2019 Marks 150 Year Sesquicentennial of Blooming Grove Schools
by Tim Campbell · first published 30 March 2019 · his original post
As most familiar with the early history of Blooming Grove know, the first school in the community was held at "White Church", which was located about a mile southeast of present day Blooming Grove. It is recorded that the first school session at White Church was held in 1869. Therefore 2019 marks 150 years of education in the BG community.
A review of the 1870 census of the old Gradyville area reveals only one local schoolteacher by the name of R. Curry. The gravestones of old White Church Cemetery are the only landmarks left in the area. The church / school house sat just across the cemetery's western fenceline as it is today. Sometime around 1878 a new school was constructed in old Gradyville. William Furra Campbell is recorded as being one of the founding trustees of this school. Land abstracts from the old townsite, which was a mile west of White Church and a mile south of present day downtown Blooming Grove, indicate that the school in old Gradyville was on "2nd Street", which is now called NWCR 4040.
According to Fitzgerald family records. the building at White Church was bought and moved to the "new town" once the railroad came through in the late 1880s, and in 1887 was made into a restaurant near the corner of South Main and Fordyce. In 1884 the Blooming Grove Common School District No. 45 was established. In 1890 there was a new two story school building built at the intersection of Ramsey and Hinkley Streets, just west of where the old brick gym/ auditorium now stands (photo attached).
In 1910 a new two story red brick building was constructed at the same site at Ramsey and Hinkley. In 1931, the two story red brick school building was torn down and a modern one story red brick structure was built at a cost of $60,000, which was laid out in somewhat of a "U" shape. The main entrance faced North and there were entrances on either side of the main entrance, with wings which ran to the south. The western wing was dedicated to elementary students and the eastern wing and center hallway were for high school and junior high students.
There were also two other schools established at an early time in the Grove's history. One of these was located across from what is now Olive Grove Baptist Church on the west side of Blooming Grove, and the other was a private tuition school which was located north of what is now highway 22 at the north end of Hinkley Street. Additionally, within the boundaries of what is now the Blooming Grove Independent School District, there were at least 16 country schoolhouses scattered across the countryside in many different communities. As early as 1850 there were schools being conducted in Dresden at Ethan Melton's place, and at Cryer Creek. At that time, Dresden, or "Melton" as it was then called, was the largest community in western Navarro County. As of 1850, Stroud Melton was the schoolteacher there. In 1850 Cryer Creek, a veteran schoolteacher by the name of John Childress, age 54, was conducting school, no doubt sponsored in some part by the large Stokes family farms in that area.
Over the course of the next 40 to 50 years, schools were started all over western Navarro County. Children usually had to walk to school, which was conducted typically about 3 months out of the year. These country schools included Barry, Emhouse, Pecan (aka Hogeye), Carroll Schoolhouse, (between Blooming Grove and Dresden), Alliance Hall, (near what is now Navarro Mills), Raleigh (between Dresden and Alliance Hall), Cottonwood (between Dresden and Barry), Thrash aka Little Briar, (between Barry and Blooming Grove), Grange Hall (north of Hogeye), Bryan Schoolhouse (between Barry and Drane), Fish Tank School at Pinkston (between Barry and Corsicana), and Black Hills, (between Emhouse and Corsicana). I believe there was a school at Lone Oak, (north of Blooming Grove), as well.
In the late 1920s, with the improvement of roads and transportation, the tiny schoolhouses began to disappear and consolidate with larger schools. In 1958 the last of the smaller country schools in what is now BGISD was consolidated, as Barry students were transferred to Blooming Grove by majority approval of both communities.
As a boy I visited the sites of many of the above named country schoolhouses with my father, always with permission of the landowner. We used a metal detector to look for artifacts. I remember visiting the site of Hogeye Schoolhouse near Pecan Creek north of Blooming Grove. The school had burned many years earlier, but there were still remnants of molten glass and other burned and charred items. We found a section of cast iron school desk, and on it were the words New Oxford. Usually we would find old marbles, which was the favorite playground game of many a schoolboy. A ring was drawn in the dirt and players contributed an equal number of marbles inside the circle. Larger "shooter" marbles were then flipped with the thumb in turn, the object being to knock your opponents marbles out of the circle. Games were either for fun only, or "for keeps" where the successful party could keep whatever he knocked out of the circle. Another common game among boys was Mumblepeg, in which an open pocket knife was flipped from various positions and contortions of the body, the object being for it to land perfectly upright with the blade stuck into the sandy Blooming Grove dirt. It was not unusual for my father and I to dig up the occasional rusty pocket knife on the old school grounds, probably lost in the tall spring grass during a mumblepeg battle.
Many great teachers and students have walked the halls of Blooming Grove schools during the past 150 years. Those of us who have come and gone surely have reason to look back and smile at more than a few memories shared with our friends and teachers. It is a common bond that binds us together as ex-students. Your author considers It a treasured privelege indeed to have attended school at the Grove and to have been a fighting Lion for all 12 years of his primary education, and an equally treasured privelege to see the successes and challenges of the present day students as they strive for success both academically and in extra-curricular activities and make their own treasured memories. Here's to the next 150 years. Go Lions!