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SCHOOLS*

Education for their children was important to most early settlers in our country. Early on, much of this education occurred in someone’s home or in a special log cabin. Typically, log cabin schools were built of round logs chinked and daubed with mud, floors were bare earth, seats were often stools constructed by splitting a log trimming off a flat side with four pegs on the rounded bottom side for legs. No records of a log cabin school in Blue Mound have been found to date.

Later, school districts were formed and frame wooden buildings became the norm. In Blue Mound, published records reveal an early school in the area named Burner and a later one named Blue Mound. Condron School was two miles to the east.

Keep scrolling for more information on each school, or use the following links to advance directly to a specific school.

Note to self: When did it become District #97 and what was it before?

Burner School

Burner was the name of an early school located just northwest of the Blue Mound four corners on land owned by J. S. Burner (Jacob S. Burner: 1818 - O1/27/1899). It is shown on the 1878 Livingston County Atlas. The Burner School located in Blue Mound Township was also mentioned on Page 551 in A History of Northwest Missouri (Volume I) edited by Walter Williams and published in 1915. The Burner School was also noted in the 1937 Centennial Constitution-Tribune Newspaper edition as an early school in Livingston County. The Burner School also allegedly once served as a Post Office. The building later burned (and no evidence exists today). The only other mention of the Burner School is in the accounts of the Great Tornado of 1883. Both the original account published in the Chillicothe Crises on June 28, 1883 and by Jim Jones’s 100 year reflection published in the Chillicothe Constitution-Tribune in the June 15, 1983 revealed that the Burner School was destroyed by the 1883 tornado.

At this date, we have been unable to locate any teacher or student records for Burner School.

Blue Mound School

The 1896 Livingston County Atlas shows this school at its present location - on the east side of the north/south road (Route Z) and on the south side of the east/west road (no designation?). The front of the building (28 feet by 31 feet) faced west with six windows on the north and four windows on the south. There was an anteroom on the west, with one window on the west and a door that opened to the south. A dug well with a pump was just a few feet south of the entrance. There was a “coal shed” just a south of the well. The school also had a flag pole.

Play ground equipment in the 1940's consisted of a merry-go-round, two swings, and a slide.

After the school closed in the spring of 1957, it was purchased by Mr. Clarence Christmas (1883 - 1958) and converted into a home. Mr. Christmas was struck by an automobile and killed about a year later while he was crossing the road after leaving church. The Reverend and Mrs. James W. Porter (1916 -1997) purchased the building from Mr. Christmas’s daughter (Mrs. Zullig). They converted the building by making the anteroom into a bathroom and changed the entrance to the south side. They also ran a dog kennel at his location for many years. Reverend Porter passed away and Estella A. Porter (1917 - 2000) sold the property in 1998/99 to the Green’s (early owners of the Blue Mound rock quarry). Stella died in 2000.

At this time the building is owned by Hunt Midwest Mining, a Division of Hunt Enterprises (which includes the Kansas City Chiefs), and is used as a lab for rock inspection and storage.

Teachers**

Students***

School years 1932 - 1950 from teacher records on file in the Livingston County Clerk’s Office, Chillicothe, Missouri.