Roaring River School

Settlers drawn to the Roaring River Valley's abundant water beginning in the 1820s, and especially the rapid spring-fed Roaring River that powered mills, soon created enough population to require a school. Local tradition suggests a mid-1800s log school, though no evidence has been found, and the earliest known written record of education in the valley is a September 16, 1872, contract hiring Ella Cravens, a legally qualified teacher, for a four-month term at thirty dollars per month. Like many rural one-room schools around the turn of the century, students walked or rode horseback, studied subjects such as reading, writing, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, geography, history, physiology, and civil government, and ranged from ages five to eighteen in multiple grades taught in a single room. Teachers divided their attention among reciting classes and silent students, discipline could include standing in the corner or the hickory switch, and recess games and duties such as carrying water from a neighbor's spring were part of school life before a stoneware cooler and tin cups replaced the shared dipper. In the Roaring River Valley School, eight grades were taught until about 1927, when a state-funded high school was added in the same one-room building and a partition separated high school from elementary students; the two-year high school continued until about 1932. After the Depression and World War II, one-room schools were phased out as districts were consolidated, and School District Number 85 was merged with the Eagle Rock district by 1952, ending the school. The building first occupied in 1880 in Pilburn Hollow measured sixteen by eighteen feet with two windows; an addition and two more windows were added in 1893, the last class used it in 1912-1913, and a new Roaring River School building for District 85 in Barry County, Missouri, built in 1912-1913, first served the class of 1913-1914.

Missouri · United States