Pioneer Schools of the Arbuckles.

 Several weeks ago I was doing some research in the library and came across a footnote that referenced a book called the “Development of Education in Murray County, Oklahoma”.  The book turned out to be a master’s thesis by Cloyd Virgil Smith in 1932 at the Oklahoma A&M College.

Now with a title like this I thought that reading it would be like eating Post Toasties without milk.  But I took a chance and asked the librarian to order it for me from the OSU library.  The book is a hardbound volume consisting of fifty-one pages that is the original hand typed thesis of Mr. Smith and is very informative.

As it was written in 1932 there is much information that is first hand from the first teachers and school officials that were here at the beginning of statehood.

The first schools in this area were those in the old Pickens, Pontotoc Panola and Tishomingo Districts that encompassed all the land in the Chickasaw Nation.  The Chickasaw government paid the tuition as well as the room and board for the Indian students.  If a white or non-Chickasaw child, not including the freedmen, wanted to attend school, they were charged a tuition fee to attend these Indian schools.

As we have mentioned many time in this column, the early white pioneers were charged an annual permit of $5 to farm and $50 for merchants and ranchers.  What I may have neglected to mention is that this permit money was what the Chickasaws used to fund their educational institutions.

As we also discussed in an earlier column, the Presbyterian Church started a Chickasaw Freedmen school at Ft. Arbuckle in 1874.  The Chickasaw government paid $2,500 for the two years support of the school. In 1876, the Baptist took over the education of the freedmen in the C & C Nations.  By 1881, the Baptists Home Mission Board had seven freedmen schools with an annual budget of $3,500 paid by the Chickasaws.  In the early 1890’s the Baptists established a freedmen’s school at Berwyn.

As times progressed, there were enough white settlers in the Nation to start schools for the white children.  These were usually held in a private home in the beginning and later the community or a wealthy citizen would build a schoolhouse.

Such was the case with W.B. Lowrance who started one of the first schools in Murray County on the Lowrance Ranch where Lilley Walker Loyd became the first teacher in the subscription school in 1886.

The school was typical of the early subscription schools of the area.  The building was a log hut built near Boiling Springs.  The school board consisted of three members, a president whose job was to get the teacher and building, a vice president whose job was to get students signed up and a treasurer whose job was to collect the dollar a month from the parents of each student and pay the teacher.

The teacher usually received $30 a month with room and board.  Normally a single teacher would live with a family for one week and move to another family the next week until the round was made and it began again.  Teachers who did not receive the full pay would accept meat, molasses, potatoes, and other necessities.

 Often the large families of the post civil-war era created a problem for the parents.  If there were eight or ten children in the family this would be a cost of eight to ten dollars a month.  This was a huge sum of money for an economy that relied heavily on bartering, as there was little cash in circulation and little to spend it on if one had money.  Often, a parent would send one child to school for a month and that child would teach the others at home.  At the end of the month, the next child in the family would go to school for a month. 

 The school term usually ran from harvest to spring planting, a period of four to six months.  The qualifications of the teachers were not looked at too hard.  Often the teachers were only eight grade graduates themselves and had taken a simple test of proficiency in reading, math, language and history.  Most of the time a good physical specimen was more important than academics so as to handle the older boys.

 In the early days there were few books to learn from and the students would bring books from home or use the Bible as a textbook and slate boards were used for writing.  The seats were usually puncheon logs with pegs for legs.  If a desk was available it was also usually a puncheon table.  Most often the students would hold the books in their laps.  A family that could furnish tables and chairs or furnished a room in their house for classes got their children educated for free.

 The children were segregated according to sex.  The boys sat on one side of the room and the girls on the other side.  Recess was no different.  The boys had their play ground and the girls had theirs.

 As stated above, W.B. Lowrance furnished the land, building and the teacher for the first subscription school.  Another citizen who was intently interested in educating his children was Tom Hayes, the adopted son of Mazeppa Turner.  Tom owned land northeast of Dougherty and wanted a school nearby.  He furnished the land, lumber and labor to build the school that later became known as Rock Creek School that was located near the present site of the dam at Lake Arbuckle.  Eventually all of Tom’s children graduated from college.

