A One-room Schoolhouse Surprise

Isaac Beckley Werner was an accomplished carpenter, and he helped build the wood frame school house that served his prairie community.  He believed in education, not only for children but also for adults to continue reading and studying.  So, this post about a country school house is particularly apt.

Our last stop at the Homestead National Monument was the brick Freeman School.  White curtains waved at the windows as I crossed the boardwalk from the parking area, admiring the neatly painted privy behind the school and the American flag high atop its pole at the front.  This was certainly a handsome school for homesteaders' children to attend.  Later, I learned that the Freeman School did not close until 1967, earning the distinction of being the oldest operating 1-room school in Nebraska.

A park ranger greeted me inside the school.  I looked at the interior, so similar to other 1-room schools I had visited--with pictures of Washington and Lincoln at the front, wooden and iron desks in neat rows, and a stove in the center of the room.  The ranger described the history of the school and ended his talk with these words:  "This is where separation of church and state began."

What a surprise those words were.  As the author of the book, Should the Children Pray?, I had spent a great deal of time researching the historical, legal, and political issues surrounding public school prayer, and now I found myself standing in a school house with its own connection to that issue.  Of course, I knew it was the First Amendment to America's Constitution that established the relationship between our national government and religious beliefs, and it was Thomas Jefferson in his letter to the Danbury Baptist Association that used the description of "building a wall of separation between Church and State."  However, the ranger explained the role of the Freeman School to the issue. 

Several of the Freeman children attended the school, and when their father learned that the teacher was reading passages from the Bible to the children during the day, he asked that she stop.  When she refused, he took the matter to the school board, who supported the teacher's view that her readings "were for the best interest of the pupils."  Having exhausted his appeals to the school authorities, Freeman filed suit in the Gage County District Court, but the court ruled in favor of the school board.

Daniel Freeman was not a man to be easily dissuaded, and he appealed all the way to the Nebraska Supreme Court.  At last, on October 9, 1902, the case of Daniel Freeman v. John Scheve, et al,  was decided in favor of Plaintiff Freeman.  The court relied on the Nebraska Constitution rather than the United States Constitution for its ruling.  Citing Article 8, Section 11 of the state constitution, which provides:  "No sectarian instruction shall be allowed in any school or institution supported in whole or in part by the public funds set apart for education purposes," the opinion of the court was that readings from the Bible and prayer, even if no comments were made by the teacher, were prohibited.  Ironically, the named defendant in the suit, John Scheve, was not only an officer of the school board but also an organizer of the First Trinity Lutheran Church.  The feelings within the community during the long period over which this litigation extended (and probably for some time after) must have been intense.  Whether Daniel Freeman was a courageous defender of religious liberty or a meddlesome troublemaker depends on your point of view.  Unexpectedly, I had discovered another way in which Isaac's times are similar to our own.

http://www.lynfenwick.com 

 

Isaac's Farm Implements

Our visit to the Homestead National Monument near Beatrice, Nebraska, allowed me to see some of the implements Isaac may have used, particularly those he used in the early years after his arrival in 1878 before he had a horse.  A walking cultivator is displayed at the Palmer-Epard Cabin which was moved from a nearby homestead.  The homes in Stafford County, Kansas, were not so grand, for there were no trees for wood and little adequate clay for bricks or chinking between timbers, so they made their early homes from sod.

Because the original settler had cleared the land for crops, when the National Park Service acquired the land on which the first homestead had been claimed under the Homestead Act, they had to recreate the vegetation of the original prairie.  Isaac probably did not find the same grasses on his prairie homestead in Kansas, the tall grasses less prevalent further south.  Even so, imagine trying to break the sod without a horse or oxen to help.  To maintain the healthy prairie environment, the Rangers burn one-third of the park acreage each year, emulating Nature's prairie fires.

Among the implements on exhibit is a hand cultivator with a plow blade, rather than the forked tongs in the picture at the top of this post.  When Isaac traded his own labor in order to have a neighbor break sod for him with their horses, mules or oxen pulling the plow, even the turned sod with ancient roots imbedded in the soil would have been extremely difficult for Isaac to cultivate by hand.  Yet, hand tools were all that Isaac and many settlers had available to use without horses of their own. 

Once the ground was prepared for planting, these farmers who were dependent on their own manual labor, like Isaac, used hand planters, the one pictured being a hand corn planter.  Isaac's journal is filled with detailed records of his experiments regarding how many kernels to plant in each hill, the best date for planting, how far apart to make the hills, the spacing for rows, and the importance of making straight rows to facilitate cultivation of the growing corn.

