 We've known CSAA member Pat HarteNaus for many years and have enjoyed all her presentations at our annual conferences. She is widely known for her Belden Boy Series, Canary Song, Whistleslick Press, and her central role in the preservation of the Belden Schoolhouse in Galena, IL. Her endearing stories keep coming! Here's another for our Report Card readers... The Eastlake Organ Finds its Way Home Beldon School Commission members stumbled across a true find that was kept for almost 100 years in the loft of a barn on Mount Hope Road. Farmer Marv Gerlich just happened to mention that he had Belden School’s organ which was removed sometime in the 1920s The Belden School Commission was determined to bring her home! by P.J. HarteNaus It’s true that lost items often don’t travel very far from their original destination. No truer words could describe the journey of the 1859 one-room Belden School, nestled in the driftless area of historic Galena, Illinois. A few years ago, I was visiting Marv, a local farmer who sells eggs directly to those passing by his farm. As we chatted about the weather and the happenings at Belden School, he brought up his interest in the school. His dad was a student there long ago. He also knew I served on the committee and wrote the Belden Boy series. Then came the question that changed everything: “Do you know I have Belden School’s organ up in my barn loft? Would you like to see it?” “You betcha!” I replied without hesitation. I had no idea the school even had an organ, let alone one tucked behind the red loft door of Marv’s barn, a barn I’ve passed a thousand times. Moments later, I was climbing up the stairs to his loft, stepping carefully over decades of buckets, farm implements and just plain ‘farm stuff.’ And there it was – an ornate organ from the 1800s, remarkably well-preserved despite being coated in a layer of barn dust. It sat patiently by the loft door, waiting to return to its rightful place at Belden School. It was June 2023, when Marv carefully removed the 1880 organ from his barn loft using his tractor and placed it onto a flatbed trailer. From there, it made its way to local antique restorer Duane Mitch in Schapville. For a full year, the now 144-year-old Eastlake walnut organ sat in Duane’s workshop as he meticulously restored it. Duane later admitted it was his favorite project because of the research involved. During this time, our committee made numerous visits to witness his progress. Duane sandblasted the iron pedals, restored decorative trims, and recreated or sourced delicate wood pieces from across the country. Meanwhile, I conducted my own research to uncover how and why the organ ended up in Marv’s loft, just three miles from Belden School, for nearly a century. What I discovered was fascinating! The organ was crafted in Boston, Massachusetts, in 1880, and somehow made its way to the Midwest. In an 1886 ledger of Belden School, I found its mention on the final line, almost as an afterthought. Yet, there is was, recorded in ink on yellowed pages. For forty years, the organ filled the school with daily songs, Christmas plays, and community events. But in 1926, the state regulations mandated that one-room schools add an emergency exit. At Belden School, this required converting a window into a door, which displaced the Eastlake organ. Marv’s grandfather, the school custodian at the time, offered to haul the organ over the hills by horse and wagon to his barn, where it would stay “for the time being.” There it remained for approximately 25 years until the farm was sold. The organ was then moved again – this time to Marv’s father’s farm, where the elderly couple resided until their passing. Marv recalls playing on the organ with his sisters as children, never realizing its historical significance. For nearly a century, the organ stayed within a few miles of its original home, waiting to return. In June 2024, we held a grand celebration for the restored Eastlake organ. Marv and his family, Duane Mitch, a gathering of Civil War Generals from historic Galena, and local residents braved the rain to join us. Despite the deluge outside, the schoolhouse was warm and lively, buzzing with excitement! Tears of happiness flowed as Marv’s family learned new details about their grandfather and the organ’s rich history, deepening their connection to this cherished heirloom. The Eastlake organ, now back where it belongs, stands as a testament to the enduring spirit of history and community. ~P. J. HarteNaus Educator and Author of the Belden Boy series www.Whistleslickpress.com
