The Pine Bough Magazine

Volume 15 December 2010 OUR HISTORY One of the rewarding activities we perform while collecting, preserving, and exploring records of the past is utilizing our historical collections in Historyexhibits. Whether online or on-site, in-house exhibits are a great means to interpret our history in meaningful and interesting ways. They also allow us the opportunity to highlight certain collections, which become effective tools themselves in fostering archival preservation through community interest and active participation. Jonathan K. Gerland Director/Archivist This past year we created an exhibit on the history of public education in Angelina County, specifically featuring the years when the system of common school districts prevailed, from approximately the 1880s to the 1960s. A century ago there were no fewer than 87 common school districts in Angelina County. Mostly rural, these decentralized districts and their country schools did far more than educate the children of their communities. In most cases, the school district and the community were one and the same, their stories inseparable. In preparing the exhibit, which featured twenty-two panels of photographs and several exhibit cases of documents and artifacts, we drew heavily upon a record group that is rarely seen today—the records of the county school superintendent. For Angelina County, although incomplete, these records comprise approximately 33 cubic feet and the bulk of them date between the 1910’s and the 1960’s. Generations past, present, and future owe much to those past individuals who preserved these records, which have been under The History Center’s care since 2004. Because there was sufficient interest in the county school exhibit, I decided that parts of this history would carry over to this year’s Pine Bough, similar to the way our World War II exhibit carried over to the 2005 Pine Bough issue. Therefore we hope you enjoy this special county school history issue, but we also realize that like all interpretations, exhibits and magazines do not tell all the stories. As I am fond of saying, exhibits are good to show what resources you have as well as what resources you don’t have. Thus, we also hope this issue will encourage new research as well as the discovery and preservation of additional records. I wish everyone a rewarding and meaningful 2011 as we together collect, preserve and explore our history – for the benefit of present and future generations. Jonathan K. Gerland Diboll, Texas CONTENTS FEATURES Angelina County Schools: Preserving the Heart of a Community 2 by Emily Hyatt PAGE 25 Map of Angelina County School Districts, 1924 6 The History Center 102 N. Temple Howard Walker: Angelina County Educator and Historical Preservationist 18 Diboll, TX 75941 by Emily Hyatt and Patsy Colbert phone: (936) 829-3543 www.TheHistoryCenterOnline.com Angelina County School Photographs, 1930’s 21 Staff: School Classification Lists, 1885-1961 40 Jonathan K. Gerland, Director Emily E. Hyatt, Archivist ECTIONS Matt Gorzalski, Archivist Patsy Colbert, Assistant Archivist News & Notices 44 Louis Landers, Archival Assistant Martin Salas, Saturday Research Assistant The History Center Committee: THE PINE BOUGH Ellen Temple, Chair Vol. 15 December 2010 Jonathan Gerland, Executive Director Kathy Sample ISSN: 1529-7039 Pete Smart Mark Shepherd A history magazine published annually by The History Center, Diboll, Texas. Dennis McDuffie Jonathan K. Gerland, Editor Kathy Sample, Chair, Board of Directors, Emily E. Hyatt, Assistant Editor T. L. L. Temple Memorial Library & Archives Unless otherwise noted, all images herein are from the holdings of The History Center. About the cover: © Copyright 2010 by The History Center. All rights reserved. Front: The Zavalla schoolhouse and students in about 1911. Reproduction of this issue or any portion of it is expressly prohibited without written permission Back: Richard Donovan paddles the Neches River as Texas State Railroad of the publisher. Engine 7 and train passes overhead on a beautiful early May morning. Photo by Jonathan Gerland PAGE 13 PAGE 5 D ECEMBER 2010 1 Angelina County Schools: PreservingBy: Emily Hyatt the Heart of a Community In communities small and large, schools are given the task of educating local children and preparing them for their futures. This, however, is only one of their functions, since the schools also provide a rallying point for community events and a focal point for community pride. Just as the hearth is the heart of the home, a school is the heart of its community. This has been true during Angelina County’s Throughout the latter half of the 19th century, the history and continues today under the Friday Texas government enacted and retracted several night lights and in the school classrooms educational reforms and funding systems as throughout the county. The technology might politics and popular opinion shifted from local have been simpler and the competition less intense to state control and back again.1 Evidence of the in the past, but Angelina County residents have reforms enacted in 1884 can be found in the 1885 always wanted