Vigo County Historical Society

Historical Treasure Article

Historic Treasure of the Week - December 7, 1987
By Deborah Curtis Drummy
Vigo County Historical Society

The warmth of our history
Without coal-burning stove how will Samuel dry his mittens.

Sitting in the rocking chair with 2-week-old son, Samuel, shows both of us basking in the heat of the Warm Morning Stove. Streams of dusty motes are falling across the room,
the water pot is hissing, and the floor is creaking in a soothing way beneath the rocking chair. Amid all of this tranquillity I am feeling guilty for not having done the proper sort of preparation to write about this week's Historical Treasure, a small wood- or coal-burning stove situated in the Historical Museum's schoolroom. However, having lived with a wood stove for several years, perhaps I can offer some information and a few insights I've gathered over the years.

A typical rural American schoolhouse of the 18th, 19th and even early 20the centuries had one large room, one teacher, and students of all ages seated according to grade levels. Custodial chores were usually performed by the older children, probably on a rotational basis. These chores included drawing buckets of fresh drinking water from the nearby well or spring, and tending the stove.

Stove tending generally meant that each morning the appointed student arrived early to fill the wood box or coal bucket (coal was often preferred because it burned hotter and longer)
and to rekindle the fire. Another frequent stove chore would have been to clean out ashes or cinders.

The simplicity of these schoolhouse stoves made them easy targets of childhood pranks. Blocking the flue could create great havoc, filling the schoolhouse with thick smoke and necessitating a much-extended and mostly likely unscheduled recess. (The subject of the stove pranks reminds me to suggest that any Hoosier reading this who hasn't read Edward Eggleston's "The Hoosier Schoolmaster" might want to add it to the 1987 reading list.)
Speaking of smoke, it's doubtful the young ladies attending the one-room school wasted any precious perfume by wearing it to school. The smell of coal smoke is a strong and lingering one which clings hard to hair and clothing. Wood smoke lingers too. Each winter the essence of burning oak attends me wherever I go.

The most special feature of a heating stove is its capacity to take the chill out of a person's bones. I've found when I go from the cold outdoors into a centrally heated building that I spend several minutes roaming around looking for a hot spot. It's easy to imagine the rosy-cheeked children warming themselves around the schoolroom before taking their seats with wet mittens set out to dry.

Now as I sit here looking at Samuel, I can't help wishing the one-room school, with a stove and water bucket, was not relegated to the past. He, unlike so many of peers, will miss the responsibility of filling a wood box and tending the animals here on the farm. But , as a mother, I can't help wishing. . . when the time comes for him to attend the big school up the road, what will be done to dry wet mittens.

The Historical Museum of the Wabash Valley, 1411 S. Sixth St., is open from 1 to 4 p.m. Sunday through Friday.