Driving down these country roads, you might spot a very old house or barn. Is it just me, or do we all say, “If walls could talk”? During my research on Medina’s one-room schoolhouses, I feel like they did just that. Excitedly, I discovered that two of those school structures still stand today.
Folks at the presentation were surprised to learn that they drive past one of the original schoolhouses almost every day—if not daily.
There sits the O’Borski Schoolhouse of 1873, located two miles south of Medina on Hwy 16.
It had a room in the middle with no floor so the children could hide their horses from the Indians.
The second surviving school is the Lima Schoolhouse, located on FM 2107 and owned by one of our hometown originals. Both schools have been remodeled over the years.
There were a dozen one-room schoolhouses scattered along the creeks and riverbanks. At first, some students came to town to join the two-story, four-room school built at our current school location.
That building would sway during high winds. The pupils loved windy days because the teachers would send them home.
More children began heading to town when the new rock schoolhouse was built in 1928. By 1930, all one-room schoolhouses had been consolidated with the Medina School, which then served 322 students.
By 1937, that number had grown to 400 students— with only 13 teachers. They had to use the Church of Christ building until more classrooms could be added. In 1945, Tarpley School also consolidated with Medina.
Many children were raised in the hills, near the creeks or by the river— but they all came to town, eventually.
Many historical, wonderful (and some funny) stories spilled out from these walls—more than I can include in this article.
I’d like to share a brief sample of my writing, penned while lollygagging with a pencil in hand: If walls could talk, you’d have a tale called history— or why not herstory— with perhaps some mystery, calamity, or splashes of catastrophe. Two still stand—do the walls still talk?
And what of the walls that
are long gone?
How do we retrieve those stories?
Was there a fly on the wall to pass down, to recall the happenings, the remembrances, and the tales? “Hide your horses, children, so the Indians don’t snatch them.”
Those tales are handed down from one fly to another.
Oh, the one-room schoolhouses by the creek or by the river— The importance of education they never failed to deliver.
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