Taught Keystone
 By Mrs. John Jack, Eustis nee Adele C. Strickland  In response to an invitation from Mrs. Minnie Parker to write a short story of the early day school at Farnam, I am complying.
I came to Nebraska in '84, after teaching 2 years in Elm Creek. I purchased the relinquishment of a claim in Dawson County, a few miles east of Farnam. I soon found out the solitude of holding down a claim, its novelty and charms had faded and in 1887 I applied and secured the school at Keystone. (I think that must have been the name of the postoffice there of an early day.) The land around had all been taken and settled on, so it was not so extremely new. A country store kept by Andersons was in the distance and the school house, it had no crown top belfry, but a bright outlook, at that time. I did not admire the epithet given it, "the little old sod school house" it was not that, it was new, cool and enduring, if you please!
The board members were Will DeClow, R. Teemley and Elmer Buss. A four months term at $25 per month. The names
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of the pupils enrolled were Harry Taylor, Minnie Tufts, Edith Grooms, Bess and Pearl Grooms, Willie, Julia and Clarence Balser, and I think two or three of the Baker children.
One thing I distinctly remember was the mixture of school books, but we were soon adapted even to that problem, and it was a typical western school. The pupils had been well disciplined, consequently not many had to be censured. They came quite regularly which was a good indication that they enjoyed their school. 50 years is a long time, much longer than the average life.
This last spring I had the occasion to go over the old road, in glancing over the erstwhile long trail I marveled that we ever attempted such almost impossible walks.
The pupils of that day! Some have "passed on", the early pioneers, all are gone! For hospitality and generosity they had no equal. The animate was so much above the inanimate mind, so much above matter that the spirit of the real honest-to-goodness things of life were discriminated to those around them. Only their memory remains, and I often wonder in the fevered rush of living in this twentieth century civilization if we ponder or realize the first cost of what we enjoy and call our own, their works follow them more hastily than the silent granites.
1886
1936
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