The streets have become quieter and the parking areas around the schools are filled up again, which means it’s back to school week after a long and hot summer vacation. Visitor numbers have been dwindling, mainly with the excessive heat we have experiencing, the cost of gas and so many other activities in our town and neighboring ones too. However, this past Saturday has been the busiest Saturday of the year!
We were overjoyed when some Rupke family relatives visited the Fort and especially “their” school again. Mommy Michelle Zerr had worked out a different scavenger hunt for each of the kids visiting and one of the items to find, was a photo of a relative. They proudly found it in the schoolhouse. Even the youngest children have been made aware of their family connections to the school house, which came from a Rupke family farm north of Stuttgart. The family have twice in the past few years had family reunions, which included some schoolhouse activities. We even used one of their photos for our brochure and also one of our series of postcards. It was such fun seeing them again and we were so happy that the school house is looking so good after the recent repainting of it!
Another Saturday visitor reminisced about her days in a one-roomed schoolhouse. With only one teacher to the group of grades one to eight, often the older children helped out with the younger ones. With the current seeming shortage of teachers, it was encouraging to hear this visitor’s granddaughter from Salina is heading to college to become a teacher.
How different being a teacher is today compared to those one-roomed schoolhouse teachers. Then the teacher, who often was only slightly older than her oldest pupils, was a renaissance individual. She had to be a nurse, janitor, musician, philosopher, peacemaker, wrangler, fire stoker, baseball player, professor, and poet for less than $50 a month. Equipped with little more than a blackboard and a few textbooks, teachers passed on to their pupils cultural values along with a sound knowledge of the three Rs.
To say that lunches and getting to school have become much easier, would be an understatement! In those days, lunches were packed at home in old-fashioned lunch pails and eaten cold. Getting to school in whatever weather, they mostly walked, rode a horse or were taken in a buggy. No modern air-conditioned yellow school buses in those days!
By the turn of the century, the population began to shift to the cities and country schools began to lose students and tax support. School districts consolidated, pooling their resources to provide more teachers, broader curriculum, and opportunity for extracurricular activities. Eventually the one-room country school had become a thing of the past. We still see some remaining structures in pastures, but they too are slowly disappearing from the landscape at the mercy of the destructive elements of nature. All the more reason to preserve our old buildings for future generations.
Our windmill always was and currently still is the highest point on our premises, but it soon will be dwarfed by the chapel’s steeple. The steeple is currently being built right next to the chapel and will eventually be lifted into place at the same time as the bell. The steeple is sixteen feet high and is a scaled down version of the Saint John Pleasant Green Lutheran church northeast of Agra. That church was built by the great uncle of our contractor – so much for keeping it in the family! In the days when that old church was built, they probably built their steeple on top of the building, going higher and higher. Fortunately, we have cranes today to lift the items into place. We are so grateful for all the support we are getting from everyone for the chapel we are building and cheering us on!
With less than a month of our season remaining and slightly cooler weather, why don’t you swing by the Fort and take a stroll through time, back to the Pioneers!
Our hours still are:
Tuesday to Friday from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturdays 9 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Ruby Wiehman
Curator
The school was situated in Block 23 of Dayton Township in the northwest corner of James Hopper’s land. This eventually belonged to the Rupke family, who helped with the move of the school to Fort Bissell as well as financially contributing to the restoration in 1985.
Fort Bissell Museum 