Schoolhouse #1

The oldest section of the house located at 560 North Oregon Street in Jacksonville has been described as the town’s first schoolhouse.  But then it may NOT have been! 

In diaries and memoirs, Reverend Fletcher Royal tells of renting a house in 1853 from Col. John Ross for $15 a month to “have room for a school and church purposes.”  Winter and spring classes were conducted there.  In the spring of 1854, Royal bought another house from a Thomas Pyle for $250.  In the front room of this house, classes were taught in the summer and winter of 1854-55.  The school was supported on a subscription and tuition basis by the townsmen and miners of the community. “Generous gifts of gold from the miners and tuition charges of from $5 to $8 a quarter sustained the school. Sixty students were enrolled the first year.”   It was not until the spring of 1855 that the town levied $600 in taxes to construct a schoolhouse, but its precise location is unclear and it’s possible that the town chose to purchase the existing structure from Royal. 

By 1866, the population had outgrown the original structure and a new tax was levied to purchase or lease a new schoolhouse on Bigham Knoll. Shortly after the new school opened, what was described as Jacksonville’s first schoolhouse was deeded to R. Sergeant Dunlap in payment for the $137 owed him for digging a well, building fences, constructing walks, etc. at the new school.  The 1855 schoolhouse appears to have been moved to its current location at that time, becoming the initial portion of Dunlap’s home. But this was not the house rented from Ross.  Was this the Pyle house, who knows?  Either way, it’s a safe bet it was not Jacksonville’s 1853 school!