(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] Illinois stories is brought to you by the corporation for public broadcasting, Illinois arts council agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.

- Hello, welcome to Illinois stories.

I'm Mark McDonald near Mechanicsburg at the North Round Prairie School.

Now you may never have heard of this school because it's been many, many decades since it was a school, but it's perfectly intact now.

It's a by the night rental.

But the fascinating thing about this is that the man who turned this back into a home actually went here as a child.

Went to school here as a child, and then he raised his family here and his daughter is now owns this place again.

And they brought it back to life with a whole different sort of orientation and Bet- or Becky Box.

It is fascinating how your dad must have loved this place so much that after it was no longer a school, he wanted to move back in.

- Can you imagine that?

- I can't but your dad must have been one of these guys that was pretty sentimental.

- Oh, he was very sentimental.

It didn't take much to take a tear to his eye.

- [ Mark] Yeah.

He went to school here as a kid, a little kid.

- Yes.

- And I guess it was, it was K through eight, I guess at that time.

So it was a great school.

He's in the school.

And then he decides why to come back here to live here.

- Well, actually dad and his family, he was an only child.

They moved quite a few places in this area.

So he went to quite a few one-room schools.

Calvary graduated from eighth grade here.

He went to two or three years at this school and graduated.

We have his graduation ceremony announcement from graduating from this school.

There were two graduates at the year he graduated in 1943.

- [Mark] Just two?

- Just two.

- [Mark] That's fascinating.

- And they would have a big graduation ceremony in Springfield for all the, all the county schools.

There were over a hundred and all the graduates would come for one graduation ceremony.

So we can look at that invitation later and see the list of the program.

- [Mark] Okay, okay.

Now we get a good look at the school from here and actually looked quite a bit like this.

It hasn't been changed much has it?

- Not... - Tell us what changes have been made?

- Not too much.

The only thing that was added onto this building structure was this front section here that is a sunroom.

That's the only addition to the original outline of the parameter of the school.

The original front door was on this road side.

The Illinois Traction railroad ran by in later years of this school.

But the kids came in from this side.

The well was on the roadside.

They would come in this way, walk to school and come in.

There were four to five windows along each of the long sides, the front door was on the front.

I'm not sure what was on the back wall, but we do know that was where the stage was.

And we can show you that when we go inside.

- Okay, let's walk up that way.

- So this porch and the porch here were added on by your dad?

- [Becky] Correct.

- [Mark] It's interesting here.

Now this door would not have been here, but for the cellar, that's the original entrance to the cellar, right?

- [Becky] That's correct.

That is where they would go down to shovel the coal into the, to get the coal for the furnace.

There's a coal chute on the backend and all the underneath workings, you can see the beams of the original school and the brickwork.

- [Mark] And you're going to show us that?

- I am, I am.

- We're going to go inside and you can see... And we get to go in the attic - Yes.

- And the cellar.

- Yes.

- What it really did look like before you all got to modernizing.

- Absolutely, absolutely.

- Okay, this of course is concrete is all new.

And your dad built this garage so that wasn't here?

- Yes, correct.

In May of 1970, he built that.

- After you.

- And when you came back here to make this into a rental, this was all grown up.

- Oh it was.

(Becky laughing) I mean, this is beautiful now.

It's manicured now, but it was all grown up wasn't it?

- Yes.

Last July, it was a year ago, our renters had left.

We had rented to them for about five years.

Mom left the property in 2014 to come live with us.

And we walked in and well, we couldn't walk in.

- It was too grown over.

The vegetation in this backyard was so thick you couldn't walk.

It was above your head.

I cried for an hour, maybe more.

(laughing) In the front, there was no flowers left.

My mom was an avid gardener.

And so, yeah, we've done a lot of, a lot of work and it's been enjoyable.

It was our COVID project.

- I think I mentioned this, but I want to bring it back again.

Your dad went to school here, then decided to move in here and raised, you're an only child, - Yes.

- raised you here.

- Mm-hmm, Yes.

- So you grew up here - Yes, born and raised.

- And then your mom lived here on her own for awhile.

- Right.

Now she's with you, but you're back.

- Yes, exactly.

(laughing) Exactly.

And this was my bedroom right here.

- Okay, this here.

And this here, you're talking about the coal chute.

- [Becky] Yes.

This is the coal chute.

The trucks would come around course, there was no reason they couldn't drive around.

They would drive around here and back up and dump their coal down there.

