Home School House

Submitted by Lynn H. Nelson

I would guess that "home school house" meant the one-room school-house for the school district in which he resided, although I've heard Kansans refer to the school-house which they attended as their "home school house." The population of Hamilton appears to have been quite small, and it may have been a settlement centered on the district's school house. This was not at all uncommon. The family who sold the land for the school often lived adjacent to the property and provided room and board for the teacher (when she wasn't their daughter, or the daughter of another family in the district). Since a member of most of the families in the district visited the school five days of the week (and also because the school-house was usually located on one of the better roads) someone usually tried to set up a country store in the near vicinity of the school. This was often enough of an attraction for the owners of adjacent land to build their houses, or for their children to build a house, as near as possible to these conveniences. Sometimes the landowners even sold individual lots.

The school-house itself was the social and political center for its district. The playground often had a diamond for the local baseball team (and _every_ place with any pride in itself had its own baseball team), for visiting lecturers and political candidates, as a meeting hall for the local grange, ladies aid, temperance union, and so forth. It was also the polling place and often enough the location for harvest festivals, community suppers and rummage sales, 4th of July celebrations, amateur theatricals, recitation nights, and recitals by local musicians (most people played a musical instrument, and many of them played quite well). If the residents of the district were too far from a church, they would often organize a congregation that would meet in the schoolhouse. Many times the residents of the district were of a common ethnic background and chose to form a denominational congregation. If their denomination was one that emphasized trained and educated ministers, the local congregation might take the form of Sunday Bible classes, with more or less informal congregational worship and visiting ministers for marriages, baptisms, and the like. Incidentally, this is probably the reason that so many older Kansans can't understand why prayer should not be allowed in public schools -- their schools were also their churches.

A nearby store was a dynamic addition to the activities that were centered on the school. Farmers didn't have much cash on hand, and would bring produce -- butter, cream, eggs, bacon, and even fresh-killed game, hides, and furs -- to the local store for credit. The store owner had to get these things to market every day and bring back the goods that his customers wanted. So the owner of a country store usually ran a freighting business on the side, and would bring back mail-order goods from town. As long as he was making a daily round-trip anyway, he also brought back the mail, newspapers, magazines, and gossip from town. A well-situated country store could draw patrons even from outside the local school district. If people were willing to come from as little as five miles away, the store could become the center of an economic community of some four hundred families. This might be enough to attract a blacksmith and perhaps a farm equipment repair shop. A widow or two might set themselves up as seamstresses or music teachers in small cottages near the school, and day-laborers might decide to live somewhere near the store, since that was where their potential employers gathered. Settlement often grew up in this fashion. If the community had some political connections, the government might appoint a local postmaster, and the settlement would be put on the map and could even consider formally incorporating as a town.

Most rural districts never got that far, and, a century ago, most Kansans lived in rural communities centered on the local school.