell Hart, printed in the Cache Valley Newsletter Nos.  131 & 132)

     The first school house was built at Oxford in 1867 and was made of logs with a dirt floor and log slabs for seats.  Henry N. Howell was the teacher.  This served until 1880 when a more suitable building was built.

BATTLE CREEK SCHOOL
     For many years school was held in people’s homes.  Esther Winn taught school free of charge in her own home; all who wished to come, young or old, were welcomed.  The first public school was taught by Ida McCoy in part of Charles Paull’s store building.  Families paid tuition.    In 1905, a cement block building was erected in the center of Battle Creek and Poverty Flat to be used as a school house/church house combination.  J. G. Nelson was the first school teacher, followed by John McClurg, Albertie (Bertie) Griffiths and others.  Before this school, there was an earlier school near where the town was—about half way between the monument and Bear River to the south. (CVN No. 144, p. 3).
       In 1914, brick school building was erected in the Roscoe District.  This was a two-room facility.  For some years, all the children from Battle Creek north attended school in this building. 

     The first Glencoe School is pictured on the left, probably built about 1882.  It doubled as the church.  The Glencoe School District 23 was later added, a double wing building.  The church met in the old school until the new church was built.   After the Mink Creek School was built in 1937, the Glencoe School was discontinued for financial reasons.   

Memory of Norman Chatterton
     [The Cherryville School] was a one-room frame building, with rustic on the outside and plaster inside.  It had soft sandstone chunks for insulation between—it was the real soft kind that you could cut with an axe.  It was half a mile below Oussie Lowe’s place.  They used this for a church as well as a school.  My father, Aaron Chatterton, was branch president.  In the mid or later 1920s my father acquired this building.  He had to cut it into sections to move it.  It was winter and he moved it on bob sleighs.  We moved it up to Sugar Creek, onto his property, half a mile easterly of Elmer Sharp’s place.  Later on Ern Spatig, LeGrande’s father, bought this property and he kept on using the old school as a storage shed.  About 1970 there was a brush fire near the building and the old school accidentally burned down.[3]

 Memory of Laura Nash Atkinson
     The old Cherryville School was located close to where Wallace Chatterton has his big new metal shed, which is three miles northeasterly of Franklin.  It was about a quarter of a mile up the canyon from the old Lowe homes, where Aunt Liza and Aunt Lizzie lived, across Maple Creek from each other.
     The building was there as early as I can remember and until it was moved.  I’d go up there once in a while to go to Sunday School with my friend, Zina Buckley.  My older brother, Ike Nash, was one of the teachers up at the school.[4]

 Memories of Joseph (Jody) Stone
     I started to school in Cherryville when I was a kid—I don’t know how old, six maybe. [Jody Stone was 6 in 1894.]  There was a school and church up the canyon from Jimmy Lowe’s place—they used the same building.  I don’t think this had been going too long when I started to school.  Father and them built this.  I remember when it was built.  I think our bunch was just about the first to use this school.   My first teacher was John Rankin.  He was a good guy and a good teacher.  After that we moved and I went to school in Mapleton.[5]
[3] CVN No. 75, p. 2            [4] Ibid.        [5] CVN No. 94, p. 1

Clifton School

Hubert Smith memories: 

     “Some of the things I remember most at the Jefferson was the sandy soil on the east side of the building, where we used to play marbles and a game we called foot-and-a-half, a type of leap-frog.  A fellow I can recall only as “Tip” [could be Floyd Lewis] was the best marble player at the Jefferson.  He always went home with a pocket full of marbles.  On the north side of the building was a sloping walkway down to the sidewalk and in the winter, when the ground was covered with snow, we had a slippery-slide down that walkway and over the dirt bank clear to the street.  We’d go back to the building and run as fast as we could to see who could slide the farthest out in the roadway.  We didn’t have to worry about cars as there were very few, if any, during the winter; maybe a bob sleigh would tinkle past once in a while, but very few cars.
     “Across the street to the west was the rock home of George Crockett.  He had a fruit orchard just south of his house and during recess we would sneak into it for an apple or plum.  One tree that I shall never forget was a plum and it was during one of our sojourns over there that I fell from or was shaken out of it and ended up with a broken arm.
     “Some of my teachers at the Jefferson were Sam Fletcher, Asael Bell, Miss Geddes, W. J. Chandler, Elvin Cutler, Claude Hawkes and a penmanship teacher, possibly Venna Andreason.
     “We used to have a cafeteria in the basement, and according to my older brother Ed, it was one of the first cafeterias anywhere in a school.  You could buy a bowl of soup, a glass of milk, potatoes and gravy, and another vegetable for only 15 or 20 cents.  The meals were not only hot but nutritious and delicious.  I think they were supplied by the high school home economics class.
      “About the time I was in the fifth or sixth grade the Junior High program was begun.  This comprised the 7th, 8th and 9th grades.  We had a Jr. High basketball team and played teams from Whitney, Franklin, Weston, Lewiston, Richmond and other small towns close to Preston.  It was quite an adventure for boys our age to be able to go play other places, which at that time seemed so far away.
     “The 7th and 8th grades each had class colors and we used to fight with each other trying to get our colors posted in the highest places in and around the building.  They were hung on the vents next to the ceilings in the various rooms, and when their backs were turned the colors would be torn down and the other class colors would adorn the spot.  They’d hoist them to the top of the flag pole on the roof and there was a single light pole on the grounds, just south and west of the building, where they’d fight to see who could post their colors on top.  When someone was climbing the pole, somebody else would go up and drag him down.  This pole was about 20 feet high and someone got hurt quite badly during one of these forays and the practice was stopped.”[19]

Memories of Stan Hawkes
     It took three 8t graders to beat up on a teacher, Lloyd Tolman.  “Tolman had a rap as a tough teacher,” but he was a good one, a real good teacher.  It was Fred Struve, Bung Hansen, and Pres Thomas that were involved.  But they had to get the jump on him.  They all did this by knocking him down with a dictionary first.  This was in Room 3, down in the basement just off from the boys’ playroom.  They split the three boys up after that.  I think that was the last Pres Thomas ever saw of school.  About that time he joined a band in Pocatello.
[19] CVN No. 139, p. 10.

