Little One Room School Ch 3

by Chester Belcher

 

Chapter 3: History of Mifflin School

 

Robert Denbo sold the first land purchased for a school in Union Township to the Township Trustee on October 22, 1853, and the school was built in Grantsburg, Indiana. Malachi Ott sold the second school site in 1854.It was located in section 29, township 3 south, range 1 west.

 

The school was built on a county road that turned off the Mifflin-Taswell road at the Anial Smith farm, northeast of Mifflin. School was taught here and Grantsburg in 1854. The schoolhouse was relocated at the present site near Mifflin a short time later. In 1855 there were 5 school sites, 3 new schoolhouses, 3 schools taught by 3 men teachers, who were paid $18 a month.

 

In Liberty Township men teachers were paid $16.66 a month, and women teachers were paid $10.00 a month. In 1853 Ansel Dexter and Nathan Harris were school examiners for Crawford County. They reported, we are lamentably deficient in the number of our teachers who are qualified, but such as they are, they do very well. Schools are not so numerous as they ought to be on the account of scarcity of teachers and school money. There were only 5 schools in Crawford County in 1853.

 

The above information came from the History of Crawford County written by Pleasant and published in 1926 by the Mitchell Printing Co. The following story is about the experience of an early Crawford County one-room schoolteacher.

 

The pupils were listed between six and twenty-one years of age. Hence, one can see that these districts contained a large number of pupils. One of the first teachers to enter this township was Ansel Dexter, who taught several schools in the county and was county examiner in 1853. He was employed to teach one winter in District No. 2.

 

On the first day a large number of boys and girls came. Dexter was equal to the occasion. When the bell rang and the pupils came into the house he walked to the blackboard and drew a circle on the board, then walked back to the door. Everyone was watching to see what he was going to do. He drew a revolver out of his pocket and fired a shot that hit in the circle. Then he pulled out a long dirk and threw it and stuck it also into the circle. Then he told the pupils that he was going to teach that school and woe betide the boy who tried to disturb the school. There was no trouble that winter.

 

It would seem that from the very first year of the one-room school to the last year of school, troublesome students bothered the teachers. My niece Peggy Belcher Maddox tells of the first day of the last year of school at Mifflin. The kids tried to hang one of their fellow students from a tree in the schoolyard. After that first day of school the teacher decided to teach at another school. The Mifflin School closed that last day of school. The Mifflin School closed the last day of school in 1957. All of those years the teachers were overworked, underpaid and under appreciated.

 

Going To High School The Hard Way

 

Going to high school was very much a hardship for anyone in the Mifflin area for the first 80 years that schools were held in Union Township. There was no high school in Union Township, so students had to walk of get to school the best way they could or get room and board at English, Indiana, where the nearest high school was located.

 

George Felker was the first student from Mifflin area to make the struggle and graduate from high school. He graduated from Lankford School in 1927. His freshman and sophomore years of school he walked 5 miles to Taswell and caught a school bus and rode 6 more miles to English High School. Every morning he got up at 3:00 am and took a lantern to the barn and milked 6 cows. After cleaning up and getting dressed for school he started out walking in the dark to get to Taswell in time to catch the bus.

 

During George’s junior and senior years he worked for the English Hotel for room and board. It was difficult work that involved firing the furnace, washing windows, shoveling snow and many other odd jobs.

 

During the summer after he finished grade school and for each summer he was in high school he worked in a rock quarry. They crushed limestone for the county highways. He pushed a wheelbarrow loaded with rock for 10 hours a day and got paid 15 cents an hour. This was during the depression, and if anyone did not work hard and do his best there was always someone else waiting for the chance to push the wheelbarrow. With the 15 cents an hour George was able to buy clothes for the school year.

 

After graduating from high school in 1931, George started working for the Muscatatuck State School. He worked there until April of 1941, when he had to go into the Army and served in the army for the 57 months. He was the first from Mifflin area to graduate from high school and was in the first group of men to be drafted into service during World War II. He served in the South Pacific.

 

When the war was over George started working again at Muscatatuck State School and worked there while taking college courses at Oakland City College and wherever Purdue and Indiana University were offering college courses.

 

Teaching was something George always wanted to do, and the Four Corners School in Jefferson Township in Washington County was the place of this first teaching job in 1966. He graduated from Indiana University in 1968 after having taught two years. Since 1975 he has enjoyed retirement from the Washington County school system. I call this going to school the hard way!