And then you could shovel it from the other side.

When I was a small girl, mom would pick me up from the babysitter.

We would come home.

The very first thing we did when we'd go down the steps, shoveled the coal into the furnace so the house would warm up.

So we could be warm enough to come inside.

And we did that until I was about six.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- And I guess somebody, when it was a schoolhouse, somebody had the job of doing that to keep it warm enough (Becky laughing) to start the day I would assume.

- Yes.

And from 1940 to 1943, that person was my father.

(Mark laughing) He was the fireman.

They called him the fireman.

He was paid 10 cents a week - Mm-hmm.

- to come and put coal into the furnace.

The furnace of the school set right here.

And we'll show you a picture of it.

It was a monstrous, unbelievably ugly thing sitting in the corner.

- Yeah.

- And dad was hired for 10 cents a week.

He would come and put the coal in the furnace.

He had to take the ashes out and on the winter mornings, he had to come early and stoke up the fire that had been banked from the night before.

- Yeah.

- Yeah, 10 cents a week.

(Becky laughing) - Well, I bet that was big money in the forties.

Okay, now this, we talked about the original door.

It would have been on this side of the building - [Becky] Yes.

- and you all saved the door and actually installed it there, so people would see - Right.

- See what that looked like.

- So then, every morning the kids would come.

I'm sure that they probably had assigned jobs.

The well was down on the road where the orange day lilies are.

The cement pad is still there from the original well.

The kids would bring up buckets of water.

And that's why we put this statue here with the little girl carrying water, because the kids would bring water in and it would sit on a bench.

They had a long-handled dipper and the kids would use that to fill their cups.

A boy coat room and a girl coat room on either side.

They- each child had a nail with a tin cup on it and their name written above it.

So if they wanted a drink, they would take that dipper and pour it in.

And that's how they got their water.

- Okay.

Now you saved the door.

You saved the pump hit, the pump head, I guess that's what it's called a pump arm.

- The handle.

- Yeah, the handle.

And you also saved the outhouse.

- Yes.

- And the outhouse is something to see, because the reason it's still standing is because it was so darn well built.

- And it's gorgeous.

- Let's go take a look at that.

- Well for an outhouse.

- Yeah for an outhouse.

(Becky laughing) Becky, on our way back to the outhouse, we're making a little stop here at the garage because your dad saved a lot of stuff.

He liked to save things.

- He did.

- This is the cornerstone from the apron around the garage.

- Yes.

- And you all saved this to make it a walkway.

This was all part of the original.

- Right.

- That's sweet.

You'd like to save- you're a farmer at heart.

That's what farmers do, they save things.

- Well, you never know that farmer's gold might come in handy.

- That's right.

Let's go, let's go back.

- And all the sitting areas cement is from the original sidewalks.

- Oh.

And you've put so much work into that.

How many truckloads of wood chips did it take?

- Well three tandem truckloads.

- Three tandem truckloads.

(Becky laughing) Wow.

Well, this is a pretty piece of property too.

- Yes.

- Now this is- when they said built like an outhouse.

I mean, (Becky laughing) look at the bricks.

- Yes.

- I mean, this thing was built to last and it's nice that you were able to keep it intact the way it would've looked that you put new wood framing around it, of course.

- Right.

- But look at the bricks on the roof.

The way it's slant- it's rounded to run off water.

And the inside is just the way it was.

I mean look at that quarry tile really built to last.

A lot of people have not seen in our house.

Don't kids don't even know that they existed.

- Right.

Let alone use one.

- Yeah.

And they actually not to be embarrassing or anything, but when you were living here, this got used frequently, cause you had one bathroom, right?

- Exactly.

Exactly.

And my mom's garden was this whole stretch here.

So this was her go-to when she was gardening outside.

So she didn't have to go in the house when she was dirty.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

- Well Mark, you and Becky, did a tremendous amount of work on this.

- Thank you, thank you.

- Because of course it was a school, but then it was a home for a long time.

- Right.

- But now it's a modern, or what's still historic, but it looks modern.

You've got a modern kitchen, - Yes, thank you.

modern bath facility.

So it's all very nice.

And you had a lot to do with that, didn't you?

- Well, we did it together, but this is really kind of a cool experience to talk about because where we're standing now, actually it was where the teacher had the piano, her desk was right here.

And this was actually a stage they used for the (drowned out by Mark).

- Oh and it was raised huh?

- Yes it was raised about six inches from the main floor.

