Schoolhouse Achieves Liftoff
On October 15 a crane crew lifted the 1870s Howard Schoolhouse from its foundation in the 1859 Jail Museum courtyard. Photo courtesy of the Jackson County Historical Society.
Historical society members cheer launch of the 1870s one-room structure’s preservation project; completion of mission’s first phase expected in November.
The Howard Schoolhouse is owned and operated by the Jackson County Historical Society; for more information, go to jchs.org. To learn more about how to donate to the historic structure’s restoration, go to jchs.org/save-our-schoolhouse.
By BRIAN BURNES
Easy - steady - easy - there.
For the first time since workers placed the frontier Howard Schoolhouse in the courtyard of the 1859 Jail Museum in Independence 65 years ago, another crew recently lifted it up again.
Greg Springer, a Jackson County contractor, used a crane team to hoist the approximately 150-year-old structure off its foundation and place it down gently in the museum’s back parking lot.
After lifting the schoolhouse off its foundation, a crane crew gently placed it down in the rear parking lot of the 1859 Jail Museum. Photo courtesy of the Jackson County Historical Society.
The dramatic October 15 liftoff was the first step in the 19th-century structure’s ongoing restoration.
In September the Jackson County Historical Society, which owns and operates both the schoolhouse and jail museum, received unexpected contributions to the repair and preservation of the former. Springer and fellow donor James M. “Mike” Shaw had come forward with donations to the repair and preservation of the one-room 1870s structure which since 1960 has received visitors in the courtyard of the jail, located at 217 N. Main St.
“I was thrilled to see it happen,” Gloria Smith, Jackson County Historical Society president, said following the successful lifting and moving of the building.
“This was very important to me and the entire historical society.
“We had raised the money and waited for the project to start, and to see it being lifted off the ground was very exciting.”
Not giving an inch
Society members believe the schoolhouse dates to the 1870s, meaning it could be at least 150 years old.
But the structure held up well when it was lifted off its foundation, Springer said following the operation.
“It didn’t move an inch,” he said.
Contractor Greg Springer inspected the base of the schoolhouse before removing it from its foundation. Photo courtesy of the Jackson County Historical Society.
“We planned it, and it went just as we planned.”
Still, Springer - who is president of Springer Building Co., based in Blue Springs - had taken several precautions.
In different locations inside the structure Springer and crew members had installed x-braces, a reinforcing technique in which two diagonal members cross in an “x” shape to provide structural support and stability.
“We x-braced it up three ways inside the schoolhouse,” Springer said.
Instruments inside the crane, Smith said, indicated the schoolhouse weighed about 10,000 pounds.
“I wasn’t sure,” Smith said. “I thought that, surely, with a 150-year-old building, there might be some cracks or fallen plaster.
“But after the schoolhouse had been placed back down in the parking lot we opened up the front door and looked, and you just couldn’t tell that the building had been moved at all.
“That just shows you how good a job they did.”
Once the building was successfully lifted and moved, Springer could get a good look at the foundation.
“It was basically just a rock foundation with some mortar on it,” Springer said.
“I thought it would have more structural integrity.”
Springer plans to tear out the old foundation and install a new one.
“Then we’ll set the building back down,” Springer said, adding that he hopes to see the project completed by the first week of November.
Unanticipated donations
This all began back in September.
That month Mike Shaw, president of the West-Central Missouri Genealogical Society in Warrensburg, Mo., presented a $15,000 check to Smith.
The money represented a portion of the remaining funds of the society which had served a 10-county area in Missouri since 1968 but whose officers, Shaw said, recently decided to disband the organization because of declining membership.
This fall Shaw has been dispersing much of the genealogical society’s funds to historical societies across that 10-county area.
“It’s fun giving away money, almost as fun as getting it,” said Shaw, who added that he had attended classes in a one-room Iowa schoolhouse as a child.
Also contributing to the project was Springer who, with his wife Natalie, contributed $3,000 to the schoolhouse’s restoration.
In the spring of 1960 employees with an area concrete company used a crane to place the schoolhouse atop its foundation. And, in all the years since, visitors to the jail museum also have visited the schoolhouse.
But in the fall of 2024 historical society officers, considering apparent foundation issues, decided to restrict access to the building out of an abundance of caution.
Jail visitors still were invited to look inside the building, which includes period-appropriate classroom furnishings.
The historical society will continue to raise funds to complete the restoration project.
“The schoolhouse will need extensive work on the interior,” Smith said.
Have kids, build schoolhouse
The historical society received the schoolhouse in 1959 from William T. Howard, a grandson of William Bullitt Howard, a 19th-century settler from Kentucky who today is considered the founder of Lee’s Summit.
