When I Was a Boy: Country Schools & Churches

When I was a boy there was not an automobile in the United States, nor anywhere else in the world, for that matter. In every rural American community there was a country school, a post office and store, and, in easy reach, a church. In most of the towns and villages there were livery stables. Only those who lived in rural America during that period know what factors those institutions were in community life. They began beating a retreat when the automobile made its advent during the early days of the present century.

In our county, which is a sample of them all, there were 99 district or rural schools, three first-class high schools and four second-class high schools scattered over a territory that was 31 miles long and 25 miles wide. There are now only 50 country school and 3 high schools. Two things contributed to the need for so many schools. One was the number of children of school age, which was much larger than now. The other was the poor roads incident to that era. Except that school houses were close to homes, it would have been impossible for a large part of the children to get any education at all.

There was not so much as one married woman teacher in the entire county during that era. Two things contributed to this. One was the prejudice against married women in the schools. The other was that, with so many children to raise, her place was in the home, anyway. Unmarried girls and bewhiskered men monopolized teaching jobs until along about the first year of the present century. Their pay ranged from $25 to $40 a month, only a few of them getting as much as $50.

Great stress was placed on Reading, Writing and Arithmetic. A favorite problem was one in connection with the number of bushels, or barrels, of corn a crib of stated dimensions contained. In view of the fact that most of the corn deals revolved about grain in the crib, this problem had a practical value on most every farm. Incidentally, not much corn was measured by the bushel during that period. It usually was bought or sold by the barrel. A barrel was the equivalent of five bushels, though nobody ever saw it measured in one. The custom was brought to our locality by Virginia and Kentucky pioneers.

Both the schoolhouse and the church were used as community centers. Once a month the local debating and literary society would hold forth at the schoolhouse, always with practically every home represented. Participants took their assignments seriously, devoting much time to books from which information to the disadvantage of their opponents might be gleaned. I believe the average rural school patron was better read during that era than during the living present. The school tax until comparatively recent years ranged from 20cents to 40cents on the $100 valuation, with very little help from the state. There was considerable competition for the privilege of having the teacher as a boarder. For one thing, she (or he) was expected to be a sort of tutor to the children. Even more important during those scarce money days, was the $8 to $10 a month the teacher paid for board and laundry. Because of bad roads, they seldom went home for weekends.

While most of the decrease in number of rural schools was due to the shift of pupils to town schools on bus routes, the fact remains that there has been a very heavy decrease in number of pupils because of the present-day preference for small families. And quite in contrast to the handful of children now found in a country school, some having no more than 5, was the 40 to 50 with which the teacher had to cope in former days.

The country church also was a community center during that era. A favorite talking point with real estate agents was that a place was in easy reach of church and school. This was because church-going was so general among farm people at that time that they were unwilling to live in a community in which there were no religious advantages. In our county, many of the rural churches have closed up and quit during recent years. This, of course, was not altogether because of the automobile. The change of population incident to a real estate boom, and to a movement of older people from town to city, was the real reason. For instance, what once would be a very strong Baptist or Methodist Church, would lose a large number of its paying members when new people who belonged to other denominations moved to nearby farms. As a rule, they were unwilling to become members of the neighborhood church. Having no church of their choice to attend, most of them soon get out of the habit. Even more distressing is that so many of them allow their children to grow up without religious influences.

Due to these and other causes, there are about a fewer houses of worship in our county than when I was a boy.

There also are about a dozen fewer post offices than the automobile era. They were daily gathering places for people in every community. There are at least two dozen fewer country stores.

Of the dozen or more livery stables, not one is left.

In addition to being community gathering places, the provided markets for farm produce. And in addition market they furnished for driving horses and feed, the stable, strange as this may seem, was a very popular place. Here in Paris what was known as the Hay Club headquarter at the Wetmore and Cissell livery barn. It was composed of bankers, teachers, merchants, ministers an others who could find time to loaf.

A volume could be written about the things that have gone out of community life in Rural America since the automobile came into general use, in one generation.