Memories of Hubert Smith     
     “The things I remember most about the Central was the playground on the north side of the building, the chute-the-chutes, whirly-gigs and the large play area between the school house and the J. N. Larsen home to the north.  I skipped the third grade there, having spent only the first two days of that school year in the third grade.  My second grade teacher was a Miss Wilcox and my fourth grade teacher was Miss Johnson.  In those days there were two divisions in each grade—A and B.  I was promoted from the Second A to the Fourth B, which constituted a grade and a half advance.  Several others were promoted at the same time [perhaps because of over-crowding, though Mr. Smith did not know the reason].
     “The next year I went to the Jefferson, to the Fifth B under Miss Euretta Cutler, and evidently I was not bright enough to be promoted a full grade and was advanced one half grade to the Fifth A, again being with my original classmates, under Miss Ida Kern.  My sixth grade teacher was Miss Ardella Smith.”[13]

 Memory of Bill Struve
     Do you remember that drinking fountain out front?  That could be a dangerous place to drink sometimes.  I saw a kid get his teeth bumped once.  This kid was leaning over to drink and here come Hoppy Hopson.  Hoppy reached over and banged the kid’s head into the spout.  His mouth was bleeding and he ran bawling into Mrs. Dalley.  So she came out there and grabbed Hoppy.  She banged his head against the fountain and asked him how he liked the same medicine.[14]

 Memories of Calder Pickett
     I think about steamy classrooms and sweaty little bodies at Central and Jefferson.  It was so hot some parts of the year.  Sliding on the ice in the winter, marbles and tops, Elvin Cutler chasing us around the room with a ruler, Asael Bell cracking together my head with that of Lawrence Farnes when we were giggling in class, Irene Johnson getting me through geometry, spelling bees, which I usually won, and football games, where I was always the last to be chosen.  (CVN #145, p. 3)

 Memories of Sheeley Chatterton

     We’d give the teachers trouble, the older guys.  There was a room in the basement of the Central and our teacher was from Lewiston.  I don’t know his name.  We called him Sugar Beet on account of the Lewiston Sugar Factory and all those beets down there.  We’d all sit back there together, most of the guys.  At noon hour we’d gather up the erasers from different places and hide them in our desks.  He’d be writing something on the blackboard and wham! The eraser’d hit that board right in front of him, scare him to death.  He’d cuss!  Then he’d come down and say, “Now which one of you guys did it?”
     We just sat there—he couldn’t prove it.  He’d go back up to the board, then he’d look around, and then when we thought he wasn’t looking we’d go Wham!  One or two more erasers’d hit the board.  And oh, if you don’t think he’d get mad at us guys!  He took the whole bunch of us one day and really gave us hell.  He’d say, “I know it came from right in here!   One of you guys right in here” (he was pointing us all out.  But he couldn’t prove it so he couldn’t do anything to us.  Do it to one, he’d have to do it to all.
     Once he threw an eraser back down that way and he hit Cap Smith’s daughter.  Boy, she got right up and went home.   Pretty soon her mother came marching in.  She got in front of ol’ Sugar Beet and shook her fist in his face.  I thought she was going to wring his neck.  She was a pretty good-sized woman, too.  Boy, he didn’t say a word.

 Memory of Diane Roe Moss
     At the Central, I remember lining up for our yearly inoculations by the school nurse, Mrs. Howard.  How I hated those shots![15]

 Memory of Howard Johnson
     While I was in the 8th grade at the Central school (1909-10 school year) I used to play hookey once in a while and go over to the Academy auditorium to watch the basketball games.  The Academy had great teams and they played upstairs there, before the Nielsen Gym was built.  The truant officer caught me and threatened to expel me if I didn’t cut this out.  My father, James Johnson, was working at the Lewiston Sugar Factory at this time.  When he came home and I told him about the incident he said, ‘Well maybe you should’ve let ‘em kick you out—then you could go over to the Academy to finish the 8th grade.’.”

Memory of Deloris Baker Bennett
     I went to school in Preston beginning in 1938:  Central, first grade.  My teacher was Mrs. Dunkley.  In the second grade I was taught by Jean Brady.
[13] CVN No. 139, p. 1.            [14] Cache Valley Newsletter No. 71, edited by Newell Hart, p. 8                [15] CVN No. 161, p. 4

The Story of Franklin County Schools

Battle Creek School

     In 1901, a one-room rock school house was built and the windows were too high to see out.  Students had to stand up before the school and ask forgiveness for being sassy or sluffing school and some teachers disciplined students by hitting them with books or rulers.

     Drinking water was carried in from a distant farm and a dipper was used from which all students drank.  There was a shed on the west side of the school lot for the horses’ shelter and feed.