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Kids Still Say the Darndest Things!  From the Bridgewater State University website: "The spirit, vision and leadership of Horace Mann, America’s father of public education, lives on more than 184 years after Bridgewater State University first opened its doors for the purpose of training teachers. His belief, not only in the importance of public education, but also in standardizing — or normalizing — the training of teachers, led to the establishment of normal schools. In 1840, Bridgewater became the third such school in the commonwealth of Massachusetts and, along with its sister institutions, developed a comprehensive approach to teacher training that became a model emulated throughout the country and across the globe. Bridgewater Normal School grew as the educational needs of society evolved. Not only were more and better qualified teachers essential to a prosperous and engaged citizenry, but the demand for a college-level liberal arts curriculum required that the Massachusetts General Court expand course offerings at the normal schools and establish public institutions of higher education." _________________________________________ By coincidence, I came across a copy of a tattered Bridgewater Normal School news bulletin from 1893 with a range of stories and announcements for educators. One section that caught my eye was called, "Odds and Ends," and it does offer a chuckle and the conclusion that, the more things change, the more they stay the same. Students will try to snow the teacher when they really don't know the answer! (From the Bridgewater State Normal School bulletin, "The Normal Offering" February, 1893 verbatim.) -High School Teacher: " Briefly describe the heart and its functions." -Pupil: "The heart is a comical shaped bag, and is divided into several parts by a fleshy petition. These parts are called right artillery, left artillery and so forth. The function of the heart is between the lungs. The work of the heart is to repair different organs in about half a minute." —A grammar school boy who was told to look up rivers, reported as follows: A river has a head, its highest and smallest part; it has arms which are also its feeders, and a right and left side. It has a bed in which there are often springs and in which the river runs instead of lying still. At the farthest extremity from its head, we do not find its foot but its mouth. It eats into hills sometimes and is known to have falls at which it usually roars. -Teacher in Physics to a boy at the head of class: "How many kinds of force are there?" Boy: Three, sir. Teacher: "Name them." Boy: "Bodily force, mental force, and the police force."  A DAILY SCHEDULE FOR A ONE-ROOM SCHOOLHOUSE
by Michael Day Barkhamsted, CT (re-printed from former CSAA Newsletter) Visitors to a one room schoolhouse often have a hard time visualizing just how one teacher could possibly teach all subjects in several grade levels at the same time. Class size might well exceed thirty and the age range of students could stretch from four to twenty. It seems an impossible task. Part of the problem is that modern students (and their teachers) are used to thinking in terms of fifty minute time blocks, and whole class presentations. There is also today a strong emphasis on making every minute count; of keeping everyone focused on learning, or at least busy with teacher directed school work. In the one room school, the "scholars" were grouped into classes of various sizes. A "class" might be two or a dozen students at roughly the same level in a given topic, and would be called as a group to the teacher's desk for a recitation of their lessons. The well organized teacher would work with each of the various classes for a short period of time; assign them a new lesson to be learned on their own, and then move on to another group. At a later time, the scholars would be expected to report back to the teacher and to demonstrate (i.e. recite) what they had learned. An underlying assumption of the one room schoolhouse was that the scholars would be sufficiently self-motivated and/or disciplined enough to keep themselves occupied and focused on their own learning while the teacher was working with others. And for most of the day, the teacher would, in fact, be "working with others". A look at a recommend daily schedule from 1880 makes this very clear. In the May 1880 edition of the New England Journal of Education, John Hancock, the Superintendent of Schools for Dayton, Ohio, proposed the following schedule of recitations for use in a one room schoolhouse. Dayton, Ohio 1880 - Proposed Daily Recitation Schedule 9:00 - 9:15 Opening Exercises 12:00 - 1:30 Lunch & recess 9:15 - 9:25 Abecedarians 1:30 - 1:40 Abecedarians 9:25 - 9:35 First Readers 1:40 - 1:55 First Class in Grammar 9:35 - 9:50 Second Readers 1:55 - 2:05 First Readers 9:50 - 10:10 First class in Arithmetic 2:05 - 2:20 Second Class in Geography 10:10 - 10:25 Third Readers 2:20 - 2:35 Second Readers 10:25 - 10:40 Recess 2:35 - 2:50 Fifth Readers 10:40 - 11:00 Second Class in Arithmetic 2:50 - 3:05 Recess 11:00 - 11:10 Abecedarians 3:05 - 3:20 Second Class in Grammar 11:10 - 11:25 Geography 3:20 - 3:30 Abecedarians 11:25 - 11:40 First Readers 3:30 - 3:50 Writing 11:40 - 11:55 Fourth Readers 3:50 - 4:10 Higher Class Recitations 11:55 - 12:00 Roll Call, etc. 4:10 - 4:30 Miscellaneous exercises Hancock recommended that teachers strive for the minimum number of classes so that more time could be allocated to each. Even so, little time was spent with each class, and that diminished as the students got older. Hancock proposed that "Abecedarians" (i.e. those just learning the alphabet) have four recitations a day for a total of forty minutes. "The time assigned for their recitations, if well employed, is sufficient to enable the teacher give a very short object-lesson, introducing the word she designs making the basis of her lesson, the elementary sounds of that word, and the characters representing these sounds. These