Kirkwood High School - K Log Yearbook (Kirkwood, IL)

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FIFTY YEARS OF PROGRESS 'The sites of the present school buildings in, Kirkwood were donated for school purposes to Young America, as Kirk- wood was known until 1872, by David Irvine, and A. G. Kirk- patrick. We have been unable to determine the exact date, but it was presumably not long after the C. B. Q Q. Rail- road was built through here in 1855, and not long after the prairie was surveyed for a village site, that the gift of land was made. The first school in the village was taught by David Abbey, and according to old residents was conducted in a room over the elevator. . The first school building was built on the site where the present high school building stands. At present it is being used as a farm.mechanics building and is an old land mark, for we are told it is one of the oldest buildings now standing in Kirkwood. In a few years this building was much too small, so on August 28, 1866--the school directors met and agreed upon a tax levy of two and two-thirds per cent with which to erect another school building on the north side of town, This building was completed and occupied by October 1867, with a total enrollment in both houses of two hundred and twenty- five. The north building was built at an approximate cost of three thousand dollars. It was a four-room, two-story wooden frame building with two narrow stairways which years later were torn out and replaced with one wide stairway. Both, north and south buildings, continued in use but no part of the school was spoken of as a high school until 1889.Thc school principal, G.C.Claybaugh, and school direc- tors decided to add subjects which would permit a formal graduation. The following subjects constituted the senior course,for the first graduation, viz: arithmetic, geometry, composition, physiology, and philosophy. , On the evening of June 24,1890 the first graduation ex ereises were held. The class consisted of just one member. Miss Sade L. Green Cwhitmanj who now resides in Cameron, Illinois. About eight o' clock on the morning of December 18, 1898, the north school building caught fire, from an over- heated stove, and was totally destroyed. The students finished their ycarls work in rooms fitted up in the opera house, which later was remodellcd and is now the present Presbyterian Church. Erection of a new north school Ctan brick? was begun early in the spring of 1899, and when completed cost be- tween S6,000 and S7,000. It was ready for occupancy in the fall of 1899, and was occupied by both elementary and high school grades. A petition,carrying over thirty signatures, was filled with the board of school directors on May 29, 1912-- petitioning them to call for an election of the voters of