PRARIE STAR SCHOOLHOUSE

The small one room Prairie Star Schoolhouse was named in honor of the children who survived the Children’s Blizzard of 1888. Cheryl’s great, great grandfather, John Cherry, brought a wagon load of supplies to the schoolhouse in Nebraska during the blizzard, making it possible for the children to survive (including John Cherry’s twin sons). More history of the ”Children’s Blizzard of 1888” is posted below.

CHILDREN’S BLIZZARD OF 1888

For the settlers on the Great Plains, January 12, 1888, began as a beautiful, warm day. Children traveled to their one room schools without hats, gloves, jackets or boots because of the warmth. A sudden, violent blizzard, later to be known as the School Children’s Blizzard, swept across the American plains. Without warning, the atmosphere suddenly, violently changed. One moment the air was calm; the next the sky exploded in a raging chaos of horizontal snow and hurricane-force winds. It moved at the mind-boggling rate of 60 to 70 miles per hour and caught teachers, parents and children unawares. In some cases, the temperature dropped an incredible 18 degrees in three minutes. The storm roared down on the prairie with a ferocity that was incomprehensible. Visibility became so poor, so fast that many people became disoriented and perished within a few feet of shelter.

The choice of staying at school or trying to make it home became a life-or-death situation. Hundreds of children spent the night in schoolhouses where desks, tables and chairs were fed into stoves. The last bits of lunches were carefully divided. Thin coats served as blankets.

When the blizzard hit Gauge County, Nebraska, Cheryl Baker’s Great-Great Grandfather, John Cherry, set out for the Prairie Star School with a wagon load of supplies in an attempt to save his children who were trapped in the school. John Cherry, plus the teacher and all of the students, safely waited out the blizzard in the schoolhouse.

By Friday morning, January 13, some five hundred people lay dead on the drifted prairie, many of them children who had perished on their way home from country schools.

The tobacco advertising tins pictured above are referred to as “Lunch Box Tins”. In the late 1800s tobacco companies discovered that children would use this style of tobacco tin as lunch pails after their fathers finished the tobacco. Every one room schoolhouse had colorful tins sitting in the cloakroom full of lunches. Companies started competing for this market, making their tins in a vast array of colors and designs. Children pestered their fathers to buy a certain type of tobacco because of the colorful lithographs on the tin.

The book carrier pictured in our granddaughter Clare’s hand, and on the desk in the photo at the right, was a common sight in one room schoolhouses. You could push a button on the carrier and the cloth straps would reel out, allowing extra books to be added. Then the reel would tighten around the books and the child could easily carry their books home. The carrier was an early day child’s school backpack!

In the photos above, our granddaughter Quinn writes on an antique slate chalkboard while Clare rings the school bell.

Our neighbors, Dick and Barbie Read, were married on the schoolhouse porch on a beautiful September afternoon.

Pictured above is an early schoolhouse portable desk. At the top of the desk is a paper scroll with two handles on the side. When turned, the scroll exhibited a series of visual teaching aids. The scroll identifies flowers, explains math numbers, music, telling time, identifies birds, counting, weights, measures, fractions, morse code, the introduction to scouting, etc. It has been a long time since morse code was taught in public schools! The table top section of the desk is a chalk board. There are small compartments below the scroll on the back of the desk for storing extra supplies.

Our granddaughters like to head directly to the schoolhouse when they visit.  In these photos you see how much Clare has grown in the last few years, but she still loves to play in the school house with her sister Quinn.

EIGHTH-GRADE FINAL EXAMINATION
SALINA, KANSAS 1895

Remember when grandparents and great-grandparents mentioned they only had an 8th grade education? Could you have passed the 8th grade in 1895?

Grammar (Time, one hour)

1. Give nine rules for the use of capital letters.
2. Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications.
3.. Define verse, stanza and paragraph
4. What are the principal parts of a verb? Give principal parts of ‘lie,”play,’ and ‘run..’
5.. Define case; illustrate each case.
6 What is punctuation? Give rules for principal marks of punctuation.
7 – 10. Write a composition of about 150 words and show therein that you understand the practical use of the rules of grammar.

Arithmetic (Time,1 hour 15 minutes)

1. Name and define the Fundamental Rules of Arithmetic.
2. A wagon box is 2 ft. Deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. Wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?
3. If a load of wheat weighs 3,942 lbs., what is it worth at 50cts/bushel, deducting 1,050 lbs. For tare?
4. District No 33 has a valuation of $35,000. What is the necessary levy to carry on a school seven months at $50 per month, and have $104 for incidentals?
5. Find the cost of 6,720 lbs.. Coal at $6.00 per ton.
6. Find the interest of $512.60 for 8 months and 18 days at 7 percent..
7. What is the cost of 40 boards 12 inches wide and 16 ft. Long at $20 per metre?
8. Find bank discount on $300 for 90 days (no grace) at 10 percent.
9. What is the cost of a square farm at $15 per acre, the distance of which is 640 rods?
10. Write a Bank Check, a Promissory Note, and a Receipt

U.S. History (Time, 45 minutes)
1. Give the epochs into which U.S. History is divided
2.. Give an account of the discovery of America by Columbus
3.. Relate the causes and results of the Revolutionary War.
4. Show the territorial growth of the United States
5. Tell what you can of the history of Kansas
6. Describe three of the most prominent battles of the Rebellion.
7. Who were the following: Morse, Whitney, Fulton , Bell , Lincoln , Penn, and Howe?
8. Name events connected with the following dates: 1607, 1620, 1800, 1849, 1865.

Orthography (Time, one hour) [Do you know what this is??]

1. What is meant by the following: alphabet, phonetic, orthography, etymology, syllabication
2. What are elementary sounds? How classified ?
3. What are the following, and give examples of each: trigraph, subvocals, diphthong, cognate letters, linguals
4. Give four substitutes for caret ‘u. ‘ (HUH?)
5. Give two rules for spelling words with final ‘e.’ Name two exceptions under each rule.
6. Give two uses of silent letters in spelling. Illustrate each.
7. Define the following prefixes and use in connection with a word: bi, dis-mis, pre, semi, post, non, inter, mono, sup.
8. Mark diacritically and divide into syllables the following, and name the sign that indicates the sound: card, ball, mercy, sir, odd, cell, rise, blood, fare, last.
9. Use the following correctly in sentences: cite, site, sight, fane, fain, feign, vane , vain, vein, raze, raise, rays…
10. Write 10 words frequently mispronounced and indicate pronunciation by use of diacritical marks and by syllabication.

Geography (Time, one hour)

1 What is climate? Upon what does climate depend?
2. How do you account for the extremes of climate in Kansas ?
3. Of what use are rivers? Of what use is the ocean?
4. Describe the mountains of North America
5. Name and describe the following: Monrovia , Odessa , Denver , Manitoba , Hecla , Yukon , St. Helena, Juan Fernandez, Aspinwall and Orinoco
6. Name and locate the principal trade centers of the U.S. Name all the republics of Europe and give the capital of each.
8. Why is the Atlantic Coast colder than the Pacific in the same latitude?
9. Describe the process by which the water of the ocean returns to the sources of rivers.
Describe the movements of the earth. Give the inclination of the earth.

Notice that the exam took FIVE HOURS to complete.