The Rebirth of a Frontier Schoolhouse
After securing a new building, a small rural district near the Snohomish prairies reaches out to the community to ensure its youth receive 'wholesome instructions.'
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
To the Editor: Please tell our friends and the friends of education that our new school house in district No. 14, near Snohomish Prairie, is rebuilt. On the 11th of June we opened a term of school; children enrolled, 29; total, 42. Our school house has a capacity of 100 people. We will be glad to entertain our friends during the summer season who have so liberally assisted us—ex-superintendents Ingraham and Jones included. The original donation list will be filed with the clerk and placed in the archives of the district. Send us good teachers who can give our youth good and wholesome instructions.
“Send us good teachers who can give our youth good and wholesome instructions.”
This letter, sent to a Seattle paper by a rural school district, highlights the intense civic pride placed in early public education infrastructure. Much like today’s struggles to fund and maintain modern school facilities in growing Washington communities, 19th-century residents viewed the schoolhouse as the heart of the social and intellectual landscape.
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