Over a pot of tea many years ago, Mom shared memories of Ballyhamage, the one-room school she attended from 1920 to 1925. The little white frame building had no electricity, indoor plumbing, telephone, water well or running water. Built on top of a ridge of hills with the Rocky Mountains as a dramatic backdrop,
Ballyhamage opened in the fall of 1919.
Even by standards of the day, that little white schoolhouse was considered remote, miles and miles from a town, general store or railroad station.
Instead of all-weather, improved roads, trails through the thick brush linked the families living in the sparsely populated, very rural Ballyhamage School District. Because of the difficulty of identifying land boundaries like the two-acre schoolyard, the schoolhouse was later found to be smack-dab in the middle of the road.
The early residents, many of whom were British subjects, prized education, and even a rudimentary school for their youngsters was better than no school. That’s what my grandfather likely thought.
when they moved to the Ballyhamage School District
in 1920.
Although Grandpa Fendall had bought the farm 17 miles west of Okotoks, Alberta, in 1918, he didn’t settle his family there until after the school had opened nearby.
stamped the Ballyhamage School District
seal on official documents.
Creature Comforts
Mom recalled the feet of the desks were nailed to two-by-fours so they could be moved. Each seat was attached to the desk behind it. The blackboard, which covered one wall, was peppered with .22-shells made by an unknown trespasser who snuck into the school.
A small rectangular wood heater squatted at the back of the schoolroom. It was undersized compared to the total size of the interior and seemed even more inadequate when the temperature dipped to -30 degrees F. The students, numbering between seven and 20 over the early years, often kept their mitts, hats and coats on as they did their schoolwork, peering over scarves pulled up around their faces. One day, an older pupil who sat at the back of the classroom built an extra hot fire but left the drafts on the heater closed, either on purpose or by mistake. Pressure built up when no air could escape the fire.
Suddenly, the lid on the heater blew off, spinning in a mad flight across the classroom, barely missing the boy responsible. That was close!
Getting There
Shank’s pony (walking) and riding saddlehorses were the modes of transportation for the pupils and teacher. A fenced corral at the school was the equivalent of their parking lot. Mom recalled that bands of renegade horses unexpectedly galloped up to the enclosure and broke down the gate in the early years.
In no time, all the horses would be long gone and the youngsters who’d lost their mounts would be walking home carrying their saddles to share a tale of woe with their parents. Sometimes, the saddlehorses were recovered, but other times, they were not recaptured, which was a grievous loss to the families.
Nuisances Endured
According to Mom, Ballyhamage must have had Alberta’s biggest, most blood-thirsty mosquitoes in Alberta. After the first crocuses bloomed in the spring, the endless number of sloughs on the ridge overflowed with mosquitoes. Those from the mud hole closest to the school made their presence known in the classroom, especially when temperatures warmed up after lunch.
To combat the little beasts, the boys built a small fire heaped with green weeds outside the open window. Smoke, reeking with the smell of stinkweed, billowed into the classroom. Coughing and rubbing their eyes, the pupils raced out of the school. Hours later, the hungry horde of mosquitoes had lessened, but the stench lingered.
So which was worse – itchy mosquito bites or the foul-smelling smoke? Mom said it was a toss-up.
Boarding the Teacher
Rather than poorly behaved pupils, Ballyhamage’s remote location was the cause of the schoolboard’s difficulty in keeping a teacher, particularly in the early years. One season, a young woman from Okotoks who was acquainted with my grandparents and mother, accepted her first teaching job at Ballyhamage.
She boarded with them one fall and early winter.
The novice teacher was desperately homesick and likely found it difficult to live in a one-room house without electricity, indoor plumbing, telephone or running water already occupied by three other people. The young educator then faced a one-mile walk to and from her isolated school each day.
Like many other fledgling Alberta teachers of the era, however, that teacher got her start in an education career by surviving a season of teaching in a one-room school.
But All in All
Mom, who started school in a fine, two-story school in Okotoks, returned there for a short time after my grandfather’s death in 1925. However, she spent most of her schooldays at Ballyhamage. When asked which school she preferred, Mom didn’t hesitate.
Ballyhamage was her choice.
While Mom made many chums at the Okotoks School, the youngsters she grew up with at Ballyhamage remained her lifelong friends. Taking the place of the brothers and sisters she never had, Mom thought of them as family. They reciprocated her warmth and affection.
After all, they went through a lot together to get a basic education.
School classmates in the mid-1920s.
schools where pupils like Mom earned a grade eight ‘public school leaving’ diploma.
* * *
Another old one-room school later replaced Ballyhamage’s original schoolhouse and that’s where three of my siblings later got part of their education. Neither Ballyhamage School was modernized, but that’s another story.
Thank you to artist Carol MacKay for sketching the first Ballyhamage School.
* * *
Although I rode a bus rather than a horse to school, now and then a little drama took place. Hope you’ll enjoy these memories:
- Every Day is Memorial Day for Wayne Givens - May 26, 2023
- A Woman Ahead of Her Time - May 5, 2023
- Spring in an Old Texas Cemetery - April 21, 2023
Thanks for the story, Elaine! The kids who went to school here, and to countless other one-room schools throughout Canada and the U.S., learned a lot more than the lessons presented by their teacher. We lived in Nebraska in the 80s. Even then, Nebraska, primarily the western part of the state, still had more one-room schools than any other state. Thanks, again!
