By: Charles E. Brooks
Upper Camp Creek School known in the early days as Kimmel School, was an old school, perhaps one of the oldest frame school buildings in the county at the time I started to school in 1902. Well-built it had weathered the storms for I would think, something like three decades and little worse for the wear, except for the paint. It still wore its initial coat of paint. Throughout the country almost everything was in need of paint, but almost nothing totally without paint. They had good paint in those days, better than now. Enough paint clung to the weather-boarding of the Kimmel School that it gave the appearance of being a white building with red cornice, dull white, to be sure, but white. A typical one-room school, about 20 feet by 40 feet, it had three big windows on each side, following the pattern of early school houses. By my time, the Board of Education had decreed that light should come in only from the back and left side of the pupil. New school houses were being built that way, but the Kimmel School, probably built soon after the Civil War, failed to meet this standard.
The interior, walls, floor and ceiling, all of hand-dressed tongue-in-groove lumber, showed excellent, careful workmanship. Like the building, seats followed a very early pattern; a bench long enough for two pupils, with the desk, serving the pupils behind, built onto the back of the seat. These also were hand-made. Two shelves, meeting in one corner of the room, for the water bucket and lunch pails, with nails underneath for coats and caps, a long box-stove and teacher’s polished desk just about completed the furnishings. Our school did display a good-sized book case full of books, a good library for that time and place. A pie supper proceeds going to buy
books, could be thanked, in part, for this “affluence.” The girls sat on one side of the room, boys on the other, with a space between; the stove, near the middle of the room, in this space.
The way we said it, the name sounded like “Kimmel,” but this is a doubtful spelling. Rose Fulton Cramer, in the census, spelled it “Kimble,” which is probably correct, with (Cimbel?) given as a possibility. One thing I know, it did not start with a “C.” I would like to correct my spelling when I know for sure, what the correct spelling is. No Kimmel children were in school at the time I went, but they had carved their names, along with other former pupils, in the well house. I, have seen them many times, but cannot now be sure of the spelling. I think the name might possibly have been spelled “Kimbel,” but we did not sound the “b,” if indeed there was a “b.” The school was called by the name of the Kimmel family, who, perhaps, had been most instrumental in the building of it. Without doubt, they’ had been one of the leading families in the valley, but they were all gone within something like a year after we moved there.
Pa bought our place from Mon Kimmel, a married son of the Kimmel family, who was preparing to go to Kansas. Our place had never been a part of the Kimmel place; Mon had bought it from Jade Melton. Pa traded a new wagon and a good span of mules for the 160 acre farm, much of it still in woods and the house unfinished. He might also have given a little cash, but if so, it would have been very little, land being cheap at that time. Mon Kimmel had a son, Charlie, whom I remember quite well. Charlie was a big boy, four years older than I, and he took me over for a time, until they left, to teach me all the arts and crafts of country living; I was from Patterson! I will certainly have to give some credit to Charlie Kimmel for my good “start” in life! Among other things, Charlie showed me how to roast an egg. We went to his Grandma Kimmel’s chicken house and he helped himself to what eggs he thought we would be able to eat. Then we retired to a secluded spot in the woods, where Charlie built a fire, letting it burn down until it made a bed of coals. He showed me how to carefully drill, with a pin, a tiny hole in the end of an egg, in which to insert a straw. This delicate step concluded, we buried each egg in the smothering coals, taking care to leave the end that had the straw sticking out, turned up and out of the coals,
That enabled us to check the progress of the cooking by pulling gently on the straw. When the straws remained firm in the eggs, it was time to scatter the coals and let the eggs cool. They were ready for the shelling and the salt!
The Kimmel’s were members of the Christian Church, and Pa often stayed at their home when he went to the Kimmel School house to preach. Grandpa Kimmel had a small saw mill on his place, for which he had rigged up a little “railroad” for the purpose of bringing in logs from the woods.
One day, not long before we moved to the valley, the track gave way and the engine turned over, spilling hot water and steam over Grandpa Kimmel; a most awful accident! He lived for some weeks, perhaps a month or longer, suffering untold agony day and night until he died. My folks were there frequently’ during that ordeal and so was I. They would not let me go in. but I will never forget hearing his pitiful groaning and crying. After the poor old fellow was laid to rest, the Man Kimmel family carried through with their plans and went to Kansas. A few months later, Grandma Kimmel and the two girls also left. I am not sure if there are any descendants of this family now in Wayne County.
In the early days, the Kimmel School was the only school on Camp Creek. Larry Lovelace son of Uncle Manuel and Aunt Nancy Lovelace once told me that he and his sister Lucy, walked four miles to the Kimmel School, from their home, on what was then called the Bill Earl Chilton place at the entrance to the Stoney Battery. In the late fall, he said they had to leave before day-light, the route taking them through the Camp Creek Shut-ins. Schools of that time started near the end of July or the beginning of August, so as to be out before the worst of the winter weather. The school term varied according to each school and sometimes from year to year, but usually a four or five month term. Each little school, a unit within itself, was under the control of three directors, elected from the community; these men almost always parents of the students. A county school commissioner served to hold the school system together in a loose organization. James K. Clubb was the last elected school commissioner. He died in office, and Cruse E. Burton was appointed to fill his unexpired term. The year 1908 saw a change to a county school superintendent, instead of commissioner, Professor Burton being the first to serve in this new office, serving continuously until 1927.
