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A Time Bridge to Oklahoma Schools By Charles Sasser T


he “time bridge” at the Cherokee Strip Museum in Perry, Okla., spans a small creek and a century into the past as young “scholars” cross over to a little one-room


schoolhouse on the prairie. Today, the scholars are 28 third-graders from the Eisenhower International School in Tulsa. Dressed in boots, hats, overalls, bon- nets and aprons, carrying lunches in syrup buckets, they line up as a “stern schoolmarm” greets them on the front steps of Rose Hill School and leads them inside where it is 1910, William Howard Taft is presi- dent, and schooling is a bit different. Rose Hill is one of thousands of pioneer schools


that once dotted the prairies and woodlands of Oklahoma. Of these, only 84 survive to be listed on Oklahoma’s Register of Historic Places. Several of them, like Rose Hill, offer youngsters the experience of a day attending a one-room school the way it was “back then.” Frontier schools appeared almost as soon as Indian


Territory opened for settlement prior to statehood in 1907. One of the earliest schoolhouses, the Territorial Schoolhouse in Edmond, Okla., began operation in 1889—only weeks after the first Oklahoma Land Rush opened up the remaining Unassigned Lands for claims. Preserved now as a “living history” museum, it is the last original structure in Edmond from that period. The first schoolhouses to spring up like mushrooms


in every new community were small, temporary, and often makeshift. Since students had to walk to school, more than 100 one-room schoolhouses seeded Roger Mills County in the early 1900s, among them the Roll one-roomer in Cheyenne, Okla., that was built in 1903 and remains a memorial to a historical period now gone.


As no public funds were available prior to 1907, most schools began when public-spirited families erected them on their farms. Students’ parents raised salaries for teachers, who often lived in lofts above their schoolrooms. The classic one-room schoolhouse evolved a bit later in Oklahoma history. Early on, districts used abandoned houses, stores, or barns. Tents were com- mon, as were brush arbors and caves. Log houses suf- ficed where timber was available, many with dirt floors. Hundreds of dug-outs and “soddies” served as pioneer schools in western Oklahoma. Fathers dug fur- rows from home to school to aid children in finding their way during snowstorms. Oklahomans who attended one-room schools are becoming as rare as the old schools themselves. Charles Baker, 76, started school at Rose Bud in Wagoner County in 1944. He graduated 8th grade in 1952, the same year the school closed down; all rural schools only went to the 8th grade. Nothing survives of Rose Bud today except for a few foundation stones





Man, this is really olden times


“ - Eisenhower International School Student


The McKey School student body in the 1950s. Teachers Mrs. Jessie Lowery (far left) and husband and fellow teacher, Edgar Lowery (far right). Photos by Charles Sasser


Jackie (Snow) Pop (left) and Janice (Blount) Sanders occupy desks they once used at McKey School more than a half-century ago.


Original one-room schoolhouse from 1902 in Frederick, Okla.


“Stern Schoolmarm” Cindy Rupp teaches visitors at Rose Hill school.


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