William Bullitt Howard likely built what today is known as the Howard Schoolhouse for his children in the 1870s. Jackson County Historical Society image PHM 22731.
Howard, who had the schoolhouse built for his children, was a man of means.
With his first wife, Maria Duncan Strother, he came to Jackson County in 1844 and acquired hundreds of acres of land. In 1854 the Howards built a two-story Greek revival home which stood for more than a century southwest of what is today the intersection of Missouri 291 and Woods Chapel Road.
But theirs was not always a happy time.
Discord between anti-slavery “free staters” who then had arrived in eastern Kansas and pro-slavery residents of western Missouri sometimes erupted into violence, creating a legacy of bitterness and retribution.
Howard was a slave-owner; a recent Kansas City Star article estimated he once had owned 12 enslaved persons.
During the Civil War, Union forces in western Missouri knew about Howard and in 1862 a Union officer arrested him,
Howard spent a month in the 1859 Jail before being released after posting a $25,000 bond and promising to move his family back to Kentucky for the balance of the war.
Howard’s wife Maria died during their exile.
After historical society members learned in 1959 that the schoolhouse had been donated to the organization, members the following spring had prepared a foundation to support it in the jail museum courtyard. Image courtesy of the Independence Examiner; newspapers.com.
Howard returned to Jackson County following the war’s end in 1865. With him he brought the body of his deceased wife and interred her in a family cemetery.
That burial ground is still there, near where the home - which burned in 1967 - once stood.
In October of 1865 Howard filed the plat for the Town of Strother, named for Maria, and set aside 70 acres of farmland that became what is now the downtown district of contemporary Lee’s Summit.
In 1867 Howard married an area school teacher, Mary Catherine Jones. The first of their children, a daughter who received the name of Maria, was born in 1868, with five more children arriving over the subsequent 10 years.
“Often it was the mother of the family who taught the children,” said Erin Gray, Jackson County Historical Society Archives and Education Director.
But, in this case, Howard’s second wife was already a teacher.
Workers placed the schoolhouse in the jailhouse courtyard in April, 1960. Image courtesy of the Kansas City Star; newspapers.com.
In that context, the construction of a schoolhouse for the Howard children is easy to understand, said Mary Childers, a retired Independence educator who for years brought students to the schoolhouse for a week of full-immersion, late 19th-century instruction.
“So Mr. Howard has a new wife and they are starting to have babies and I’m sure she said, ‘Honey, now that we are having kids, we need to educate them,’ ’’ Childers said recently.
“ ‘Let’s build them a schoolhouse.’ ”
The brand new 1870s schoolhouse
In 1959 a Kansas City crane and heavy hauling company moved the schoolhouse intact from Lee’s Summit to Independence.
After historical society members restored the schoolhouse, they organized a 1960 dedication ceremony. Standing with Howard Adams (right) historical society president, are donors William Bullitt Howard, Jr., and William T. Howard. Jackson County Historical Society image PHL 23073.
Workers placed the structure on its foundation in the spring of 1960. Society members then restored the building and, following a dedication ceremony, opened it to visitors that June.
Beginning in 1975 Childers, who with a colleague in 1971 had established a small private school known as The Schoolhouse, began bringing students to the Howard Schoolhouse for a one-week frontier education experience.
For five days students arrived at the Howard Schoolhouse dressed in period apparel. During class time they would bend over penmanship exercises or study McGuffey Readers, the 19th-century textbooks that built reading and writing skills.
Childers brought students to the Howard Schoolhouse every year from 1975 through 2022, when she retired.
Also, for many years, approximately 1,000 Independence School District first-grade students have made annual visits to the schoolhouse.
Those visits should continue, said Gloria Smith, once the preservation project is completed.
The historical society has raised more than $47,000 towards the schoolhouse’s restoration, Smith said.
For many years the Howard Schoolhouse hosted students who, during one-week sessions organized by Independence educator Mary Childers, studied and played in the same ways as their counterparts had 150 years ago. Image courtesy of the Kansas City Star.
Much of that money, she said, has been devoted to the contract which directs Springer to move the building, repair its foundation and then place it back where it was, she said.
The remainder of the money, plus any new donations, will be designated to interior repairs, which will include plastering and painting.
“But we are still not sure how far our money will go, because there are still so many unknowns,” Smith said.
But the plan is to have the building’s interior repaired in time for the 2026 tourism season.
There are an estimated 400 frontier one-room schoolhouses that still survive across the country.
The Howard Schoolhouse, Smith said, will continue to be among those.
“By next spring, we should have a brand new 1870s schoolhouse.”
Brian Burnes is a former president of the Jackson County Historical Society.