Reminiscences of Mt. Hope
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 I have been asked to write something about the country schools of this vicinity fifty years ago and when I submitted the picture for publication of what is known as the Mt. Hope school, Dist. 85 of Frontier county, located 8 miles southwest of Farnam, it was suggested that I describe the first days of that school as typical of the other schools of that time. The first school that my brother and I ever attended was the first term ever taught in that district. However, the photo was taken some twelve years later, but it was the original school house.
My father, H. G. Hicks, mother and we two boys, aged one and three landed in that neighborhood in the spring of 1884. My two sisters were born on the homestead as also were my own children. I think the only homesteader in that vicinity at that time was Harry Jones who lived on the place now occupied by John Adkisson. During the next two or three years the homesteaders became very numerous and soon the neighborhood was much more thickly settled than it is now, as many of the quarter and half section farms then occupied by separate families have since been combined into larger farms.
Soon the need for a school became evident and District 85 was organized with Marshall Colebank, Sam Colebank and H. G. Hicks as school board.
I well remember my first day of school. It may interest some of the youngsters of today if I describe it from a kid's standpoint. My father took us to school the first day in a lumber wagon which was the only kind of automobiles anyone here had at that time. The school house was of sod with the walls unplastered, the cracks around the door and windows filled with yellow clay mud. The floor was made of rough 1 foot boards with numerous knot holes. The furniture consisted of a chair for the teacher which she brought from home and three long wooded benches without backs. We needed no desks for we wrote on slates which we held on our knees. The blackboard looked like the throw board from someone's corn husking wagon, painted black or nearby so and fastened to the sod wall with stakes. Outside was a pile of large ears of corn for fuel, valued at 10 to 15c per bushel.
The teacher was Mrs. Knight, wife of the man on whose homestead the school house stood. Her time was quite well occupied during school hours teaching us the three R's, doing her family sewing and disciplining her incorrigible son, who was too young to study. Before we started out the first day, my mother had expressed doubt as to my ability to sit still even until school was started, so I thought it had to be done and sat still and copied figures on my slate while the men who were "shingling" the hoof, that is, laying sod over the rough boards, rattled dirt down my neck. I also sat still and said nothing when a few days later I saw a snake crawl into the school room through a hole in the wall, crawl across the room, pass under the teacher's chair and go into a hole in the floor. I expected a chastisement if I interrupted the school for a little thing like that.
The first school year consisted of a three month term, as also did the second which was taught by Geo. S. Hicks, whom many Farnam folks will remember. He was a Methodist minister of the "circuit rider" days and had been ship's carpenter on a whaling vessel and sailed all around the world, including the south sea islands, so his talks were very instructive. Seats and desks were installed that year and the teacher built a teachers desk which served until a few years ago.
The third year 1890, we had a four month term, taught by D. W. Brooks, who still lives in the community west of there. He also added a piece of equipment which consisted of a cottonwood switch about four feet long, which he took care to let us see him stick up behind the blackboard. I cannot recall that he ever had the occasion to take it down. I think he originated the policy of preparedness. By that time we could read Harper's Third Reader, win an occasional "head mark" in spelling and sing the multiplication table.
Other important lessons were how to divide into squads to hold the windows, frames and all from blowing in or out when
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a sudden windstorm came and how to pick ants out of our dinner pails. The playground equipment consisted of plenty of room to play "dare base" and "black men" etc.
Much has been said about the wonderful pioneer mothers, but I wonder if we realize how many things they and incidentally the teachers, had to worry them even in as safe a country as this was. At the time my oldest sister was born there were no doctors within forty miles and no way to get word to them except by horse power. Among my earliest memories was the warning to look out for public enemy No. 1, the rattlesnake and it became sort of an instinct for us kids to jump when we heard the familiar "buzz." Probably to us the cactus should be listed as enemy No. 2, as we never wore shoes in summer, and several kinds of cactus hid in the thick buffalo grass, which grew everywhere. As an example I will tell on Authur, when he was about three or four years old. He stepped on some cactus which did not bother much as he was used to it, but when he sat down to pick them out of his feet, he sat on a bunch which did bother, so he rolled over into a still larger cactus patch and lay there broadcasting the S. O. S. signal.
As for myself from the time I could walk I was troubled with "wander lust" and would start out to see the world whenever I could make my getaway. I remember my parents telling of finding me once in a canyon where I had crawled partly into a coyote hole and gone to sleep with a big rattlesnake nearby. Another time after a hunt which lasted most of the day they found me in a cornfield where I had become exhausted and lay asleep with my face streaked with tears and dust. When my sister started following my example, they used to stake her out on a lariat, this did not prevent her from getting hold of some poison and taking it one day, and I remember the frantic and successful application of home remedies. This happened while my father was away from home. He hauled all his building material for a frame house from Lexington and Cambridge with a team. It was while he was away on one of these trips that we had our first experience with a Nebraska cyclone, which fortunately was a small one. My mother, when the boards which were nailed over the places where the windows were to be, began flying across the room, got us two kids into a corner with her sewing machine drawn over us for protection. The house was picked up and turned around but not moved far, and about the only damage it did was to land on the tail of our dog. My cousin, Wm. Hicks, who had gone to hunt the cattle and got in a hole during the storm, came and when he saw that we were all safe he tried to lift the house from the dog's tail and failing in this task, took the hatchet and cut the tail off.
Then there were the prairie fires with no roads and few patches of plowing to stop them. But all these things were but common experiences in those days and detailed descriptions may become tiresome.
Your editor also asked me to tell something about the people who homesteaded in that neighborhood. Space will permit me to do no more than name them. I think I can remember most of them. Those who had children in school during three "terms" were Sol Davison, Marshall Colebank, Sam Colebank, Jamee Harry, Mr. Marrifield, Lewis Gilman, H. G. Hicks and Wm. Barns. Others who had no school children of school age were John Tomalla, Mr. Mariman, Herm Dyer, Frank Dyer, David Brooks, Agnes Whitaker, Lish Colebank, W. L. Hicks, Chas. Hicks, X. White, Sam Hathaway and Ben Lapp.
The children of Sol Davison, H. G. Hicks and Sam Hathaway still retain the land taken up by these men. All the other farms have changed hands, some of them many times, and the people who lived on them have died or moved out of the country with the exception of D. W. Brooks and James Harry who live south of Moorefield and John Thomalla of near Farnam.
The above are the names only of those who lived in Dist. 85 and do not include the names of many well known pioneers of the surrounding territory. I have written this account entirely from memory and if I have made errors or omitted any names, it was unintentional.
1886
1936
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Web Publisher: Weldon Hoppe