Today we head farther back in history from our previous post of Edith M. ROBERTS, (later McMurray, then Luck), when she was a part of the Prairie City High School Class of 1918. Four years earlier, on the 26th of June, 1914, Edith had graduated from 8th grade in the “Public Schools of the State of Iowa.” But what school was it?
We know that Edith could see her brother, George A. Roberts, Jr., and their sister Ethel Gay Roberts, later Robison, coming home from school- she wrote about this in stories to her family. The Mound Prairie schoolhouse was just a quarter of a mile down the road from their farmhouse. Edith adored her older sister and brother. Being the youngest by eight years, she would be at home with her mother, and could stand on a chair and watch out the window for her siblings to leave their one-room schoolhouse.
Edith’s father, George Anthony Roberts, Sr., was on the local school board and hired teachers- and the family also boarded them, more often than Edith’s mother, Ella V. Daniel Roberts, would wish. One more mouth to feed and another person in the small house was a challenge, especially if the schoolteacher had a difficult personality. (We have written earlier about some of those, and need to finish up those thoughts in some new posts. See notes.)
We believe that Edith attended this school, Mound Prairie, for her first eight years of schooling. She may have attended another school for the latter part, however, as her father had built a second house in Jasper County where he and her mother moved, but we do not know if Edith was already graduated by that time or if there was another school closer to the new place. We do know that in high school she rode her horse to her paternal grandparents’ house, that of John Roberts and Elizabeth Ann Murrell Roberts, in Prairie City. (They had moved there when John sold their farm and retired.) She would leave the horse at their house and go on to Prairie City High School, and she did the same for church on Sunday.
We also found some old pictures that we think may be children by this old school, or perhaps by another school. (Click to enlarge any of them, or request a higher quality picture.) It is likely that the same floor plan was used for many of the county schoolhouses, and similar exterior materials. Foundations may have been just what was around, especially if the soil was rocky, so those differences may help to differentiate schools.
We do know that Edith Roberts taught in some of the rural schools after she graduated either high school or college, so they could have been the children in her class. They might have instead been family or neighbors who attended this school near the homeplace, or another Jasper County school. Some of the Roberts, Daniel, and Murrell family lived in nearby, or in nearby counties, with some family as far away as northwestern Iowa, Missouri or Illinois- even out into the Dakotas. Some of the same children, especially four handsome boys that look like an energetic handful, are in multiple pictures we have. While the pictures are quite evocative of a very different time and lifestyle and enjoyable in their own way, we surely would like to identify the people and share with other descendants who would also enjoy these pictures. So if you can identify any of these children or the place, please let us know in the Comments section!
More images to come- please do let us know if you can help identify the people in the images or the places.
Notes, Sources, and References:
- Family treasure chest of photos, the “Roberts Family Photo Album, circa 1910-1920s.”
- “Those Places Thursday: Jasper County Schoolhouse.” https://heritageramblings.net/2018/04/19/those-places-thursday-jasper-county-schoolhouse/
Click to enlarge any image. Please contact us if you would like an image in higher resolution.
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