And this was the chalkboard behind us here.

- Uh huh, uh huh.

- So when Alvin Cormany and his wife, Alice, purchased the land or purchased the school back during the auction, after the school to transition period occurred, they decided to make this into a rental home.

So they built this into the first room, which is the kitchen.

- Uh huh.

And it's been serving as a kitchen ever since.

- A kitchen ever since.

And that would have been roughly 1950ish, - 1950.

Exactly right.

- Okay.

- So when we see the rest of this house and it's no longer one big room, we're going to see that it's been sectioned into rooms for particular purposes.

And that was done in around the fifties.

- That's exactly right.

That's right.

He built it with the intent or remodeled with the intent of making it a rental home at that time.

So yes, that's right 1950s, - Yeah.

- when the structure was created inside.

- And that is so interesting.

then after that Becky's father moves back in and that's just so interesting.

- I know, where he went to school.

He loved this school so much, he decided to live in it.

- Yeah, so you have to imagine this is one big open space.

This whole room, this whole house is an open space.

- That's correct.

- And when we were outside, Becky was explaining to us that that's where the door, the main door would have been.

- That's right.

Right where that corner sets would be the, the half mark of where that door is.

So if you can picture that, that's where the children came into the school building and the teacher of course, and right below us, about five feet back of the wall is a juncture where the pine floor meets the smaller section of the floor.

- Mm-hmm.

- And this was considered the cloak room all the way across here.

One side was for the girls.

One side was for the boys.

- Uh huh.

This is where they hung their tin lunch pails, their water cup, and of course, their coats, depending on the time of the season.

And then they entered into another door in the same spot and this was the actual school.

- And then all open, clear up to where the teacher's stage was where we just- - All the way to that north wall.

- And then she was talking about the coal stove or the you know.

- Right.

- It would have been right here.

- It sat right there.

Exactly.

And she told the story about her dad being the fireman, feeding the furnace - Mm-hmm, mm-hmm.

- right at his desk, sat right about here.

And you can see if we pull back the carpet actually, you can see some of the burn marks in the floor from where the students and I'm sure dad was one of them.

- Oh yeah.

- Where you see the seared marks.

- Yeah.

- And we were thinking that more than likely from the furnace to here, they were using the window here to chuck the coals out every once in a while.

- Yeah.

It's a miracle it didn't burn down.

- Well, yes, we're glad that didn't happen.

(laughing) We certainly are.

- Oh man.

So you put a lot of blood, sweat, and tears into this floor because this is original.

This is all original.

- It's the original floor.

And mom and dad did some finished work when they actually plastered the walls back in the 1960s and they had it refinished, but it hadn't been touched since then.

So I sanded all the floors down after we emptied the home of all of mom's artifacts and things.

We went ahead and took the floor and decided we weren't going to take any of the original features out of it or the history, right.

Because the floor kind of talks and we sanded it down.

I did, I sanded it down on my hands and knees, which was my first time experience, but we got through it.

It was great.

And then I refinished it with polyurethane for floors and put three coats on there.

This is how it turned out.

And we're really pleased.

- It turned out great.

It's great.

It seems to be really pretty.

- Let's take a look at the rest of the place because you have a bathroom of course.

And I think you have a couple of bedrooms here.

- Right.

- So let's take a look and then we'll get to see beyond the bones of the house as well.

Okay.

So this is one of the rooms of it.

Actually, it's large enough to be comfortable.

You wouldn't think that this could be chopped up into the comfortable rooms, but it's large enough.

- It's large enough.

We have a queen bed in here for guests and this was mom and dad's original bedroom, but the walls you see are the finished that mom and dad had for many, many years, we didn't touch any of that.

We repainted everything, a great color palette that Becky had selected.

Did some minor refinished work on the window frames and the doors just to kind of bring them up to a tasteful feature, new lighting.

- Yeah.

- But yeah.

And then again, here's the original floor.

In fact, Mark, where you're standing, you see the break point in the floor, right on top of that, - Yes.

- that's where the stage actually started.

- Ahh.

- Where you're standing was the raised stage.

- I would have been six inches higher.

- You would've been six inches higher.

That's right.

- Now let's take a look into the bathroom there because that has been a bathroom for a long, long time.

I'm going to go past through here.

Sorry.

We can take a look in there.

And it's a modernized now - Right.

- and very comfortable.

- Yup.

Full bath with shower and a sink and toilet of course, and some nice amenities.