 In 1879, Nathan Price built a school at Sorghum Flat, which was also a log cabin.  Most of these cabins had no windows, poor ventilation and were dark.  What little heat they had was usually a wood or coal heater that produced copious amounts of smoke in the schoolroom.  In 1900 Price’s Chapel was built to serve as both a school and church.  The building still stands on the Healey Ranch near Dougherty.  Miss Jennie Culbert was the first teacher at Sorghum Flat School.    She was succeeded by a Mr. Boyd.

 In 1886 a subscription school was organized at Drake using an old log house.  Mrs. Vionna Harris was the first teacher with nine pupils.  This brings up and interesting point.  As there were nine students the teacher could not work for nine dollars a month.  The solution was for the parents to pay more per child or some wealthy citizen would make up the difference.

 In 1887 a school was established at Davis with fifty pupils.  W.F. Parker was the first teacher of the white school.  For a time the white school and the Indian school were in the same building but had separate teachers.  Later the schools separated and remained that way until statehood.

 In 1890 a school was established at Sulphur.  Like Davis the white and Indian students were in the same building but had separate teachers.  W.O. Harris taught the Chickasaw students.

 A school was also established about 1890 in Dougherty.  The first school was in the commissary of the D. & W. Railroad.  Mr. Mustang was one of the first teachers.  It is said that he ruled by the rod.

 Also about 1890 a school was organized in Russell a few miles southwest of Davis on the Washita River. Mr. Headrick the former county attorney from Gresham County Texas was one of the early teachers.

 In 1891 a school was established in the Washita community with W.H. Fielding serving as the first teacher.  As usual, the desk and chairs were split logs with wooden pegs driven into them to serve as legs.  The name of this school was later changed to Wheeler or Wheeler Flat.  In the 1920’s, Wheeler was consolidated with Carr Flat and Talley to form the Joy school.

A school was established in 1900 in a log house at White Mound southwest of Sulphur with about a dozen students.  Sam Edmondson was the first teacher.  The name of the school was later changed to Board Hollow or Board Bottom, then to Arbuckle and then to Crusher.

Carr Flat School began in 1893 and was named for John E. Carr who was an adopted Chickasaw. Mr. Carr had six daughters that needed an education and paid to build the school between Joy and Wynnewood.  Mr. Wheelis and Cora Smith were the first teachers. 

The Oklahoma School for the Deaf was located at Guthrie before statehood.  The school was under the direction of a special board of trustees just as Oklahoma colleges are today.  This board of Trustees met at the Artesian Hotel in Sulphur on June 18, 1908 for the purpose of deciding on the location of a temporary site for the school.  The board at that time was made up of  E.D. Cameron, Charles Burks and John R. Miller. 

A committee representing the commercial club of Sulphur met with the Board and offered to erect a brick building seventy-five feet by one hundred twenty feet in length with basement and two stories.  The building would be rent-free and could be ready by the beginning of September 1, 1908 for the school year 1908-1909. 

Although the school was originally put here on a temporary basis, the State of Oklahoma appropriated $100,000 in 1909-1910 for the construction of four new buildings.  The new buildings were ready for the 1914-1915 school year.  In 1911, there were 207 students.

There were also three separate schools for the education of the African American children.  These schools were Jackson Separate School located south of Hennepin in the old Howard school district, booker T. Washington in Davis and Dunbar in Sulphur.  The children attended these schools through the 6^th grade and were then bussed to Wynnewood to complete grades 7 through 12.  In 1954 schools were desegregated and the bussing of the black children to Wynnewood stopped.  The black children were then sent to school in their own districts with the white children.

In 1923 there were thirty schools in Murray County.  Today there are only three, Sulphur, Davis and the Joy School under the Wynnewood School District. 

Contributed by Dennis Muncrief - February, 2003.