The Papinville Picnic is in the
planning stage and the date is set Sept 27 starting at 1:00 p.m. There will be
some new events this year so save the date. The present school building will be
130 years old this year. They would like to have as many students that attended
Prairie City, Mission Branch, Seelinger and Papinville to come to the
celebration. If any of your grandparents, mothers, fathers, sisters or brothers
attended these schools, come celebrate and learn the history of education.
They have had the Papinville
History and School History books reprinted. If you would like to know more of
the history about your family you may find it in these books. There are school
pictures, teachers names who taught at the schools and stories past students
have written. In the school history book, it begins with Harmony Mission,
plotting Papinville and stories written by people that lived or had lived in
Papinville.
This week the story is about the start
of education in Bates County. Harmony Mission, in 1821, had the first school
that the missionaries built to teach the Osage Indians and the mission
children. The stories will be published in the Mid America News Review or you
can listen to it on the KMOE Radio Station.
Early Education in Papinville
The Osage Indians did not
take to the missionaries ideas and demanded that the missionaries pay them for
the privilege of using their children as pupils. Education of the children
failed and the children were released to their parents. As soon as the children
were released from the school they were to go back to their tribe and teach
their tribe the ideas they had learned, but they continued their old customs.
The school lasted from 1822 to 1836. Some of the missionaries stayed in the
area and taught in their homes.
In 1835, George Douglas (Superintendent
of the mission) hired a teacher to for his own children plus some of the other
neighbor’s children in their homes. Douglas later built a school on his
property which was on Prairie Street between Main and Market streets and was a
barn built on the William Swarnes property. Education carried on like this from
1837 to 1847 and was about the time Papinville became the County Seat.
Melicourt Papin owned 70
acres and donated the land to be platted for the Village of Papinville. Several people started to come to Papinville
and many businesses were flourishing. Papinville was the center of a large
circle and men from miles around came to the mills and traded at the
businesses.
A tract of land blocks were
designated for the school. Before the school was built, the Civil War was in
full swing. At this time Papinville had a population of 400 people. In August
of 1863 Order 11 was issued and everything in Papinville was burnt.
