One-room schoolhouses in Illinois date from the 1855 free school law, which encouraged local townships to create school districts with elected boards that could levy taxes to support schools and pay teachers. Illinois is estimated to have had about 12,000 one-room schoolhouses at one time, more than any other state, with each district serving as many as a dozen families from nearby farms. In 1885, John Mottes Miner, foreman of the 40,000-acre Burr Oaks cattle and agricultural enterprise in present-day Sibley, Illinois, purchased the southwest corner of Section 17 in Sullivant Township, including school number 4, which had been destroyed by fire. He built a new frame schoolhouse on the site, and it became known as Miner Grade School, operating in that role for the next 60 years. The school served generations of residents of Sullivant and Dix townships, including the Miner, Poplett, Doyle, McKenna, Bonnen, and Dueringer families, whose descendants still live in Ford County. After John Miner's death in 1922, the land and school remained in the family, but the acreage became known as the Schoolhouse 80 until Ford County consolidated its districts in the late 1940s. Julia Miner Dueringer later bought the old schoolhouse and eventually sold it to the Guthrie Grain Elevator, which moved the building two miles down the road and repurposed it as office space.