It is understandable that these crude mud and log school houses were often referred to as 'mud Colleges' by the old-timers.īy the year 1880, most of the log schools had disappeared and in their places emerged a frame or brick structure which 'for elegance and beauty of design' rival those schoolhouses of the older settled countries and which lasted for almost another seventy years. Seats were also made out of the puncheons. The writing benches were made of wide planks or puncheons (unfinished slabs of split timber also used as flooring) resting on pins driven into two-inch auger holes bored into the logs beneath the windows. The windows, formed by cutting our a part of a log on either side, were usually covered over with greased paper or a piece of eighty-by-ten glass. This big fireplace served not only for warming purposes (and extra light) in the winter, but also as a kind of conservatory in summer.

Some times a door was placed on each side of this fireplace and a horse would be used to drag a large log to the hearth by coming in one door and passing out the other one. The early schoolhouse, a small log cabin with a mud and stick chimney in one end of the building, had a hearth and fireplace wide and deep enough to take in a four foot log plus smaller wood. The first schoolhouses in the earliest days of the settlements of Pike County, Illinois, were built much the same as the cabins of the early settlers according to the HISTORY OF PIKE COUNTY, ILLINOIS, published in 1880 and described on pages 227, 229, 238 and 836. The information was researched and written by Margene Kiser Teachers, Former Students Students and Interested Citizensīarry Newspaper 'The Paper' (Reprinted 2008) History and Pictures Written By Pike County Natives Reprinted by Pikes County Ulna's Schools 1823 - 1995

Derry township absentee line