Blooming Grove School

 The building pictured here is the third to serve the children of the community.  Abandoned as a site of learning more than fifty years ago, it still stands in the center of the town, and it serves as a community center.

Mrs. Betty LAMONT, local historian, relates that in the days when no one thought about separation of church and state, verses of the Bible would often find their way into the text.  In an 1845 Spelling book, Mrs. LaMont found this verse:

                        He that made us all is God

                        He made the sun and the moon.

                        The sun gives light by day.

                        He knows all that we think.

                        He loves them that do good.

                        All we have is from God.

Long ago, the grandmother of Mrs. Virgil DAVIS taught here using the McGuffey Reader.  Another teacher, Miss Emilene KELLEY, lived to the advanced age of 107.  She numbered many of the alumnae of Blooming Grove among her friends.  Some of those alumnae bore these family names:  GLAUB, MCWHORTER, SWIFT, DORA, BANNING, BANKS, FRITS, STEINARD, STEGNER, NAYLOR, LAMONT, CHAMBERS, SWIFT, GESELL, TAYLOR, VANMETER, and ANSPACH.

                                                                                                Elmer E. Peters, MD,

May 21, 1995