- And then we're not going to take a look in here because we're very cramped, but this looks like it's about the same size as the other bedroom.

- Just a little bit bigger.

- Just a little bit bigger.

- A little bit bigger, yeah.

- It's got a queen bed in it as well and very nice.

Very nice.

- Right, exactly.

You see here and I don't know how much we can get in here.

- Come this way, if you would.

- This is a historical element we added to the home, all of what you see in here, except for maybe the dolls, which were Becky's mom's, everything else was part of the school.

The desk we found in Pennsylvania, we acquired it from another family.

But as the exact model of desks, that was the last series of desks from the 1930s that were used in this school.

- Mm-hmm.

There is part of the ideal desk here, which would have been the first desk of the school built in Chicago.

But the school was originally stash- are outfitted with ideal school desks with those ornate metal frames.

- Wow.

- Yeah, really cool.

- That's a smart idea to get people to look into the past.

That's nice.

- Yes.

- Lighting: we know the school had its first electricity about the time the Illinois Traction ran by in 1935.

And they did it in time for their school Christmas program.

And these were the lights that they installed in the school here.

So we managed to pull those out and stick that in here.

Well, we thought for our guests, that would be great to have some artifacts that can look at, and of course can't walk away.

We've got to protect it, but you can see everything in there.

- Yeah.

- Yeah.

If you're interested in seeing the really school- some really cool stuff, we'll go upstairs and I can show you the construction of the school itself.

- I would love to see that.

Because that's still the way it was 150 years ago.

- That's correct.

That's right.

- Narrow stairways coming up here.

- Yes.

Yes.

Conserve space.

- But this is a very interesting tutorial on how these buildings were built because here you get a really good look at it, don't you?

- Yes, this is the best look of the original interior architecture of the school.

So the ceiling itself is a tin plate, egg and dart pattern.

And again, this is the school as it was built and opened in 1875.

- Mm-hmm.

- You can also see the corner surround the top portion of the ceiling, where it meets the wall is the original color of the school.

I don't know that the school was ever repainted inside.

So you're seeing the original paint finish as well.

We left everything as it is.

We felt just the historical aspect of this was important to maintain.

You know, it's aged time if you will.

Along the wall, you'll see here, the framing of the original window.

Of course it was framed up when they remodeled internally to create the walls down below.

But nonetheless, this is the original framing of the windows.

- And were the windows the same on both sides of the building.

- There were six windows on each side, yes.

And the farthest end windows were taller than the remaining windows in between.

- Mm-hmm.

And then, also from here, you get to look at, if you look straight up, you can see that the way this was constructed and the way the eaves are really the joists and everything exactly the way they were.

- Right, for snow load, it was built at a 45 degree pitch.

And it was a shake roof.

You can see, obviously, As you look straight up there, the school was built with genuine two by fours and for construction needs today, you know, a two by four for example, is not quite two by four.

It's less than that.

These are genuine two by fours.

You see the shake roof and the split pattern up there to allow the roof to breathe.

Of course, for four different seasons as moisture and humidity levels varied.

But yes, that's the original construction of the school as it was in 1875.

And of course, that wasn't really accessible or visible.

There was dead airspace at the time.

- Yeah.

- And here you see, of course this is the top side of the eight-foot floor that was created when the home was actually built into a home from the transition period from school to home.

- You got to bend down here, Mark.

- Yes, you do.

- People were a little smaller, a little shorter then.

- Watch your head.

- This would have been the daily trek for whoever the coal boy was, right?

He would have had to come down here.

- That's right.

Becky told the story about her dad being the coal boy.

Yeah, so here's the backside of the coal chute right in here.

The loads of coal would be mounted up here.

He would come down with his bucket down the stairs we just came in, scoop his buckets up, walk back out and then around the front and through the front door to stoke the fire and the coal furnace.

And after mom and dad married and grew up, you know, are married and moved in here.

There was a major, big coal furnace here.

And that stayed until 1965.

The receipts for the coal during that time are still hanging right here.

- Oh they are.

- Yes, and while we're down here, I'll just point out that the original construction base of the school is as it is.

So you see here, the two by 12 cross beams, but the actual foundation itself was brick and mortar.

And then above that were 14 by 14 square Oak beams, all hand-hewn, of course, that sat to build the actual wood superstructure of the school.

- And they're still there and they're still apparently in pretty good condition.

- Pretty good shape, yes.

I don't see any major damage and still holding strong.

Yeah, exactly.

