EARLY SCHOOL HOUSES
the primitive school houses of Illinois were built of logs and were extremely rude, as regards both structure and furnishing.
Indeed, the earliest pioneers rarely erected a special building to be used as a school house. An old smoke house an abandoned dwelling an old block house or the loft or one end of a settler's cabin not infrequently answered the purpose and the church and the court house were often made to accommodate the school.
When a school house as such was to be built the men of the district gathered at the site selected bringing their axes and a few other tools with their ox teams and devoted four or five days to constructing a house into which perhaps not a nail was driven.
Trees were cut from the public lands and without hewing fashioned into a cabin. Sixteen feet square was usually considered the proper dimensions. In the walls were cut two holes one for the door to admit light and air and the other for the open fireplace from which rose a chimney usually built of sticks and mud on the outside. Danger of fire was averted by thickly lining the inside of the chimney with clay mortar.
Sometimes but only with great labor stone was substituted for mortar made from the clay soil. The chimneys were always wide seldom less than six feet and sometimes extending across one entire end of the building. The fuel used was wood cut directly from the forest frequently in its green state, dragged to the spot in the form of logs or entire trees to be cut by the older pupils in lengths suited to the width of the chimney.
Occasionally there was no chimney the fire in some of the most primitive structures being built of the earth and the smoke escaping through a hole in the roof. In such houses a long board was set up on the windward side and shifted from side to side as the wind varied. Stones or logs answered for andirons, clapboards served as shovels and no one complained of the lack of tongs.
Roofs were made of roughly split clapboards, held in place by "weight poles" laid on the boards and by supports starting from "eaves poles." The space between the logs which constituted the walls of the building was filled in with blocks of wood or "chinking" and the crevices both exterior and interior daubed over with clay mortar in adhesiveness. On one side of the structure on or two logs were sometimes cut out to allow the admission of light and as glass could not always be procured rain and snow were excluded and light admitted by the use of greased paper.
Over this space a board attached to the outer wall by leather hinges was sometimes suspended to keep out the storms. The placing of a glass window in a country school house at Edwardsville, in 1824 was considered an important even. Ordinarily the floor was of the natural earth although this was sometimes covered with a layer of clay firmly packed down. Only the more pretentious school houses had "puncheon floors" i.e. floors made of split logs roughly hewn. Few had ceilings (so called) the latter being usually made of clapboards sometimes of bark on which was spread earth to keep out the cold. The seats were also of puncheons (without backs) supported on four legs made of pieces of poles inserted through augur holes.
No one had a desk except the advanced pupils who were learning to write. For their convenience a broader and smoother puncheon was fastened into the wall by wooden pins, in such a way that it would slope downward toward the pupil, the front being supported by a brace extending from the wall. When a pupil was writing he faced the wall. When he had finished this task he "reversed himself" and faced the teacher and his schoolmates. These adjuncts completed the furnishings, with the exception of a split-bottom chair for the teacher (who seldom had a desk) and a pail, or "piggin" of water with a gourd for drinking cup.
Rough and uncouth as these structures were they were evidences of public spirit and of appreciation of the advantages of education. They were built and maintained by mutual aid and sacrifice and in them some of the great men of the State and Nation obtained that primary training which formed the foundation of their subsequent careers.