Attending Mifflin School By Maxine (Belcher) King

My first school experience was at the Mifflin School house, Mifflin, Indiana. My parents were Vollie W. and S. Gladys (Felker) Belcher. My birthplace was on a farm approximately 1-1/4 miles north of Mifflin, Indiana (Union Township). I was their sixth child. I have one older sister and four brothers. They are Ruth Marie (Belcher) Newton, Robert William Belcher, E. Paul Belcher, Chester Lee Belcher and N. Leon Belcher. (Leon and I were the only ones that attended Roberson School.)

 

My first year attending school my teacher was Wallace Meyer. This was his last year of teaching school. My second and third years, my teacher was Thelma Newton.

 

I lived on a farm about a mile and a half from the schoolhouse. I walked to school with my bigger brothers, Paul, Chester Lee and Leon. When school was out after my first year and the report cards were given out stating if you were promoted to the next class or had to remain in the same class for another year, I was so happy and thrilled I got promoted to the second grade. When I arrived home and showed my report card to my mother-my bubble was broken. My mother made me take the first grade over the next year. What a disappointment! I really didn’t care if I learned anything or not at this time because it wouldn’t make any difference if I got promoted or not, Mom would not let me go to the second grade.

 

At the end of the second year, the teacher promoted me again. I didn’t care, as I just knew Mom would not let me go to the second grade. To my surprise that fall I did get the go to the second grade. My teacher again was Thelma Newton. At the end of that year I was promoted into the third grade.(I still had my doubts if Mom would let me go on to third grade or make me take the second grade again.)

 

I started in the third grade at Mifflin School. The school bus that year came past our house and picked up my brother, Chester Lee, and took him on to high school at English. Leon and I still had to walk to Mifflin School and were about the only children (if not the only ones) walking to school. Therefore, my dad (Vollie Belcher) and a neighbor (William G. Babe Knight) went to the trustee, Willis D. White, and talked him into transferring us to Roberson School. The neighbor boy, Cecil S. Knight, was also walking to school. I think this was the second or third week into the school year before we got transferred and were riding the school bus to Roberson School.

 

After they closed Roberson School, we all went to Grantsburg School. That was big time-as now we were attending a two-room school. One room had the first four grades (teacher: Jewell Sears), and the other room had fifth grade through the eight grade. My teacher for the next two years was Robert Walts, the best grade school teacher I ever had.

 

I lived at the same place during my childhood and attended three different grade schools (Mifflin, Roberson and Grantsburg). I graduated from Grantsburg Grade School in the spring of 1953.

 

In the fall of 1953, I entered the high school at English. In the fall of 1955, they had the new English High School completed; therefore, I attended high school in two different buildings. I graduated from English-Sterling High School in 1957. There were 48 in my class, the largest class to graduate at that time.

Mifflin School Graduates who Later Graduated From High School or Got A G.E.D.

 

A high school bus for students from the Mifflin area was started in 1929 but stopped because of the depression and started again in the late 1930s. The bus took students to the English High School in English, IN. The first person to ride the bus and graduate from English High School was Charles Burnis Pavey, the second was Clara (Smith) Speedy and the third was my oldest brother, Robert Belcher. He was followed by Joyce (Knight) Waller. Doris (Felker) Pittman graduated from Mifflin and Salem High School. Wayne Goldman and Marjorie (Nash) McFarland graduated in 1948.My brother Paul Belcher dropped out of the class of 1948 but later got a G.E.D. I am real proud that he was able to graduate at an older age. Robert Hammond graduated in the class of 1950 from English High School.

 

There were three students who graduated from Mifflin School in 1947, and all three graduated from high school in 1951.This was the first time that a whole class graduated from high school. They were Violet (Smith) Shelton, Ralph Hammond and Chester Belcher.

 

Other Mifflin School graduates who completed high school were: Shirley (Hammond) White, Gordon Hammond, Evelyn (Belcher) Hammond, Patricia (King) Judd, Marilou (Goldman) Walker, Basil Redden, Mary Ann Brown, Maurice Laswell and Ronald Hughs.

 

Mifflin School students who graduated from college:

Joyce (Knight) Waller - Indiana Central 1951,

Teacher Chester Belcher - Purdue University 1957 - Purdue University Extension Educator,

Shirley (Speedy) Shields - Oakland City B.A. 1970, University of Evansville M.A. 1973 - Teacher Darrell Benham - Oakland City College 1971 - Minister

 

Published U.S. Legacies March 2006

The Author of this story, Chester Lee Belcher from Rockport, Indiana passed away in September of 2021.
We are very thankful that we were able to capture and preserve some of his memories and stories, before he passed away.

 

© Copyright March 2006,

All Rights Reserved by American Legacies and the Chester L. Belcher family.