Tuesday, February 9, 2010

School Transportation

School transportation is hot topic these days, but in general it is expected that students will be provided transportation to school from wherever they live. This was certainly not always the case. I often think about what students used to have to go through to get an education.

For 8-year-old Loa Lampson going to school in the autumn of 1851 was a not an easy endeavor. She lived in a double log cabin called “the Siamese Twins” which her father Edmund had built three years earlier in a clearing off of West Jefferson Street. Loa and her brother Romulus, age 11, would have to follow an old Indian trail along the river-- the only path through the woods. This would lead them, along what is today W. River Street, to a flat plain on the south river bank, below Bridge Street today. Here they would find a beehive of activity in the middle of the forest. A dam had been built across the river with a saw mill on the southern end. No bridge yet spanned the Grand, so the children had to carefully walk along the top of the stone dam to reach the north bank, taking great care not to fall into the icy river. During the winter they would be able to cross on the frozen river, while in the spring, they would have to be ferried across during the spring floods.

Once they reached the north bank, they would have to climb up a steep gully beside a small wandering creek. At the top (what is now the corner of Bridge and Front Streets) they would follow another footpath through the woods until they reached another clearing. In the center sat the newly built Red School with its fresh coat of paint (near greenwood school today). It had one room and six benches for the students. Miss Mary Ann Sanders was their teacher.

Even some eighty years later in the 1930s, when the city schools provided high school education for 39 rural districts, getting to school was still a problem. Families living in the country could not bring children to school daily. During this time country children who wished to attend High School had to find city families who would let them board in their home. In return the children were expected to do chores for the family and help around the house. Then on Fridays, the children would return to their family farm until Sunday afternoon.

My own grandparents, Bernie and Alice Hershoren, were one such host family. They had two young children at the time and in return for help around the house, let a few young students board with them. One of these girls, Minnie Wolodko would later marry Jack Kingsley and become our neighbor for many decades.