- All the tools and implements that we see here.

These were all in- at one point or another, were all in this building?

- That's right.

They're all- if we can trace them back - Wow.

- to the same time period, but whether they came from the school or not, I don't know, but I can tell you that some of this is very, very old.

- Mm-hmm.

- So we set it up just as a feature of the home, just to display things of the bygone past.

- Yeah.

I know you got a humidifier down here, which is very important.

- Right.

- It's almost impossible not to get water.

- Well, we have home features now it's important to keep it dry down here, but a central air and heating of course and water softening systems.

That's all been modernized for the home itself.

- Yeah.

- But what's really cool to here, Mark, as we walk out, I'll show you, there's some original hooks that were here from the time of the school as well.

So when he came down here, it was during the warm season or whatever, you could hang your coat here as you were working scoopin' coal.

But these hooks are actually from the time period of the school.

These go back easily to the 1800s.

- Oh, there's another one over here too.

- Yep, and a couple more behind you, so old stuff, but you can see the original two bys that were used and still in great shape.

Hard to beat Pine and Oak from that time period.

- Yep.

- Yep.

(walking up stairs) - Well, Becky, we got a classroom picture here.

Here's your dad right?

- [Becky] Yes.

- in this one room school house with the teacher.

- Catherine Lot, yes.

- And there on the stage, we mentioned that's where the kitchen was, and of course she had a piano there and the chalkboard.

I'd like this picture too, because it shows looking the other way from the teacher's stage out to where- and you mentioned the furnaces back here- and the cloak rooms across the back, and you can see how the kids, how they configured it for the kids.

And then I also liked this cause we talked about you and your dad so much today that this is a picture of you at the house.

And he's an adult now living in the North Round Prairie.

So, kind of sweet to bring it all back to life, isn't it?

- It is.

- Yeah.

And you get to do this as often as you like when you have guests, if you're happened to be around you get a chance to share all this with everybody.

- Right.

That's kind of nice.

You brought a lot of things in for us to look at that you found here on the property.

- Yes, a hundred percent of this from the house.

- No kidding.

And if you look around, there's children's books there's- oh, this is nice.

I'm going to touch this very gently because I want you to show it to us.

This is dad's report card?

- Yes.

This is his eighth grade report card: Billy Baker.

eighth grade, North Round Prairie.

And they have a lot of different classes that we wouldn't think of, you know, in a one room school house.

- No, especially.

I mean.

Now you would think teacher trying to cover all this with all ages of kids would be very difficult.

Things like physiology, phonics, manual arts, music, drawing, school attitude.

(Becky laughing) - Yes, school attitude.

- Yeah, how'd your dad do in school attitude?

- [Becky] He did good on the school attitude, yeah.

- Well, that's interesting.

And then of course, all of these books that you have saved, these were all part of early buyback.

They had a lot of religion too, didn't they?

- Yes, and a lot of his schoolwork, we have some papers from his schoolwork.

They used patriotic songs or Scripture, that type of thing as part of their lessons.

But inside of the books, it says North Round Prairie School.

And this was a series of books that they had in their library.

This was a transportation book.

This was from a much younger book than these very old ones here, you can tell.

This was 1940 Illinois pupils reading circle book, North Round Prairie school district number 40 grade three.

And then of course my childhood scrawling in the middle, when I couldn't spell my name yet.

- Now they had electric lighting installed in, I guess the forties would, or would that have been about the time?

I'm not sure, but this is an example of one of them, right?

- In '35.

- In '35 oh, okay.

So yeah, the REA was busy here then.

- So when we tore down a shed, we found an entire bushel basket of these lights.

- Is that right?

- And there's an article that was written that said that the teacher at the time was very excited that electric lights were going to be in time installed by the Christmas program.

- And you- all this was found on the property, all these metals?

- Yes.

Somebody came with a metal detector and then things we have dug up.

Pieces of pottery and glassware and a reed from an accordion, a window latch.

When we remodeled the sunroom, we found this in the wall, right where the window would have been.

Let's see if we can find the picture here.

We saw this picture earlier, my dad's sitting here, there's a window right behind him.

In this wall, and the exact spot when we did the sunroom, we found this window shade latch for window shades.

It would've gone around these little pulleys.

So that was kind of cool to find.

- Mm-hmm.

Come over here with me for a minute, because there's things about country schools that people either don't know or may have overlooked.

(Becky laughing) And there's a lot of information in here.