Not all of the corn was planted in plowed soil.  In the early years, Isaac and many others planted "sod corn," planting hills in the midst of the prairie grasses.  The yield was not particularly good, but they managed to raise enough to supply their own needs.  Today's combines not only cut the stalks but also separate the ears from the stalks and the kernals from the cobs.  Isaac did that by hand, making use of the stalks for fodder or using the dried stalks for fuel in his stove, along with twisted husks and the cobs, once the corn was removed.



These photographs offer some understanding of the hard, physical labor required to create farms on unbroken land, the stubborn grass roots resisting the plow.  Only 40% of the settlers staking their claims endured the hardships and labor required to prove up their land and receive a patent from the government.  It is easy to understand why so many did not survive the difficult task, some giving up their lives in trying, others just giving up.



http://www.nps.gov/home/planyourvisit/150th-anniversary-of-the-homestead-act.htm

Are you one of 93 million descendants?

Isaac B. Werner had no descendants, but many homesteaders raised families.  Today it is estimated that 93 million people are descendants of homesteaders.  I am among that number, and perhaps many of you following my blog are too. 

This past weekend my husband and I attended the 57th Annual Willa Cather Spring Conference in Red Cloud, Nebraska, and I will be sharing that great American Writer and her hometown with you in future posts.  However, I mention our trip to Nebraska to share some side trips we took after the Conference.

The Homestead National Monument operated by the National Park Service is located near Beatrice, Nebraska, northeast of Red Cloud.  We enjoyed the drive through some of Nebraska's beautiful rural landscape and realized only when we arrived at the national park that it is the 150th Anniversary of the Homestead Act of 1862. 

Those of us who know the Great Plains region tend to think of homesteading as having occurred on the plains, overlooking the extent of America opened for settlement by homesteaders.  Upon arrival at the park site, visitors are immediately presented with the question:  "Do you live near a Homestead?"  A map shows that there were 30 homesteading states, although in 1862 when Abraham Lincoln signed the Homestead Act, not all of the territory had yet achieved statehood.  According to the park ranger who greeted us, Montana is the state with the largest homestead acreage, and Nebraska is the state with the largest percentage of its land having been homestead.  Kansas, where Isaac homesteaded, also has a great homesteading heritage.

As visitors approach the Heritage Center, the sidewalk parallels a wall showing the 30 homesteading states, with a box cut from each state's silhouette representing the proportion of that state's total area that was available for homesteading.  The photograph taken looking down a portion of the wall shows Nebraska at the far left, with Kansas next in the line of state silhouettes on the wall.

After an informative conversation with the ranger, we viewed the film and walked out just in time to see a Junior Ranger being sworn in.  It was great seeing how seriously the young man took the responsibilities he was assuming with his oath to learn about the prairie and help care for it and teach others to respect the land.  Notice particularly the tall Plexiglas tube on the left side of the photograph.  A bunch of prairie grass has been carefully extracted from the soil to show the blades of grass above the surface (above the top band on the tube) but also the length of the roots extending deeply into the soil.  Grass such as this formed the sod that homesteaders plowed to clear the land for cultivation of crops.  I will never again think that the common garden weeds that I pull have deep roots!

Isaac staked his claim in 1878, and it was not until 1886 that he finally bought a horse, having avoided the indebtedness necessary to purchase a horse until that year.  During his early years of farming, he traded his own labor in exchange for help from neighbors with horses and machinery to break the sod. This exchange of labor allowed him to break so little sod that much of his time was spent raising trees rather than planting fields.  Even when the sod was broken, he had to use hand tools for farming the ground.

The implements displayed near the homesteader's cabin on the grounds of the Heritage Center are those pulled by horses, mules, or oxen; however, at the Education Center the exhibit included man-powered implements like Isaac initially used.  When we arrived there, I spotted the sign directing visitors to that exhibit.  "Oh, look!" I exclaimed.  "This is where the farm implements are!"  I noticed two rangers exchanging perplexed expressions, and I said, "I suppose that is not something you usually hear from the women visiting your exhibits."  They laughed and nodded.  They had no idea that it was my time spent with Isaac that had caused my enthusiastic response to the opportunity to see the implements he used on his homestead.  In a future post I will share pictures of some of the implements I photographed.

Not only the Homestead National Monument has wonderful events planned throughout the summer commemorating the 150th Anniversary of the Homestead Act of 1862 but also the Nebraska Humanities Council is celebrating their state's homesteading legacy.  It is a great year to visit Nebraska, and when you do, be sure to include the Willa Cather Memorial Prairie and Willa's hometown of Red Cloud in your planning.  http://willacather.org/; http://nebraskahumanities.org/; and http://www.nps.gov/home/planyourvisit/150th-anniversary-of-the-homestead-act.htm.