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BRAY’S ONE-ROOM SCHOOL FROM 1934 – 1940
{The following information was written by chapter member, Norma J. Cost}
MY ELEMENTARY SCHOOL DAYS AT BRAY’S ONE-ROOM SCHOOL FROM 1934 – 1940. Education in a one-room schoolhouse was very different than in a modern school of today. There were actually two schoolhouses. One for grades one through four, and another building for grades 5 through 6. I attended both schools. They were located about 2 miles from Costonia, Island Creek Twp., Jefferson County, Ohio on the Island Creek Road. They were across the road from the Bray’s Methodist Church and the cemetery (which sits up on the hill overlooking the creek). One of these schoolhouses is still standing today, although it has been many years since it was used for school purposes.
We were a close knit group of children. We all enjoyed each others company and I couldn’t wait to go to school each morning. We would start walking to school and as we neared another house along the Island Creek Road, children from that area would join us. We walked along and talked and laughed and had a lot of fund on the way to school and back home in the afternoon. There were no school buses to take us to school and we really didn’t mind the walk. We lived 1-½ miles from the school. Some lived farther away than I did.
My best friends were Jeanette and Joan Williams and Bob and Maxine Phelps. They had a younger brother, Ralph. We didn’t have a lot of possessions, but we were always happy and felt very secure in our parent’s love. Bob and Maxine were neighbors and their dad worked with my dad in the Steubenville Paper Mill. Jeanette married Donald Daugherty, another of our schoolmates. Joan married Charles Stewart and Maxine Phelps married Dick Emery. Bob Phelps married Pearl Putman. Jeanette, Joan and Bob have all passed away.
Inside the schoolhouse there were very few pieces of furniture. We each had a wooden desk in rows. Each desk had an ink well, which we dipped our stick pen into to write. As we entered the school there was a cloakroom in the back of the room where we put our coats, boots, hats, gloves and our lunch boxes. There was no running water, bathrooms or indoor plumbing. In the cloakroom was a bucket with drinking water, with a dipper to get the water. Each of us had our own drinking cup. In time we did have a water container with a spigot to get water. A small stream flowed behind the school with a footbridge across. We went over the bridge and there stood an outside toilet. We did not go out there very often in the winter, for it was very cold. The schoolroom itself had a large potbellied stove for heat in the winter. It was a coal stove, and the older boys took turns going outside to the coal pile and filling the stove to keep the fire burning. It was very warm right around the stove, but colder the farther you were away from it. There was a piano in the corner of the room for music classes and beside it was an American Flag on a floor stand. The only other furniture in the room was the teachers’ large desk and a large blackboard and chalk across the front of the room.
There was only one teacher for all the grades that were in the school. We didn’t have much homework, like today, for we had time to work on our lessons while the teacher was busy with another grade. Sometimes we would listen to what she was teaching another grade and would learn a lot that way too. Our classes were very disciplined. The teacher had a paddle on her desk, and we all learned to respect it. Just to see it there was a cause to do as we were told. I remember a few times when she used it, but not on me. Some of the boys were unruly at times.
We always had recess, a time when we would get a break and if the weather was fit, would be allowed to go outside to play or just get some fresh air. W had an hour-long lunchtime followed by our favorite games. The girls played hopscotch and jump rope. The boys played ball or marbles. Sometimes we all played Red Rover together or kick ball. {Front seated, L to R: Donna Saner, Jeanette Williams, Ruth Ann Davis, Norma Moore, Lois Tice, Delores Miller, Joanne Williams. 2nd Row: Donald Myers, Kenneth & Carl Hescht, David Waine, Keith McCaslin, Donald Daugherty, Glen Campbell, Bob Phelps. Back Row: teacher, Mrs. Ura Bradley, Eugene Smith, Olive Montgomery, Hilda Evans, Edith Montgomery, Donald King, Lee Daugherty, Ronald Littlejohn, Anna Lee King, Helen Spencer.}
We had good teachers, who were very dedicated to their jobs and the students. My teacher in the first grade was Miss Virginia Moores who lived in Wintersville. My teacher in the 2nd to 5th grades was Mrs. Margaret Evans, who lived in Toronto. My teacher in 5th and 6th grades was Mrs. Ura Bradley. We had a teacher who came once a week. She went to several other schools during the week too. Her name was Miss Riddle. The teachers always started our school day with a song, story reading, sometimes a Bible story, and also a prayer and pledge to the flag. Our reading books were not only stories to teach us how to read, but they also taught us good moral lessons as well.
