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Chase County Sketches
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Pleasant Valley School
By Myrtle E. Riggs Cox
It must have seemed a pleasant valley to the earliest comers to that little community located near the southwest corner of Chase County, joining Butler County on the south and Marion County on the west. Pleasant Valley's first settlers bought their land near the source of Middle Creek, and in a few years, homes dotted both sides of that small stream of water.
Much of the land was still owned by the United States government. The Atchison, Topeka and Sante Fe had purchased some tracts. The nearest trading center was St. Francis, now known as Burns, which is ten miles west, in Marion County, following the Chase-Butler county road. St. Francis at that time consisted of a box car as the depot for the A. T. and S. F. railroad, one dwelling house and a general merchandise store owned by Funke and Bueke, who had come there in 1879.
By 1884 the settlers in Pleasant Valley felt the need of a public school in their midst. This need was realized by the organization and formation of District No. 45 on June 18, 1884. The name given was Pleasant Valley school.
Leora Park was the first teacher and Mary E. Hunt was the current superintendent. The original district was nine sections in Township 22, Range 6, East of the sixth principal meridian. They were sections 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 34, 35, and 36. March 1, 1904, sections 28, 29, 32, and 33 were attached, taken from district No. 13 (Wonseu) . T. G. Allen was county superintendent. On April 3, 1926 the S. E. 1/4 of section 15 was attached, being detached from District 13. On January 29, 1934 N. W. 1/4 of Section 22 was detached and attached to district No. 13.
In 1882 Isaac and Nancy Ellen Sullivan Silver moved on the S. E. 1/4 of section 35. There were not enough children in the vicinity to justify a school district. It was through the efforts of Isaac Silver, who had no children of school age, that Nicholas E. Sidener was influenced to move to section 26. When a school census was taken, it lacked one pupil of required number. So Isaac Silver included his married daughter living on section 36, but not yet 21 years of age. Now enough pupils were in the district to organize a school district.
Isaac Silver's married daughter, Ella, did not attend school. Her husband, Andrew A. Siefert, was the first board member elected for district No. 45. Another daughter of Isaac Silver, Emma, ten years of age, was a pupil in the first year of the Pleasant Valley School. She is the only living member of her class at the present time, 1965. Emma Silver Sidener now lives in Burns, Kansas.
At the time of the organization of district No. 45, there were three occupied houses on section 36, Andrew A. Siefert, Oliver Pinkston and Jim Critzer and one occupied house on section 24, Milton Houghton. The schoolhouse was located near the center of section 26 on which lived Thomas Vincent, Jabez B. Cooley, and Isaac Deel. Thomas and Sarah Vincent deeded one acre to district 45, on October 11, 1887. District paid S20 for it and said acre was to revert back when no longer used for school. Thomas Vincent was a Quaker and Jabez B. Cooley was a Quaker minister. Isaac Dee] was Civil War veteran who came from Illinois. Henry A. Riggs, in 1883, was the first to live west of the school and the same year Henry Freeman bought land in the same section, No. 27. In 1886, Calvin B. Riggs bought the N. W. I/4 of section 35. The S. W. 1/4 of Section 25, was owned by E. S. Green.
The south half of Section 23, known as the Potter Ranch since 1892, had Ed Fowler as the first tenant.
On June 25, 1894, William Freeland came to the Potter Ranch, which was about one-half mile from the schoolhouse. Before school began that Fall, 1894, the school building had been moved to its present location causing the Freeland boys, Willis, Robert, and Ralph, to walk a mile and a half to school. Robert Freeland, now of Burns, Kansas, was the first pupil in District No. 45 to receive an eighth grade diploma. Up to that time pupils must stay in school until past common school age. Robert's teacher, Maude Lybarger, 1902-1903, persuaded William Freeland to let Robert take the eighth grade county examinations. That necessitated his going to Burns, then going by train to Florence, Kansas, to meet the examiners. Robert attended high school the following year at Burns, the first year of the Burns High School. Willis Freeland lives in Oklahoma and Ralph Freeland lives in California (1965) .
The original Pleasant Valley School house which had been moved from the center of Section 26 to where it now stands had at one time been remodeled. Then in 1953 an addition was built to include a water system, making the building modern with running water, electricity, and an automatic propane heating system. On March 20, 1965, the schoolhouse and its contents and the playground equipment were sold at public auction under the direction of County Superintendent, Ida M. Vinson. John Weber and Paul Scharenburg, former board members assisted.
Pleasant Valley, District No. 45, held its last term of school in 1957-58 with Mrs. Myrtle Cox as teacher. In 1962, the district was disorganized, the land being attached to three districts: Matfield Green, Burns, and Cedar Point.
The building was sold to Paul Scharenburg. The sale marked the demise of the little one-room schoolhouse in Chase County. Doubtless a school-house in the center of, and a creek running diagonally through any specific area, would be an attraction to the early settlers in the '80's. This must have been the case with Pleasant Valley which had its beginning as the Westward Movement and the close of the Civil War caused people from eastern states to seek more land in Kansas.
by Lorna Marvin
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