Volume 9, Number 7 - Spring 1987
An All-American One Room School With a Proud Name ‘STAR’
By Bill Cameron
In a year of war 1863 in a lovely place in the Flat Creek Valley in Barry County, Missouri, near the junction of Willow Branch and Flat Greek two mothers saw the need for a school where children could be taught the essentials of education: reading, writing, and arithmetic and be subjected to kind but effective discipline. Those mothers called on their neighbors for help, and a log schoolhouse was built. For four years those mothers taught the children without receiving any monetory reward.
At that time of beginning, the Missouri-Arkansas borderland was in the throes of ‘The War between the States’.
A man died in the Willow Branch community, and he had requested burial in a place in the valley. All the horses had been commandeered or stolen, and the body was loaded on a wagon and the wagon pulled to the burial place by the women and children.
Union General, Bliss, had Headquarters located upstream about two miles from the Log School: and General Blount was in command of the Mo Ark. Area. One of his soldiers was credited with the authorship of the following song of sorrow which was passed on to me by Ben Stubble field who later taught five years at ‘Star.’ The Song:
They fought us very bravely and hoped to gain the day, ‘Till General Blount’s Artillery on them began to play. It caused so much havoc, it put them all to flight, And they withdrew their forces under cover of the night.
Next morning we felt sorrow for all those rebel wives, Hunting their dead husbands with melancholy cries, And sisters seeking brothers, they wrung their hands and cried
Oh dear bloody brothers, for Southern rights you died.
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Following the battle of Wilsons Greek a detachment of U.S. Cavalry were ordered to join General Blount at a point east of Fayetteville, Ark. The order demanded speed and the ride was completed in less than twenty-four hours. Those Cavalrymen rode past the log schoolhouse location that would later be named ‘Star’.
In 1867 tax money became available and a new clapboard schoolhouse was built.
The first paid teacher was hired. He was Capt. George Stubblefield who had served in many battle actions. He was at Prairie Grove and Pea Ridge, Ark., at Wilsons Creek and Pilot Knob in Missouri, and he also served East of the Mississippi. I did not find out how long he taught at Star School and at an academy in Barry County before moving to California where he continued to teach.
The School was officially named Star School No. 38, Barry County, Missouri, and continued to serve the community for more than thirty years. At the turn of the century (1899-1900) a teacher had to be replaced. Two young men applied for that job. One was hired. The rejected one set fire to the school house.
A new school house was built on the foundations and served the Willow Branch and Roark conununities until 1935. The last teacher at Star School was Leta Thomas and she had only three students on closing day. They were Emory Melton (now State Senator) and two Hoggett brothers.
In the early 1970’s Dr. M. Graham Clark, President of The School of the Ozarks, told me that he desired to have a one room school on the campus of The School of the Ozarks. He preferred one that would be historical. Star School No. 38 was located on the bank of Flat Creek down stream from McDowel, Missouri. Ben Stubblefield who as a young man just back home from service in US Army and who taught at the school for five years gave information about the owner of the school. That owner was Dr. Don Sater a professor at SMSU. Dr. Sater gave the building to The School of the Ozarks.
On the same acre with the Star School there was a small cemetery that had been neglected. It held a lot of interest. Most of the stones had been knocked down by cattle, that is all but one small stone and on it was a bitter-sweet obituary.
"Florence Robinson born 1866. Died 1879. Budded on earth to bloom in heaven. I am personally grateful to Dr. Sater for his gift of the building, and to his first cousin, Helen Farwell French and her husband John French of Anchorage, Alaska, and Barry County, Missouri, who gave the largest donation for the restoration.
The building had to be taken apart in sections before moving because of narrow roads.
The work of taking down, moving, and rebuilding on campus was supervised by Harding Wyman and Herbert Thomason. When the final move was made to a location beside the Ralph Foster Museum, Herbert Thomason, now assistant curator of the museum was there to serve and to help.
Dedication ceremonies were held on March 28, 1981, and four teachers who had taught at Star were honored; Ben Stubblefield (five terms), Edna ‘Berry’ Melton (three terms), Leta ‘Thomas’ Chastain, and Ella Garris (taught in 1910) who was represented by her daughter.
On March 6, 1986, Star School came back to life. Jeanelle Duzenberry, Curator of Education at Ralph Foster Museum, completed her work on a Children’s Day Star. Four retired teachers who had taught in one room schools were drafted back into service.
By grouping the children, nearly 500 young Americans had the experience of being given a lesson in a one room school, a lesson very much like that given one hundred years ago.
Each group joined in singing "God Bless America." I, who have no birthright, but do have a highiy valued right of purchase, know that Freedom, Faith, and Honor will be redeemed by America’s young. Eighty years ago, I as a boy in a far country read and believed lines from an American poem:
We were not born for cages,
nor to feed from a keepers hand,
Our strength which has grown through the ages,
Is the strength of a slave free land.
That was a promise. Now, I would all men were free; free from priest and kings, and mobs, from you and me.
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