Good morning, Dave. That’s really interesting that there were one-room schools in Nebraska in the 1980s. Ballyhamage closed in 1956, along with several other area one-room schools. The consolidated school was a bus ride away!
Wonderful anecdote about the stinkweed fire! I attended a country school myself, but don’t remember a mosquito problem. Those poor kids!
Creature comforts like screens on the windows were unknown at Ballyhamage, so there was nothing to stop the mosquitoes from the nearby sloughs from feasting on the pupils trying to do their schoolwork.
Public School Leaving diploma, was that a Canadian phrase?
Thanks for picking up on that somewhat awkward phrase, Gary. My guess, and it’s only a guess, is that ‘a public school leaving diploma’ paralleled verbiage that was used elsewhere in the British Empire. At the time, Canada has very close ties to Great Britain.
I also attended a one room school in Kansas from 1957 to 1962. My first grade class had 4 students, while all other grades only had one or two. Sixteen students in all . No indoor plumbing, so 2 holer outhouses served for girls and boys. Our teacher was Mrs. Spencer who also served as the janitor and pumped fresh water each day for a handwashing station and a drinking water container. Everyone brought their own lunch in a metal lunch pail.
Our bus driver had 2 kids at the school and picked up all the other students in his little school bus.
Norma, wow, you lived a chapter in American history that has vanished! It sounds like this period of your school days remains not only crystal clear, but also dear to your heart. Thank you so much for sharing these memories.
Another wonderful story, Elaine. Thank you for sharing! (My mother and her eight siblings attended a country school, east of Carstairs, Alberta. Many memories for them, too!)
Anne, you’ll have to ask your mom what memories she treasures from those long-ago school days and if she’d like to go back and do it all again!
My mother attended such a school–one room without any of the conveniences you mentioned. She also received an 8th grade diploma. However, she did not return the next year but stayed at home to help care for her younger siblings and to help with housework and garden. She had a total of 8 other siblings and she was the oldest of three girls. Remnants of quite a few old one-room school houses remain standing in Arkansas today. Although my school had many rooms and an inside bathroom grades 1-12 were all under one roof with the raised auditorium separating grades 1-6 from grades 7-12. I loved my school (now demolished) and I still remember its smell.
Brenda, your mom certainly contributed a tremendous amount to her family’s well-being. I’m sure her younger siblings looked up to her all their lives. Hope some of those old schoolhouses have found a new purpose in life.
Elaine, I love your stories about Canada and your family. I can almost smell the skunk weed and the warm fire.
I attended Laura B. Peck Elementary in Houston. Each grade had its own individual room, a wonderful cafeteria with homemade rolls, and a playground where, in the spring, we danced around the May Pole. I rode my bike to school, loving every minute of it.
Elementary School was a happy experience for me.
I’m glad you enjoy my stories from Alberta, Donna. Your elementary school education sounds like it was great fun. Of course, knowing you, I’m sure you made it a happy experience!
What a wonderful story! This sounds so much like my own mother’s experience at Old Bowling School in Texas and my father’s time at the Faye School in Ozark County, Missouri.
I think if our mothers could have gotten together, I think they would have had no end of common experiences to share even though they were raised in different countries! Thank you, Bev, for your comment.
I do so love reading your stories Elaine. I still have two of my mother’s school textbooks from when she first started school in the 1930s. Such precious memories.
Thank you so much, Janine. I’m sure you could write quite a story based on your mother’s experiences at school in a part of the world far, far away from Canada and the U.S. Perhaps someday you will do that and share it with us. BTW, what are the titles of your mom’s textbooks?
She went to school in Germany Elaine so the two I have are her geography books which are interesting in that they show Prussia on the maps. She immigrated to NZ in 1952. I also have an 1868 National Third Reader as it was called, that was owned by William Eaches Fendall who was born in Virginia in 1857 and died in Philadelphia in 1936. If you google ‘National Third Reader by Parker and Watson’ you can see an example as to what it looks like. William has used the front couple of pages to ‘practice’ his signature. He has a very flowery hand.
How interesting, Janine! Those books are definitely treasures. Thank you for sharing more background on your family and the keepsakes you have.
Elaine, your stories trigger so many memories of my past and I so enjoy them. My dad told a similar story about the one room school he attended in rural Iowa in the mid to late 1920’s. He would walk the two to three miles up Macintosh hill which was an old mud road and steep hill to get there every day or ride his pony. I remember hiking up the same hill as a kid with my grandma and grandpa on Sundays to get to church when the road was otherwise impassable by car. Later in high school in the winter he would walk the half mile to the river at the back of the farm, strap on his skates, and ice skate the five miles to get to the high school. Can you imagine kids doing this today? Thanks for taking me back to my childhood years with your stories.
Rick, I’m happy that the nostalgic stories I share give you pleasure. What a sight your grandfather must have been arriving at high school on his skates! In my mind’s eye, I can see you hiking up Macintoch Hill with your grandparents because the roads were too muddy to take the car. Reminiscing about people who are dear to us but live only in our memories is good for our souls. At least I know that’s true for me. Thanks for writing.
I look forward to every one of your stories that introduce me to interesting folks and new places. Each is such a gift to your readers.
Thank you, Linda. Thanks for your encouragement for starting a blog and keeping it going. You are one of my North Stars!