ANTIQUES FROM THE ONE-ROOM SCHOOL HOUSE
Brenda Kellow, 2001

One-room schoolhouses were common at the turn of the century when my parents were going to school in Collin County. They usually were small frame structures, exceptionally small according to today’s standards, with a wood burning stove, a bell to call the students to class, a teacher to instruct on all grade levels—usually first through the tenth or eleventh grades—and a room full of kids from the same area be they wealthy or poor.

Mother and Daddy attended one of these. Mother went to St. Paul school, which was sometimes called Dump school or Rawhide School, located just north of Wylie. Daddy was a student at the Culleoka School located near the general store and under the ‘spreading oak tree.’ They knew everyone in their respective classes and were related to many of the students. They loved school and often told me stories about their school days. One of the stories my mother told me is one I am going to share with you.

Mother said that they had learning days, but a short time each Friday was special for her because she and the other kids got to make some form of art. Her favorite was the class they had on making clay figures and animals. I know this was a class with lots of sentimental value for her because she saved some of those clay figures. There is one male adult with dark skin and hair in a long blue robe. Another is an adult female in a tan robe and reddish colored hair. They were Bible figures if my memory serves me correctly. Then she made some animals: a cow, a horse, and a goat. As I write this I wonder if it was possibly the main figures in a nativity grouping. They could very well be Mary and Joseph with the animals in the manger. I remember that Mother was sad when she told me that my older sister had broken one or more of her clay figures. Now I wonder if it was Baby Jesus.

Mother is gone, but those remaining figures my mother held so dear that she made in her class in the one room schoolhouse now have a place of honor in my office. Today, it is I who hold the sentimentality toward those clay figures made over a hundred years ago.

Another item from her school days that I also give a place of honor in my home is the old school bench from Saint Paul School. It was given to me by my cousin John Scanlan for our new farm house in east Collin County.

It was a little rickety when I acquired the wooden bench. My husband tightened the screws in the bench to make it sturdy. I lovingly cleaned it without removing the original blue-gray wash but removing any splinters, then painted on a dull lacquer to freshen it. Now it is used in my gallery where it is both a treasured piece of antique art and a functional seat for observing the art objects collected from our travels and the hundreds of family pictures on plate rails acquired over years of researching our family history.

Treasured items from the past have a history of their own if you will just sit back and let them whisper their stories to you.


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