Evergreen School - District No. 31 - Logan Township

Evergreen School was 18 miles southeast of Meade and only 3 miles west of the Clark County line in southeast Meade County on Section 15-T33-R26. It was originally built on land belonging to John A. Cole and is sometimes called the Cole School.

District 31 was formed in 1886, and the original schoolhouse was a small stone building (about 15 x 20') of which remnants remain as this story was written in 2017.

in 1916, along with three other school districts, Evergreen got a more modern 28' x 40' frame building. This building was placed on the SW corner of the SE/4 Section 9-T33-R26, a half mile north and a half mile west of the little block school. The new school was referred to as "Evergreen West," and the old school was referred to as "Evergreen East." It closed at the end of the 1943-44 school term and a public sale was held July 28, 1944, to sell the furniture and buildings.

After this school closed the wooden frame building was bought by the Fuhrman family and became part of their home.

Teachers of Crooked Creek School

Vink, Callie - 1921 - 1922

Haigh, Mattie J - 1922 - 1923

Barclay, Bessie M. - 1923 - 1925

Craig, Mary - 1925 - 1926

Cordes, Viola - 1926 - 1927

Craig, Mary - 1927 - 1928

Eikermann, Leo F. - 1928 - 1929

Eckhoff, John - 1929 - 1930

Eikermann, Homer H. - 1930 - 1932

Powell, Virginia - 1932 - 1933

Moore, Mary - 1933 - 1934

Cole, Herbert M. - 1934 - 1935

McCampbell, Georgia - 1941 - 1942

Harris, Katherine - 1943 - 1944

Surnames of students at Evergreen school:

Austin, Black, Butler, Carey, Chambers, Chandler, Clay, Cole, Coon, Cornett, Craig, Davis, Fry, Fuhrman, Haskins, Heape, Lauppe, Lumbert, McGlathern, Peck, Powell, and Reneau. We don't have a record of the earlier students from the 1890's and early 1900's, but the names of the school officers included: Dickerson, Heap, Atterbend, Orr, Cole, Pinnick, Veatch, Haskins, Ashby, Lauppe, and Martin. It stands to reason all these people had children in the district.

Raydie Cragg Weaver

from the Meade County History Book

In August 1914, Miss Raydie Cragg arrived by train in Meade, Kansas from Oswego, Kansas. She went directly to the Court House to have her teacher's certificate registered. There she met the County superintendent Pearl Wood Smith and a teacher Miss Mayme Finkle.
Miss Cragg had been employed to teach the Evergreen School in a little stone building near the John Cole home on Sand Creek.

Mr. Alta Lauppe, a school board member, met the new teacher and took her to his home where she was to room and board. Sitting on that high seat in a wagon was a new experience for her and the trip seemed endless. Meade County had harvested a wonderful crop that spring so Miss Cragg amused herself by counting straw stacks. At one time she could count 31 straw stacks from her seat on the wagon.

Geneva, Merle, Ralph and Edgar Lauppe, age six and their teacher walked two and a half miles to school and home after school as soon as the janitor work was done.

"We got our mail about once a week from a mail box at the Crawford Corner. Since there were no cars in the community for transportation, we made our own entertainment at the school house such as literaries, school programs, dinners and occasionally a box supper to raise money for library books or something else needed in the school. The rural schools usually had enough pupils to make it necessary that one teacher teach all eight grades. There was no time to be lonesome or to get homesick," said Raydie.

In 1916, Edward E. Weaver, Sr. came to Meade County from eastern Kansas. He came to work on the new Baptist Church in Meade as he was a carpenter. Mr. Weaver helped build the new Evergreen school house. On August 2, 1916, Miss Raydie Cragg and Mr. Edward Weaver, Sr. were married in the home of Mr. and Mrs. J.A. Reneau by the Rev. W.W. Reid.

Mrs. Weaver served for a number of years on the examining board to help the County Superintendent with teachers' examinations and with the examinations given to rural pupils in the seventh and eighth grades before they could enter high school. There were stacks and stacks of papers to check.
She recalls one time while teachers were busy with their tests, a storm came up and they were kept busy scooting their tables out of the way of rain dripping from the roof on the old Court House.
Mrs. Weaver retired in 1957, after teaching 43 terms of school, 38 of which were in Meade County. She continued to substitute until the fall of 1962.

June 14, 1955, Raydie and Orville C. Van Hoesen were married in Beaver, Oklahoma. They made their home in Meade where they lived out their lives.

James Wilson Story

Meade County History Book

In 1894, James Wilson was married to Cornelia McGaffin, who, having been reared and educated in Waterloo, Iowa, had decided to come to Kansas to join her married sister, Mrs. Belle Adams, instead of going to South Dakota with her parents.

After teaching two terms of school, one at the Cole school southeast of Meade, and the other at the Black school south of Meade, she was married and lived in Arkansas, Oklahoma and Kiowa, Ks., while her husband was serving as cattle inspector for the government. (The Wilsons returned in 1887, and lived out their lives in Meade.)