Published: July 10, 2008 03:57 pm            

Looking back at the one room school

Sand Ridge

Location: Lake Prairie Township, sec. 1



Sand Ridge School which takes its name from the soil composition in the area was on the Pella-Sully road (T-22) approximately 6 miles north of Pella.

There are no available records of when the first school house was built but in 1888 it was sold to Walter Van Der Hart for $41.50 and a new one was built which stood until the fire of 1944 at which a time a third school was built. In February 1961 that building was auctioned for $1,130 and moved to Beacon.

Two students, Anna Ter Louw Roorda and Annette Vander Hart Ter Louw, have left detailed descriptions of the school as it was when they attended in the first decade of the 1900’s. (The large, gray one-room school house with attached coal house set on the north end of a one acre playground. On the south end was a small barn which housed a burro, and later a pony, which owner Harry Awtry rode to school.

The entry was on the south side of school. A blackboard stretched the length of the north wall. There were three large windows on the east and west walls and between them were hooks where students hung their coats. A pot bellied stove stood in the center of the room; in winter time the area around it was often crowded with wet mittens, coats and their owners trying to keep warm. Other days students remained at their assigned places in one of the four rows of double desks.

In the south east corner was a raised platform on which was the teacher’s desk and an organ. In front of the platform was the recitation bench. When the teacher called pupils for class she would say, “First grade reading, turn, rise, and pass. Turn meant turn in your seat so feet were in the aisle, rise meant stand up, and pass meant walk to the bench.”

A few open shelves along the west wall held a small library of books and the lunch pails. On the front seat was a pail with drinking water. At times water from the school well was “questionable” and children were sent to get a pail of water from a nearby farm. At first they all drank from a common dipper but later they were required to provide their own cups. They continued, however, to wash their hands in a common basin and dry their hands on a common towel.)

This school burned down March 8, 1944 and on March 13 the board contracted for use of Pete Slycord’s farmhouse for $80.00 for three months. Donna Zwank Gosselink remarked on the big improvements in the new school which had an oil furnace, running water, a library, Rolscreen windows and a cement floored basement. she also tells how her dad Peter Zwank who was not allergic to poison ivy would avoid being “tagged” by running into a patch of it when students played tag.

Other popular games of that era were Blackman, fox and geese, drop the handkerchief, and shinny which Cornelius Schakel describes as hockey on the grass with a tin can--very dangerous. In the wintertime they also enjoyed skating on a pond near the school.

Mollie Brom recalls helping one little girl in school who always cried because she had a “headache in her legs” (probably from walking a long distance).

Students from several different decades mentioned the pastors and lay persons who came to school to teach Bible class once a week. Sometimes these pastors also held services on Sunday and brought three or four schools together for vacation Bible school. Rev. H. L. Van Dellen, long time missionary for the American Sunday School Union, walked from Pella through the mud to the school when C. C. Ver Dught, the father of Arie of Dught was a student there. He told Arie that since his family didn’t have opportunity to attend church regularly he really appreciated the early training he received through these classes.

Teachers and the dates in which they taught include Minnie Dickey 1897, Sylvia Platt, Julia Van Zante 1898, Jennie Vander Zyl, Julia van Zante 1900, Florence Hammer, Minerva Pugh, Hattie Harmsen 1901, Julia Van Zante 1902-03, Jas D. Frank, Orville Ney 1904, Henrietta Gaass 1905, Cassa Clark 1916-18, Lena Hoksbergen 1919, Marie Vander Hart 1920-24, Jeanette De Jong 1925-26, Marie Vander Hart 1927, Perry Smith 1928-30, Rhoda Culbertson fall 1931, Otis Crozier spring 1932, Otis Crozier 1932-33, Irene Roose 1934-35, Johanna Rouwenhorst 1937-40, Lena Nugteren 1942-43, Marjorie Litten 1944-46, Darlene Bevan fall 1947, Johanna Rouwenhorst spring 1948, Gladys Leusink 1948-50, Elizabeth Tuinstra 1955. Other teachers who taught during the 50’s were Ruth Gosselink Olive Palmquist Terrill, Margaret De Ronde.

(The next school will be Plain View of Lake Prairie township. Those with stories or pictures that could be copied should contact me at 628-4716)

        

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