One-room schoolhouses used to be a common sight, scattered through every section of Ellsworth County. But, they can be a rare find today.
“What happened is in 1947, the state consolidated some of them, so they got to be a little bit fewer. In 1966, the state said, ‘OK, transportation is good enough y’all can come into a local school district,’ so they all closed in 1966,” said Cynthia Edgerle of the Ellsworth County Historical Society.
“Some of them are still standing. Some of them have been torn down. Some of them have been turned into modern homes. Some of them are hay sheds,” she said. “And some of them have been moved all over the place.”
But they all have one thing in common. The Ellsworth County Historical Society will soon commemorate all of them with distinctive metal signs indicating where they stood, or once stood, and contributed to the education of Ellsworth County children over the years.
Edgerle said the historical society has been working on the project for a while, but things really got kicked off with a donation from the elder John Svaty a little over a year ago.
“He said, ‘I’d like you to find all the schools in the county and let’s put up signs where they were,’” she said.
Edgerle said the society knew that other people had already collected a lot of the data on the old one-room schoolhouses before them, so now the task was to take that information, find the actual physical location of where the schoolhouses were located, figure out the proper name of the school and finally, get permission from the current landowner to place a sign. Not to mention, then getting affordable signs made for all the locations.
That wasn’t as easily said as done. Schools could change names, and even change locations over time, and that’s when the volunteers at the society turned to the county’s Register of Deeds office and antique plat books to hunt down the various schools.

“It’s been a real interesting adventure to find them all,” Edgerle said.
“We knew there were at least 83 in the county, and most of them were located on a corner of a section. We’ve discovered that some of them had up to three different names, so when they’re listed on our list, they are all the same school.
“We also found out that if a family grew up in the neighborhood, and then all those kids were grown, they’d just pick up the school and move it, then the same physical school got a new name and a new number.
“It’s been an adventure. It’s been fun, and we’ve heard from most people, and they are very excited about doing this. Some of the younger generations we’ve found that now own the property are just now finding out that there was a schoolhouse there. Then they go back and ask the grandparents about it. It’s been a fun project.
“We have 67 permissions given from landowners out of the 83 sites and probably six no’s. The rest we are still hoping to hear from.”
The signs for the schoolhouses are being made at the Ellsworth Correctional Facility. There is a prototype at the Hodgden House Museum Complex for the Mud Creek School. The signs are metal, but not painted.
“We’ve talked about signs over the years. We knew we didn’t want something that would always have to be repainted,” Edgerle said. “We knew we didn’t want them to have to be cared for once we planted them. We wanted them to stay there and be pretty permanent. So coming up with a design was already in the conversation and then with his (John Svaty) donation, that kind of pushed us to get something done.
“ECF drew up this plan and we liked it. They talked about painting it and putting a powder coat on it, or something like that, but eventually that stuff chips off. We didn’t want anything really fancy because we didn’t want people to think it was a place to target practice. The design is pretty rustic and most of our county is rustic.
“ECF said they’ll start on the signs when the snow flies. They won’t get to our stuff until they can work inside. They have a gentleman who does the CAD drawing and then they cut that on a plasma cutter. The price will be at their cost; they don’t charge us any labor or anything.”
She said the society estimates the cost will be about $50 per sign.
“We’ve been lucky the donations have been good. John started it, and other people have chipped in,” she said. “In the permission letter we sent to landowners, we said if you want to donate, we estimate the cost will be about $50. Sometimes we’ll get $20 or $50 back. It’s been great. We’ve had fun. It’s interesting and my little plat book has been marked everywhere, so I think we know where to go.”
Once the signs are made, it will be up to volunteers to get the signs set up.
“Most of what we do here is volunteer labor and volunteer everything,” Edgerle laughed. “The landowners don’t want it in the middle of the field, but along a fence line is fine. There are about 20 townships and about five schools per township, some have a little bit more, so that alone will be an adventure.”
To experience one of the county’s one-room schoolhouses restored to its schoolhouse days, the North Black Wolf School is located on the complex grounds. It is available for tours. Historical society volunteer Margaret “Mugs” Kepka attended the school and has a variety of stories to share with museum visitors. The society also has a collection of historical photos of all of the county one-room schoolhouses they could locate.
“We’ve had great fun. Hopefully, people are patient with us, and we’ll get it finished,” she said “I think it’s going to be a couple of years to complete the project from the time we first planned it.”
Edgerle encouraged any schoolhouse landowners who haven’t been contacted to get in touch with the group at 104 S. Main St., Ellsworth, or call (785)