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Historic Villages Practice Country School Preservation In future posts on The Report Card we'll recap some unique times we've shared in 20 years of CSAA annual conferences. Ask any attendee you know and they'll tell you the annual conference offers a lot more than an exchange of ideas! We traditionally add the best experiences a location can offer. Grand university campuses, local museums, regional music, historic sites, trolley rides, train trips...we've sampled them all at some point in the past 20 years. While our focus on country schools is not "grand" in any sense, the more simple pleasures found in them are most rewarding. Appreciating an antique hanging globe, discovering schoolhouse advertising curtains, photographing manufactured ironside desks, hearing a song from a restored pump organ, envying a perfectly preserved set of Holbrook's apparatus...are all experiences we've been afforded. The pleasure of a visit is multiplied when our schoolhouse tour is part of a historic village. There we get to step into a period home, a country store, a meeting house or chapel, a firehouse, a barn, a barber shop, a dentist office, or possibly a bank, well preserved and outfitted with furniture and proper artifacts. We always make a beeline to the schoolhouse though. New London Historical Society In 2017 the CSAA annual conference was held at Colby-Sawyer College in New London, New Hampshire. After a full day of presentations, we paid a visit to the New London Historical Society a half a mile away. This perfect, small New England town boasts of a historic village of 15 buildings representative of the 1800's in New Hampshire. The 2-MINUTE video below (GET ACQUAINTED WITH THE VILLAGE) gives a brief overview of what we saw there, but the two buildings we want to call attention to are schoolhouses, one of them being REPURPOSED into the Colby, Greenwood & Seaman's Country Store. A slide show follows... Note: Next month we'll visit West Bay Common School Children's Museum in League City, Texas!  
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Piece by Piece, a Beautiful Renewal Amazing, the valuable information you find when you're not looking. After visiting countless schoolhouses over the years, I find the most eye-catching artifacts in the classroom surely include the pot bellied stove and the well-worn manufactured desks with the cast iron legs. The designs are numerous and beautiful. Original matching desks are a treasure if your museum owns and displays them. Many of us covet them. That's why it's not unusual to find CSAA members bending and twisting to get the perfect photograph of these genuine works of art. If a schoolhouse museum has undertaken a restoration of their desks, they have undoubtably faced a labor of love and a lot of elbow grease. If you are thinking of repairing, restoring, or just freshening up your desks, I stumbled upon a gentleman on YouTube who has provided us with a three-part video series that runs viewers through the process. The initial deconstruction of the desk is an amazing thing to watch and gives us an idea of just how much work is involved in a single set, desk and seat. Country school enthusiasts have always been impressed by the quality and workmanship in this type of desk, but wait until you witness the ingenious method of connecting the wood to the iron and why everything operates so smoothly. Even if you aren't looking for this information, the videos are helpful in learning how to repair and restore 19th century manufactured desks, and a big help to those who are considering it. Thank you to Underwood Industries! Restoring an Antique Desk from the Early 1900's "Underwood Industries" on YouTube  Recently, I was organizing my collection of schoolhouse related "stuff" and came across a large lined writing pad, a "Big Chief Tablet." It came to me as a gift at CSAA's 2014 Annual Country School Conference tucked into our conference swag bags. Now this wonderful conference was held in St. Joseph, Missouri at the Pony Express Museum under the direction of Cindy Daffron and it was unforgettable. As for the tablet and the city's connection?
From Wikipedia: In 1906, William Albrecht established the Western Tablet Company in St. Joseph, Missouri, which later became the world's largest paper tablet producer. In 1947, the company trademarked the Big Chief tablet. The tablets were crafted with newsprint paper and widely spaced lines—perfect for young children learning to write—and featured a bold cover with an American Indian head in full headdress, which inspired the name “Big Chief. Production of there tablets ended in St. Joseph, MO from 2001-2004, but relaunched in 2012 under American Trademark Publishing. I think everyone at the conference but me knew the significance of this bright red tablet with the image of a stately Native American on the cover.They genuinely enjoyed owning one again! It flooded the attendees with memories of their elementary school days and what it meant to most schoolchildren of the 50's and 60's (my vintage), but I have no recollection of ever owning one. Possibly it was more of a midwest staple as I attended school in a large city in Massachusetts. Help me out on this one. I use ChatGPT sparingly, but I made a simple request for information on the Big Chief Tablet like this... "Please find information on Big Chief school writing pads. History?" AI graciously filled in the blanks as to the history and evolution of the Western Tablet Company, but more interesting was a blog they cited written by one Kristy Darnell Battani in 2021, entitled, No Big Wahoo. I will gladly share her link because she tells the wonderful history of the Native American image on the cover of the tablets. Battani skirts the issue of cultural sensitivity with references to Ralphie's use of his Big Chief Tablet in the movie, A Christmas Story, etc. But the public comments at the end of her article assure the reader that childhood memories of the tablet were dear and her historical information about the image is well done. Take what you like and leave the rest.  Little Welsh Schoolhouse on the Prairie - 1906 In 2018 The CSAA Annual Country School Conference was held in Beatrice, Nebraska and hosted in part by the National Park Service at Homestead National Monument. On our Wednesday coach tour of area country schools we had the pleasure of visiting the "Little Welch Schoolhouse." With our thanks, CSAA is proud to re-introduce the Pleasant View Schoolhouse to our members and readers, one of our listees on the CSAA National Schoolhouse Registry! The videos below were submitted as programs in our 2021 VIRTUAL CONFERENCE held during the year of COVID closures. Pleasant View, also known as the "Little Welch Schoolhouse-District #81" displays a fabulous restored advertising curtain, while our hosts take you on an informative tour of the other artifacts in their schoolhouse. BTW...Note the CSAA Registry plaque on the schoolhouse! From the curators in 2021: "We're excited to share the first of our virtual tours of the Great Plains Welsh Heritage Project, featuring the historic District #81 Schoolhouse built in 1906. Board vice president Janey Rudder tells the history of the schoolhouse attended by the children of Welsh and German immigrants. Board president Gwen Colgrove and volunteer Dean Cole, who were among the last students to attend the school before its closure in 1960, recall their memories of growing up in the “Little Welsh Schoolhouse on The Prairie.” From their website: The Historic District 81 Schoolhouse is a fully furnished 1900-era one-room schoolhouse museum. The interior of the schoolhouse has been restored to its original appearance. Thomas J. and Elizabeth (Rowlands) Humphreys held the first local school in their home until George U. Jones donated the land in 1878 and School District 81 was established, three years before the town of Wymore was established. The present schoolhouse was built in 1906 and was originally located about two miles south of Wymore at the north end of the Welsh settlement centered on the Bethel Welsh church. This was the first school to be built by the Welsh community for the education of their children. At first, many children only spoke Welsh. Therefore, it was important that teachers come from the Welsh community, and many teachers were recent graduates of Wymore High School. The school was closed in the fall of 1960 and relocated to McCandless Park in 1967. Twice a year volunteers from the Great Plains Welsh Heritage project offer “A Day at Country School” event at the schoolhouse for local 4th graders. Students experience a day of authentic 1929 lessons and learn a little Welsh. They also learn about the history of country schools and the significance of this particular school in the Welsh settlement. The Pleasant View Schoolhouse is open to visitors Memorial Day weekend, Sam Wymore Days in June and on request. |
