Iowa All Over: Schools of the past

MOUNT VERNON — Minutes away from Cedar Rapids, just down Mount Vernon Road, a historic building offers visitors a look at the Abbe Creek School — believed to be the oldest standing brick schoolhouse in Iowa.

The school is located on land purchased by William Abbe, the first settler in Linn County, said Gail Barels, conservation education specialist at Linn County Conservation. After the area was first settled, community members decided there was a need for a school.

Abbe provided the land for Abbe Creek School, established in 1844, which historians believe was a log cabin, Barels said.

The log cabin burned down during the Civil War and was rebuilt with brick, Barels said. The school was built at its present location on the former Lincoln Highway, now Mount Vernon Road, in 1856.

The tiny schoolhouse, measuring 20 by 26 feet, was used to to educate students in first through eighth grades.

The teacher's desk faces three rows of students' desks and chairs. In the center of the classroom stands a wooden stove. Students would bring their lunch to class every day, and soup would be stored in individual jars in the stove, which also provided heat to the entire classroom.

Original schools were not set up by the state, Barels explained. Instead, many such schools were started by families, who paid the teachers directly.

Attendance was not mandatory at the school. During planting and harvest season, boys — and some of the girls, too, — stayed home and worked on the farm, Barels said.

'These were farm families and they had to do everything by hand and they needed the person power,' she said.

The school also served as a central gathering point for the community.

'The one-room school was the school, the church, the community center, the voting place,' Barels said. 'It was the center of the social activities for the area families.'

Depending upon the school and the circumstances, teachers could live with families, Barels said. Records indicate the pay range for teachers in the 1870s and 1880s ranged from $20 to $30 a month, with no holidays, according to Linn County Conservation.

Windows in the building overlook the scenic surroundings to the schoolhouse. Outside is a spring, the source of a feeder stream running into Abbe Creek, that provided fresh water for the school.

On the other side is the Abbe Cemetery, where many early residents are buried, including two Civil War veterans.

Abbe Creek School closed in 1936. For a time it used was a private home, Barels said. At one point, the home had electricity and running water, although it doesn't now.

In 1964 the restored schoolhouse was dedicated as the Abbe Creek School Museum. Today, the Linn County Conservation Board maintains the facility.

'Students walk in today and they start asking questions and they don't stop because everything is so different for them,' Barels said. 'There's no electricity in this building, so how did they get light? Where did their water come from? It shows them what people in past times lived like.'

Just down the road in Solon is another one-room schoolhouse, this one a native stone building.

According to Gazette archives, 14 rural schoolhouses were auctioned off in October 1954 in the Solon Community School District. The then-112-year-old Stone Academy was advertised for sale, but Dr. William J. Petersen, superintendent of the Iowa Historical Society, wrote the board asking that it be preserved.

According to archives, it was the first Johnson County school building.

If you go

What: Abbe Creek School Museum

Where: County Hwy E48, Mount Vernon

Hours: 1 p.m. to 4 p.m., the first and third Sunday of June, July and August. Special arrangements can be made by contacting Linn County Conservation staff, (319) 892-6485.

For more information, visit mycountyparks.com/