characters the children should practice making in script between recitations." "First Readers" meet three times a day for a total of thirty-five minutes. Between recitations the students would have certain lessons to memorize, or would practice writing on their slates. The Fifth Readers received fifteen minutes a day of the teacher's time and just twenty minutes a day was set aside for "Higher Class Recitations". We do know that many teachers recruited older students to tutor younger ones, so the amount of instruction may well have been more than is accounted for in Hancock's schedule. Nevertheless, there must have been a considerable amount of time each day when students were very much in charge of their own learning. While the daily schedule would certainly vary from one teacher to the next, the plan proposed by John Hancock does give us a sense of what a typical day was like for both teacher and students in the one room schoolhouse. *We have searched to locate Mike Day numerous times on-line and have been unsuccessful. At one time he produced many wonderful reproduction primers and print materials for use in country school museums, but Clippership Publications is also presumably out of business. If you know how to reach Mike Day please let us know how as well. We continue to appreciate sharing his schoolhouse articles! Why Did They Blow Up the Schoolhouse? Who hasn't fallen in love with the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder...or Michael Landon and Melissa Gilbert in the TV adaptation of Little House on the Prairie? One of our CSAA members, Sarah Uthoff, is a lifelong devotee and expert on all things "Laura." She will no doubt think me daft when I divulge that I only learned a few years ago that in the last episode of the 9th and final season, the good people of Walnut Grove, being forced out of their town by an evil land developer, blew up all the buildings in their town except the church (and in real life the Ingalls farm film set). If I ever knew, I simply forgot. They actually blew them all to smithereens! That meant the beloved Walnut Grove Schoolhouse, the focal point of countless unforgettable episodes, childhood antics, teacher troubles, student rivalries, and budding young love, exploded into a hail of sticks. The explosions are well documented on YouTube and writers have offered a number of reasons as to WHY total destruction would be chosen as the end of the Little House series. Access the attached article that has researched the real story. FACT-CHECK TIME!! 1. It was rumored that Michael Landon was unhappy with NBC that the show was cancelled and he didn't want others to use his set. 2. Newhall Land Development that rented the land for the film set had a contract that required the land be returned to its original state following the cancellation. They suggested bringing in a crane to demolish the buildings. 3. Michael Landon decided blowing up the buildings (and later removing the debris) would be cost effective and it would provide a great story for a finale! In 2024 the cast, crew, and devotees of Little House on the Prairie TV series celebrated the 50th Anniversary of the the introduction of the pilot episode that spurred a nine-year love affair with the Ingalls family. A reunion festival was held at Big Sky Ranch (original site) with visits by many cast members. Tours were offered to see replica "flats" built to indicate where the originals sets stood. The schoolhouse movie set stood up the hill from Oleson's Mercantile as you see below...Uh, flats are not that exciting. (Top Photos: from movie scenes. Bottom Photos: "flats" on the tour.) I'll wager that our national authority on Laura Ingalls Wilder, Sarah Uthoff, attended that anniversary festival and hope to hear from her with some thoughts. Check out her impressive brochure below. That black button can lead you to her website as well! Looking Forward and Back in Time
Happy New Year! As we round the corner into 2025 most of us look ahead and hope for the health of our families, peaceful co-existence, and enriching activities. As a member of CSAA, it is gratifying to reflect on the past and recall the experiences that have fostered renewed interest in preserving our country schools. Just perusing the photos from our 20 years of CSAA conferences reminds me of how many memorable moments we've spent as an organization reuniting with old friends, traveling to places we would never have considered, and being involved in research and presentations that have proven invaluable to our passion for preserving our "icons of public education." So, we continue to invite even more history buffs to keep up the momentum of our association. But, how DO we encourage another generation to pick up that gauntlet and keep our preservation efforts in the forefront? Since 2005 CSAA has laid the groundwork and set many precedents for those who might consider taking an active role in our mission. What do we say to our prospective new members and future participants? I've come up with a list that is not exhaustive by any measure and I look to our readers for additional suggestions. Feel free to submit comments below. WHY BECOME INVOLVED WITH CSAA and WHAT'S IN IT FOR YOU?
Nothing to lose and everything to gain...help preserve our remaining historic one-room schools. |