Now this is a guide book, really, as to what a good one room school house, oh, this is the wrong book.

I'm going to let you show because you were showing me earlier about the specs that had to be observed for a one-room schoolhouse.

- Yes.

And I found an article in 1911, it said requirements for a superior one-room school diploma.

They had to have a playground, at least one acre, kept in good condition level covered with good sad, some trees and shrubs.

The teachers at that time were responsible for all the decoration of the landscape around.

So, the large trees in our yard were planted by the teacher many years ago.

A well or cistern, two outhouses, good, convenient fuel house inside the house.

Ample school rooms, separate cloak room for boys and girls, outside painted in good repair, inside walls properly tinted and clean.

Lighted from one side or from one side in the rear and adjustable windows fitted with good shades and a floor, good and clean.

(laughing) Not sure what good is, but then as you jumped to 1920, we found an article.

It's substantially much more detailed, as they were making their schools better for their students.

They wanted a higher grade education.

They had to have a certain standards and it was called a standard school.

And you can see a picture of what a standard school would like.

These are, this is 1910 picture here.

And then it says ample playground, good approach to the door and the outhouse.

Convenient and serviceable fuel houses, house well built in good repair, including paint, good, tight foundation, attractive, interior decorations, clean floors, walls, and for good blackboards.

Again, they use the word good.

I'm not sure how you would qualify good.

Suitable for small children.

Two cloak rooms.

And again, one for girl and boys.

- Yep.

- Two good pictures, a good teacher's desk, a good book case, (laughing) good collection of juvenile books, suitable as aid to schoolwork, as well as general reading.

Set up a good up-to-date maps, good globe, suitable dictionaries, and a thermometer.

So they had to have all those things in a standard schoolroom.

- Now what about teacher salaries?

I thought we saw some information about that too.

- That's hysterical.

Okay.

What year would you like?

We have 1901 to 1911.

- Let's go with 1901.

- 1901 in a one room ungraded school house.

And ungraded means that they had all grades together and there were probably less than 10 children.

A male would earn $251 and 29 cents a year.

And a female would earn $220 and 18 cents per year.

- Per year?

- Per year.

- It's phenomenal that people could live on that.

- Average annual salary.

- That's remarkable.

And of course the women were getting less.

- They were getting less.

- I'll be darned.

And there were probably a lot more of them.

I would suspect that, - Yes.

cause it seems like every picture I've ever seen of a one-room school house, the teacher is female.

- Right.

And the rules for the teachers in the early 1900s, they were not allowed to be seen in public with a man, unless it was their brother or their father.

- Mm-hmm.

- They had to, they couldn't go to outside public places.

They had to, you know, not talk to their neighbors about people in this school.

They had to, you know, they just, they couldn't be married.

There were just a lot of rules for teachers in that time that were much different than the rules we have now.

- Yeah.

Well, you've done a lot of research.

You and your husband, Mark, have done a tremendous amount (Becky laughing) of work and it's really paid off.

I mean, when you look at what people- I mean, almost anybody can come here and share this.

I mean, it's open to the public now and you have it listed and people can come for a weekend or a night and enjoy themselves.

So, it's really phenomenal what you've done, I think.

- Well we're really- - You probably feel really proud of it?

- Well, for years, I've wanted to preserve the history and didn't know exactly how to do it.

And I thought about a living history farm, and didn't know how to do that exactly.

- Yeah.

- I thought about a bed and breakfast and well, so this is, seems like a nice combination to preserve history and give hospitality to people as they learn so.

- Yeah.

Well, it's been a very interesting visit and I just find the whole fad, this whole one-room schoolhouse.

I asked you earlier, how many- there were a hundred just in Sangamon county- how many might be still in existence.

It's something that I have to do a little homework on because there may, this may be the only one, or there may be five or six others that are on private property that are being taken care of.

We'll just, we just don't know.

Well, thank you.

- Thank you.

We appreciate you coming.

- I hope you found this enlightening.

I sure did.

And a couple that really cares for this property and has kept it in the family is kind of an enlightening, refreshing experience.

This is the North Round Prairie Schoolhouse from 1945- from 1875 to 1945.

And you get a chance to enjoy it once again today.

With another Illinois story near Mechanicsburg.

I'm Mark McDonald.

Thanks for watching.

(lighthearted music) - [Narrator] Illinois stories is brought to you by the corporation for public broadcasting, Illinois arts council agency, and by the support of viewers like you.

Thank you.