One of my fondest memories of my years there was a spelling bee that I won first place and one boy and one girl from each of the schools got a trip Rock Springs Park, an amusement park in Chester, WV.
When students finished the 6th grade at these schools, they went to Jefferson Union School for 7th grade through high school. I believe that school is now called Edison Local, near Richmond, Ohio.
Times were much simpler and uncomplicated back then. There were PTA meetings for social activities. Students, teachers, and all the parents attend. The children would put on a program of some sort for the parents. We had pie socials and cake walks.
Across the road from our house lived the Maragos Family. They were very good neighbors and my parents and they helped each other out in many ways, in good times and bad. Some of their children and my schoolmates were Angeline, Ted, Nick, George, Spiro, and Lil. Angeline was one of my good friends. Mrs. Maragos was one of the kindest women I knew growing up. She always treated me with kindness when I would visit her home. Angeline and I have kept in touch even after we both married and she moved away to Pennsylvania. I believe some of the Maragos’s still live in the vicinity of Island Creek.
Some of the kids on down the road as we walked to school were, The Montgomery’s; Olive, Grace and Learnard were the ones I remember nearest my age and there were several more children in that family. The Hescht’s lived across the creek; Kenny was my age and in my grade. There were more in that family too, but they were older than I was. One was called Red and another Coleman. Dorothy Montgomery lived on that side of the creek.
Then we came to maiden’s lane on our walk to school and there were the Spencer’s; Helen and Charles, and Delbert and Harry Montgomery, Donald Myers, Delores Miller and Eugene Smith. Then came the Tice children, Lois and Kenny. I guess Kenny was my first little childhood crush, although he never knew about that! There were the McLewain’s. David was my age. As we got near the school, there was Glen Campbell and Donna Saner. Across the road from the school were Carl Hescht, Lee and Donald Daugherty. Ronald Littlejoin, Annlee and Donald King, and Hilda Evans came from Costonia.
Past the school was the Evans store, which we loved visiting! I remember walking there to spend pennies or take milk bottles for a refund. That store was about 2 miles from my house, but I didn’t mind walking there to buy candy.
When I started school in first grade, I was very shy and I cried almost daily for my older brother, Bernard, who would have been in the upper grade school. The teacher would have to send for him to come and reassure me that I would be all right. This is the brother I lost when I was 9 yr. old. I also had a brother Lewis Moore, which went to school with me who was three years older than I was.
There were three sad events that happened during that time in my childhood that I remember very vividly. In 1936 there was a very bad flood on the Ohio River and also the creek that flowed along the Island Creek Road and it was very high and swift. There were footbridges that were used to walk across the creek to get to the houses on the other side. Two of the boys ran ahead of us and attempted to walk across the bridge. George Maragos lived on the other side of the bridge and while crossing lost his footing and fell or was swept into the creek and was taken by the current downstream and drowned. I can remember that incident as though it were yesterday. It was my good friend from across the road. Then in 1939, my baby brother, only 9 days old died and was buried in the Bray’s Cemetery. In the same year, about 9 months later, my older brother, Bernard, 14 yr. old died.
When I think of all the good times, although children nowadays would call them hard times, it makes me want to go back to those days. I just wish we could – all my classmates and I – could get together and walk that road once more to the little one-room schoolhouses. After the sixth grade, most of the ones that were in school with me went on to Jefferson Union School, which is now Edison Local High School. My family moved to Toronto and I finished my school years there, in Roosevelt School Jr. and Toronto High School and graduated in the Class of 1947.
I would love to know what happened to all my schoolmates from Bray’s School. Where they are now and who they married, etc. If anyone would like to get in touch with me, myemail is, Norma Moore Cost tenngmac@aol.com.
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