Ellet School, Latham

Latham, Kansas, in Union Township.

It was once a thriving town serving farmers and ranchers in Rock Creek Valley, a stop on the short route of the Winfield Southwestern Railroad (later, the St. Louis and San Francisco Railroad) that connected Beaumont to Winfield.

Today, the railroad tracks are gone but the town lingers on. The Latham Saloon provides weekend entertainment. On Sundays, one has a choice of two churches, Baptist and Methodist. Otherwise, it is a Rip-Van-Winkle kind of town.

Latham lies just north of Rock Creek in Union Township. Get there by heading east of Wichita and Augusta on US 400, before Beaumont go south on Stony Creek Road. Or head north from Cambridge in Cowley County.

Ellet School, Latham, Kansas

Ellet School

The Ellet School No. 42 was once located at the now defunct town of Bodark along with the post office. In 1885, the one room school and post office moved two miles east to newly built the railroad and Latham. The school is named for Civil War General General Alfred Ellet, or his son who settled on Rock Creek, in nearby Cowley County. (Walnut Valley Times, June 24, 1870.) The school is on Cherry Street just south of 200 Street. It is a typical white clapboard construction with three windows to each side and a single door in front. The school was begun in 1871, given the number 42 in Butler County, making it one of the earlier schools.

[Note. The present school is dated 1880 and numbered 7. It may be that this school is not the Bodark school but one from Clay Township. Kansas Trails, source.]

Latham 1885

What kind of town did Latham become? The first issue of the weekly Latham Journal in September 1885 extolled the beauty of the town nestled on a hillside alongside Cherry Creek Valley. The headline was a new grocery store for Latham to compete for business with C. H. Backus. Latham already had a hardware store, general store, and pharmacy all advertised for business. One could eat at the Star Restaurant two blocks west of the depot on Main Street and even find overnight accommodations.

Latham’s farmers and cattle ranchers fared will enough to build a high school. A faculty of three taught Latin and German, Science and Mathematics in addition to all the necessary skills. Here is a link to the Latham High School Yearbook of 1913.

Latham High School, 1913

The Annual Board of the Yearbook, The Pansy, 1913

Ellet Schoolhouse Butler County

The Moving Finger writes; and, having writ,
Moves on: nor all thy Piety nor Wit.
Shall lure it back to cancel half a Line,
Nor all thy Tears wash out a Word of it.

The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, by Omar Khayyam

Schools teach us many things — math, writing and arithmetic, but more than that they teach us to be good citizens, and to think.

My apologies. I have been absent from this blog for quite a while. Still, I have not ceased my admiration for one room schoolhouses, slowing down or stopping each time I see one.

Ellet Schoolhouse

In tiny Latham, Kansas I stopped for the umpteenth time at the Ellet one room school house and took these pictures. It is named for General A.W. Ellet, (or his also well-known son, Edward), who both came to Kansas to make a new lives after the Civil War.

I thought about all the children who went to school here and moved on to better lives. I thought about the railroad that once stopped in Latham to load the farmers wheat and cattle, and the railroad now long gone, like the children who are now schooled elsewhere.

Early History of Kansas

Curious about Kansas one room schools, I went Cutler’s History of the State of Kansas   published in 1883 and found this:

“The first school taught in this county was in charge of Miss Sarah Satchel. [Satchell Creek and road still exist.] It was located at Chelsea [an early town now under Lake El Dorado. The cemetery still exists.], the oldest settlement in the county, and was opened in 1860. At this time the school district embraced this county and Cowley, as well as parts of Chase and Greenwood counties. The second school was taught in 1863 in Towanda in a log building [J.R. Mead, a Wichita founder had a trading post near here], erected by the settlers. A school was also started in El Dorado Township at an early day, a subscription being raised by the citizens, and the school taught by Miss Jane Wentworth [15 pupils were taught]. … The schoolhouses were … rough, and, if reports speaks truly, some of the teachers were of the same sort. Yet the work was pretty honestly done, and the rising generation compares favorably with that of any other county. Since 1879 very full reports have been made, from which the following summary is drawn:

School districts in 1879, 125; in 1880, 130; in 1881, 138; in 1882, 143.

School population between the ages of five and twenty-one: In 1879, 6,056; in 1880, 6,397; in 1881, 6,545; in 1882, 6,861. Enrollment: In 1879, 4,590; in 1880, 4,356; in 1881, 5,228; in 1882, 5,303.

Average attendance: In 1879, 136; in 1880, 176; in 1881, 179; in 1882, 154.

Total school expenditures: In 1879, $34,962.76; in 1880, $40,060.03; in 1881, $43,469.22 2/3; in 1882, $53,328.09.”

Maps tell a story

Still curious I went to the 1905 Standard Atlas of the State of Kansas where I saw the amazing number of schools built by farmers and ranchers to educate their children. The farms and ranches are mostly gone. Let’s hope to preserve some of the memories, some of the history.