In those days many Wayne County teachers, especially in the country schools, taught with a 3rd grade certificate, which; means they had passed
The teacher’s examination, most having completed grade school only. The average teacher’s salary ranged from $30 to $40 dollars a month. According to what the district could pay. Some teachers were no more than 16 years old, and many of them girls, who married within a year or two, thus ending their teaching career, in most cases. With the help of my sister Stella. I have figured out all the teachers of the Kimmel School from 1900 to 1909. Ora Thornburgh, daughter of Uncle Ed Thornburgh, Ma’s brother was teaching in March 1901, when we moved to the valley. Ordinarily, school would be out by the first of the year. I am not sure why the Camp Creek School was in progress that late; perhaps they had closed for a couple of months because of bad weather. Ora boarded somewhere in the community. I remember her coming one night to our house for supper. I thought she was a great lady! I suppose I had never seen her so “dolled” up before. Jim Wilkinson, son of Uncle Henry Wilkinson, taught the 1901 term; Annie McAllister, my first teacher. – 1902; Mr.Bryce Terry Sr. 1903; Martha Eaton – 1904. Martha lacked a month of finishing her term, and in the spring of 1905. Chester Stevenson, after closing his term at another school, finished the Kimmel School term. Floy Birdwell taught the 1905 term; Walter Lashley, who married Annie McAllister. – 1906; Mollie McAllister, sister of Annie. 1907: and Bill Keathley – 1908. This is the last term we Brooks children went to Kimmel School. The school term of 1909, taught by Edith Long, had already started before we moved, but we declined to start, since we were planning to move to Brunot. Fred still laughs about something I had forgotten: he says I was up in an apple tree when Miss Long came along, and I called out, Hi. Miss Short!” and quick as a flash, she responded with, “Hi, Mr. River!” I must not, have gotten the connection, or I would have remembered this bit of whimsy.
I am not sure when the Lower Camp Creek School was built, probably about 1903 or1904. My sister, Stella, taught the Lower Camp Creek School in 1906. The families of Lower Camp Creek finally decided it was too much of a trip for their little ones to go to the Kimmel School. They got together and built a small school house, a dinky little school, and the Upper Camp Creek boy’s promptly named it Puckie-huddle. Officially, it was known as the Lower Camp Creek School just as Kimmel School was officially Upper Camp Creek School, but the name, Puckie-huddle, caught on, much to the chagrin of some on Lower Camp Creek. Grandpa Arnold especially disliked the name. He tried to get the name Turkey Roost started for the Kimmel School, but this did not go over. However, they could do nothing about the name, Puckie-huddle; it stuck like Elmer’s glue! The best thing the Lower Camp Creek people could do was console them selves with the knowledge that on the other, side of Mudlick Mountain a school bore the name Lizzard Lick!
The building of the Lower Camp Creek School thinned our school out considerably. Puckie-huddle could boast of more pupils, but we could boast of more room! The families on Lower Camp Creek, that I recall, who furnished children for the new school were: Helms, Ellis, Arnold, Kitwright, Booher and Morse. On Upper Camp Creek: two Newlan families, Wilson, Sweeney, Brooks, one Williams pupil, and sometimes other children, not regulars, children from saw mill families who drifted in and out. Most of the time, the Brooks family furnished the largest number. In 1904, the last year Stella went, and the year Fred started, we contributed five to the Kimmel School. After 1904, Virgie, Millard, Fred and I still held the record for the Brooks family. We must have left quite a vacancy when we moved!
At that time: there was no structured grading system, as later developed under Professor Burton. We went by “books,” not so much by grade or length of time in school. Each student progressed at his own speed, and went to school until he mastered the books, however long it took or however old he got, or otherwise until he decided to quit. I have known students to be three terms in Franklin’s Fifth Reader. Lest you quickly judge them to have been dumb students, I can assure you, many college students of today would flunk it! It was more than the name implies. And I expect the average modern student would wilt before the old Milne’s Arithmetic! I know of an instance, back in the 1930’s, that a “product” of
Wayne County country schools of the first decade of this century, without further education, worked a problem that no teacher in the state of Missouri worked on the teacher’s examination. Being a challenge this problem was taken up by a brilliant, young college graduate, then mathematics teacher in a high school. After working on the problem for several days, he passed it along to his geometry class. Some thought at first it would be a “snap”: it sounded simple. However, the brightest of the students were soon “stumped.” But the father of one of the students, without benefit of “higher education,” sent the problem back to the teacher the next day, correctly worked; where upon he was sought out by the teacher for the explanation, but the class heard nothing further about the matter. We might have been educationally deprived in the old days, and our teachers deplorably unqualified, by modern standards, but it is the results that stamp the product!