the best for their students. The Angelina County School Registry that lists the schools have been and will continue to be the county’s 55 schools, their trustees, the number of heart of their community. students expected to attend each school, and the As historians try to tell the story of the past money allocated for that school. With this year’s and preserve the experiences of those who shaped reforms, legislators implemented a system with their communities, local schools and their records both state and local controls. They created the provide a window into the lives of the people they Office of State Superintendent of Public Education served at the most basic level. When using records and gave the office the job of supervising the from these institutions, historians are limited to schools, enacted laws that allowed for the creation those preserved through the years. Fortunately, of permanent districts and gave the citizens of preservation minded Angelina County citizens those districts the right to elect trustees. While recognized the importance of the county schools adding this small bit of centralization, the new and their records and endeavored to save them. laws also allowed the rural school system to stay Among its many other collections, The History largely intact. Known as common schools, the Center preserves these county school records and rural system still allowed for parental petition of mounted an exhibit in February 2010 to showcase community schools, but gave more discretion to them. In this issue, we continue the exhibit’s the county judge to regulate the schools and hire mission to tell the stories of the parents, students, the teachers. Local districts also regained the right teachers, and administrators who cared about to levy taxes, but this was not mandatory, and in Angelina County schools. fact, many rural common districts were still parent and community supported without taxes. State vs. Local Control Urban and Independent schools received From the beginning of the Republic through more oversight and funding, but for the rural the Civil War, Texas schools were mostly rural, schools, especially the schools in the 50 counties locally supported institutions. exempt from term-length requirements due to 2 T HE PINE BOUGH the agricultural nature of these counties’ feature of their ability to tax, enjoyed “better Attendees at a Teacher’s economies (which included Angelina local support” than common school districts. Convention at Angelina County), the system left each school as a He decried the state of common, rural schools County courthouse, ca. largely autonomous entity controlled by its and the laws that kept them from improving 1910’s. Longtime Angelina County teacher Mattie McCall local trustees and only partially answerable to themselves, lamenting the “cramping 2 Kinsolving is last on the right. county or state oversight. conditions imposed by the Constitution” and At the beginning of the 20th the “astonishing restrictions with which the century, Angelina County Independent Districts law shackles the vast expanses of our rural life, teachers attended Teacher’s Independent districts were the solution the very foundation of the commonwealth.” Conventions and Institutes to school funding and governance problems County schools could combine rural school during school breaks, usually in preferred by state education officials and districts, but to Lefevre, even the “consolidating September and December. All reformers. Common districts, controlled by of absurd little districts” and thus concentrating county teachers were strongly county school boards and county officials, more students (and the funding they brought encouraged, if not required to were wholly dependent on state and county with them from the state) in fewer schools was attend and participate in the appropriations for funding and could not not enough to make up for their deficiencies meetings, which lasted a week (and were usually unwilling to, if able) levy when compared to the independent districts.3 and included speakers from out of town and workshops taxes. Independent districts, by definition, The state vs. local control issue was at the presented by their colleagues were mostly independent of county authority heart of the independent vs. common district on such topics as “School and levied their own taxes – answering only divide, and it was through funding that the Management: Proper and to state education officials. This taxing reformers could make their vision reality. Improper Punishment,” ability allowed independent districts to build A county rural school wholly dependent on “Language and Grammar,” newer buildings, pay teachers higher wages, state and county funds could not compete, “Mathematics: Subject of and improve their facilities and equipment. in terms of school term length, teachers, Fractions,” “What to do With the According to an address given by State buildings, or equipment with independent Abnormal Child.” Superintendent of Public Education Arthur districts that were able to tax their larger Donor: Sarah Jane Thames.

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