Published: September 12, 2008 03:36 pm            

Looking back at the one room school

West Amsterdam, sat on a bluff overlooking the Des Moines River, southwest of Pella. There is a site marker for the school on Hemstead Drive, the road that leads to the T’Lam Cemetery. Built in 1882, the 18 by 26 ft. building was identical to the East Amsterdam building which has been preserved as a museum. When the school population continued to dwindle in the 1940’s the school was closed and the neighborhood children attended East Amsterdam. The school building was purchased by George Wassenaar and moved to the corner of University and West Second St. in Pella and remodeled into a two story home. The last owners of the house were the David Ways who had four small children. Mrs. Way described it as a doll’s house which she decorated in whimsical colors. They sold the property to Central College which razed the house.

According to the 1934 school board report there were 35 growing trees on the school yard. The report also states there was no well, more seats and a phonograph were needed and the blackboard needed to be lowered.

When Dick Schippers was interviewed for a 1936 Chronicle article about his days at the school near Howell Station that predated the division into East and West Amsterdam he said that most students wore wooden shoes. This was not so surprising as Amsterdam was an early Dutch settlement. The Tooms, Van Lints, Rietvelds, and Kleins were among the Dutch who opted to live there rather than in Pella. The record of teachers at the little red brick school which was located on the Toom farm shows Rufus H. Snavely, winter term of 1874, C. A. Vander Linden 1865, J. W. McDonald 1876, and Jennie Fosdick 1878.

Velma De Prenger Rempe phoned me to talk about her first year of teaching at West Amsterdam in the 1939-40 school year. Velma who was a graduate of the class of 1938 had to postpone teaching for a year because she was only 17. That fall instead of being in the classroom she found herself in the cornfield helping her dad husk corn. While teaching at West Amsterdam she boarded at the Art Van Haaften home. The roads in the area were poor. She always hoped it would not be raining on a Monday morning when her parents dropped her off at Howell station to walk up the railroad tracks to the school.

Velma said the Valster boys sometimes interspersed Dutch words with English and she wondered what one meant when he said, “And the mouse ran up the naaimachine” (sewing machine) Her seven students (1 girl and 6 boys) were natural actors and put on a good Christmas program. It seems this small school provided a good start for Velma who taught six more years in schools closer to her home near Leighton.

Marilyn De Hamer De Jong also called to tell me about her days at the West Amsterdam school. She too mentioned the bad roads when her dad would take her to school in a jeep. There used to be a slogan about neither rain nor snow keeping the mailman from his rounds. This certainly applied to both students and teachers in the rural schools which were seldom closed because of bad weather. Marilyn attended primary through 3rd grade at West Amsterdam and made the transition to East Amsterdam after the West school closed in the spring of 1944.

The names of teachers known to have taught at West Amsterdam are Minnie Veenstra 1899, Katherine Boland 1900-01, Alice Veenscholer 1902, Delia Rietveld, E. Van Nimwegen 1903, Cora Hoogennakker 1904, Cora Hoogenakker, Sylvia Woody 1905, Tille De Wit 1906, ? Adams, M. Vander Linden 1907, Alta Vander Linden 1908, Lottie Koopman, Hattie Harmsen, Marie Vander Burce 1909, Ethel Truer, Oletha Lemmon 1910, K. L. Byram 1912, Edna Patterson, Grace Toom, Jennie Huff Patten 1913, Besse Vande Garde 1914-16, Ethel Rovaart 1917-18, Hattie Van Veen 1919, Ethel Rovaart 1920, Gertrude Sels, Marie Roorda 1922, Nellie Brack 1924, Margret LeCocq 1929, Ila Van Ness 1929-32, Ida Kuyper, Margaret Keuning 1935-38, Velma De Prenger 1939, Birdy Beintema 1940-41, Dorothy synhorst 1942, and Norma Schakel 1943.

The next school article will be about Silver Grove. Carl Nollen has compiled an extensiive history of this school. Because original photos reproduce better than copies, please call 628-4716 if you have one to share.

        

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