Video: Pioneer Day traverse 2011

Below are clips we gathered over Pioneer Day weekend. Tony McGuffey and his wife, Roberta, joined us on Saturday for a personal tour of some of the sites in the western part of Izard County.

ENJOY!

Shady Grove/Day Schoolhouse

The Shady Grove School was in the Day Community in the extreme northeastern corner of Izard County. Sessions began around 1880 in a log building which was replaced by another log building a little later. Eventually, a one-room framed structure was built and can be seen below. A later addition was obviously added.
We were told an interesting story about this building. It once stood nearly a half-mile away across a hollow but was moved to where it is currently located. Men from the community jacked-up the building, placed round logs beneath it, then rolled it down one hill, across the drywash, and up the other side of the hollow to where it now feebly stands...neglected, sadly.

Bingham School & Powell Spring

Samuel Bingham was listed as a farmer in the 1860 census. He was well-learned and operated a school out of two rooms.   "Professor Bingham", as he was known, died during Confederate General Price's Raid on Federal troops in Missouri which commenced with the Battle of Pilot Knob.

The building below, known also as the Arnie Jeffery/Walter Guthrie house, was the first school to be built in Mill Creek ,1870.
Note-the only record of this building's use of a school was in the form of a tax-record in 1874.

Once it's use as a place of learning ended, it was modified to become a home. Mrs. Betty McCollum, a local genealogist, historian, and co-author of the Down Memory Lane series of books, spent most of her childhood growing-up in this home that sits along Mill Creek in Melbourne.

Notice the iron stake in one photo...probably part of the anchor system for a swinging-bridge that once spanned the creek.

Another walking-bridge spanned Mill Creek a little below the old school/home. Known as the Powell
 Bridge, it allowed pic-nickers and frolickers to cross the creek from the court-square to a park near the Powell Spring. The piers of the bridge remain and are pictured below.

Heartfelt thanks to Mrs. Betty McCollum for taking us to her childhood home and for use of the vintage photo of Powell Bridge!