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NIU Office of Public Affairs


News Release

Contact: Mark McGowan, NIU Office of Public Affairs
(815) 753-9472

July 19, 2005

NIU professor helps historical-genealogical society
with book on DeKalb County's one-room schoolhouses

DeKalb — DeKalb County history buff Henry Leonard came to Lucy Townsend, curator of Northern Illinois University's Blackwell Museum, with a question: “Can you help us?”

Leonard, a retired NIU math professor, was president of the DeKalb County Historical-Genealogical Society at that time.

Townsend, curator of NIU's Blackwell Museum, said “yes” to Leonard, joining a mission to create and publish 1,500 copies of a book chronicling the county's rich heritage of one-room schoolhouses.

All are working to raise $30,000 to cover printing costs for “Rural School Journeys: A Legacy of Learning” that will feature around 250 pages and more than 200 photographs and anecdotes from former students.

“It should be a valuable resource for historians as well as people who want family histories. The committee is finding documents never looked at before, things out of newspapers and attics,” Townsend said. “The photographs are phenomenal: wonderful pictures of the kids playing baseball, playing in the snow, sitting in the classroom. Just from a historical perspective, the pictures alone are priceless.”

The book will contain a brief overview of Illinois one-room schools, a map of DeKalb County's schools and chronological lists of superintendents and teachers.

Although research will conclude late this fall with a 2006 publication target, sales will begin in September. Townsend will put NIU's share of the profits toward an endowment fund for the College of Education's Milan Township One-Room Schoolhouse that supports its upkeep.

DeKalb County once was home to more than 160 one-room schoolhouses, each of which was only a couple miles from the next, giving true meaning to the term “neighborhood school.” The era spanned about a century from the 1850s to the 1950s.

Alumni speak glowingly of how the wide range of ages in the classroom enriched their learning.

Kindergartners were exposed to lessons meant for eighth-graders, and every level in between, while older students enjoyed constant “refresher courses” as the younger children studied. Meanwhile, older students naturally took on the responsibility of nurturing their younger classmates.

Because each had its own district and its own trustees, Townsend said, no single repository for local artifacts exists. Also, she added, “most education historians ignore them.”

NIU, however, is a leader in preserving the one-room heritage.

The Milan Township District 83 one-room school – dedicated in 1900 – was reconstructed on NIU's campus and dedicated Sept. 12, 1999.

Built by local farmers at a cost of $850 and measuring 24 by 36 feet, the school was 13 miles southwest of DeKalb on the corner of Perry and Tower Roads near the town of Malta. A shrinking number of school-age children in the district forced its closure in 1942.

Also, NIU will welcome next year's return of the Country Schoolhouse Conference, devoted to the preservation, interpretation and recollection of the one-room schoolhouse experience.

NIU hosted the first of the annual conferences in 2001, and now will become the home for the organization and its Web site. Townsend said she hopes the site will include links to all one-room schoolhouse museums in the United States and Europe.

Townsend made a presentation on the book project at the recent conference, held last month on the campus of Union College in Barbourville, Ky.

For more information on the project, or how to contribute, contact Townsend at (815) 753-9326 or (815) 753-1236 or the DeKalb County Historical-Genealogical Society, P.O. Box 295, Sycamore, Ill., 60178 .

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