Clay Center, District No. 41

Clay Center in Butler County, Kansas is not much more than a place name. Its location is 210^th street southeast and southeast Cole Creek road. (Yes, one is confused by the city of the same name in Clay County.)

Clay Center, Dist. no. 41, schoolhouse

You get there if you are heading east from Douglass towards Latham (10 miles), or if you are going south from Leon to Atlanta (9 miles). An old automotive building at the intersection proudly proclaims the name Clay Center. A house stands on the northwest corner and a one room schoolhouse, District No. 43, is on the southwest lot. The north branch of Rock Creek flows by wrapping around the schoolhouse and proceeding in a southwesterly direction

C. M. Price pre-empted the land, part of the twenty mile strip of the Osage Trust, at Clay Center after it was opened up to settlement in 1870, paying $1.25 an acre. The early settlers planted corn, wheat, oats, beans and other crops; in addition, raised cattle, horses, and mules for market. The township was organized in 1879 and a one room school was built soon after. The population of the township in 1880 was 410.

[Vol. Mooney’s History of Butler County, Kansas, 1916, contains C. M. Prices article on Clay Township.]

The one room schoolhouse is lovingly maintained. It is a typical clapboard frame construction with windows only on the south side.

front

south side view

rear view outhouse

Clay Center

The schoolhouse also appears in both the Butler County, Kansas atlases of 1885 and 1905.

hClay Township, Butler County 1905

1885 Clay Township

Clay Township, Butler County, Kansas 1885

Mount Tabor school, District no. 30, Butler County, KansasBut

Mount Tabor, south of Nazareth in Galilee, is believed to be the site of the Transfiguration of Jesus. It is also the 12th century B.C. site where an army of 10,000 Israelites under the command of Barak and the prophetess Deborah defeated the Canaanites.

In the 1870’s one room schools sprouted on the Kansas prairies like spring flowers. One of the early ones was District No. 30, later known as Mt. Tabor school.

Mount Tabor schoolhouse, Dist. No. 30, Butler County, Kansas

The name Mount Tabor appears as far back as 1944 in a survey of one room schools of Butler County. The story explaining why or how District No. 30 was renamed Tabor is lost. The one room school sits on a low rise overlooking the surrounding prairie. A New Testament scholar might make the association with the Transfiguration of Christ on Mount Tabor. An Old Testament scholar would like the idea of the Israelites fresh in the promised land, conquering the Philistines. Our 44th President, Barack Obama would appreciate the name of the conquering Israelite Judge, Barack, which in Hebrew means “black.”

1870, The Promised Land

Settlers rushed into the promised land of Butler County, Kansas like the Israelites. Names like Goodland, Richland, Pleasent Valley, and the like enticed them with visions of paradise. Homesteads of 160 acres at one dollar and twenty five cents, were available to all. The cost of the land was to go to the Osage Indians, who in 1870 were once and for all removed from Kansas to reservations in Oklahoma.

In July of 1870 Kansas Senator Sidney Clarke offer in Congress an Indian appropriation bill, allowing that the Osage Diminished Reserve be open to settlers at $1.25 per acre. Congress quickly ratified Clarke’s bill. The Osage Diminished Reserve was a 30 mile wide strip of land in Kansas, lying just north of the now familiar towns of  Wichita, Augusta, Andover, and Pittsburg. Settlers rushed into this land after passage of the act to quickly make claim to the 160 acres allowed under the act.

“Sooners” rushed in and even before the act became law, on June 13, 1870, a patent was issued to Parlina Kinder for the first claim in what would two years later become Rock Creek Township. Others followed in quick succession and with their families came the need for a school.

southern half of Butler County, Kansas with northern boundary of the Diminished Osage Indian Reserve drawn

William G. Cutler’s in his History of the State of Kansas, first published in 1883, includes among the early schools in Butler County, Kansas:

Rock Creek Township, 1870, by subscription of settlers in District No. 30

Another source lists the active dates of the school from 20 March 1871 until 11 April 1951. Butler Early Schools.

District School No. 30 in Rock Creek Township in Butler County sits on a dusty 230th street, 2 miles south of Douglass Kansas, and 4 miles to the east of paved Highway 77, halfway between Hopkins Switch and Purity Springs roads. It is a typical Kansas one room school, built of native Kansas limestone with two front doors, one for boys and the other for girls. Four windows along the east and west facing walls allow for light from the morning and afternoon sun. At a later time, plaster was put over the limestone and a new roof was added.

Side view of Mt. Tabor school

It pops up on the Rock Creek Township map of 1885, down at the bottom in section 30, just west of Swishers Branch and on property belonging to H.S. Johnson. The unpaved gravel road is 230th street.

Rock Creek Township

School teachers were often newly married housewives or bachelors. They earned $30 a month, give or take, and sometimes payment was in food, hence the idea of giving a teacher an apple a day. Teachers had to be nurse, peacemaker, referee, fire maker, cook, professor and poet. Equipped with little more than a blackboard and a few borrowed books, teachers taught the three R’s, penmanship, and right from wrong.