Name This Peoria Landmark

Peoria County Landmark #284

Alice: Old Stone School at Stone School Rd and Rt. 116 between Farmington and Trivoli.

Precisely.

I could only find one reference to this building on a website named PeoriaCountyOneRoomSchools.com (I swear – there’s a website for everything!) This is the only source I could find and I hope that they don’t mind that I am reprinting it in its entirety. As happens so many times, maybe someone will stumble across this and add some more tidbits of info.

The Pea Ridge School more often called the “Stone” School has had interesting stories told of its beginning.

The building stood on a very important corner; originally, being on the trail that led to the gold fields of California and to which a rush was made immediately after 1848. On the south side of the road just opposite the schoolhouse stood a blacksmith shop where the travelers stopped to have the horses shod before continuing their westward journeys and so nearly all the time an encampment was pitched on the corner similar to our more modern tourist caps except that the tourist of those days came in covered wagons while now they drive cars. (This tiny little town was called Pea Ridge.)

Before the days of the Civil War a log school was built and used in this district. Before this time, the pupils of the neighborhood went to the little log school taught by Maria Harkness over in district 30. (Harkness Grove) The stone building, which is now being used, was built after the log building had been used for about ten years and had become too small to accommodate the large enrollment. This new building was erected about 1864 and has been in service since that time. The room was heated at first by a large stove in the center of the room and the seats were crowded around three sides of the stove. Now a modern heating and ventilating system have replaced this stove. The seats were benches in the earlier days and these have gone through a series of changes.

Double seats were place in the room shortly after the Civil War. Then when it became known that single seats were better a set of these were arranged in rows in the building, all of the same size and then later it was discovered that the younger students should have smaller seats, a graded set of seats was place as they can be found now if one were to Double seats were place in the room shortly after the Civil War.

The building was turned into a home in 1950 and owned by Russell Deal. The walls are two foot thick. The floors at the time it was converted into a home were within a half-inch of being perfectly level. Inside measurements are 22 x 30 feet. It is constructed of limestone keyed in.
Laura Jones

This entry was posted on Sunday, April 5th, 2009 at 4:00 am and is filed under Historic Peoria. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.