Out of 74 rural schools that once stood in Doniphan County, Kan. fewer than 20 structures remain.

The one room schoolhouses are a piece of history that are slowly vanishing in Northeast Kansas. Children in grades first through eighth once all attended class together and were taught by one teacher.

“Before they had these school districts then they had the Iowa Sac and Fox Mission,” said Glendon Hartman, Doniphan County Schoolhouse Historian and Wathena resident. “The missionaries would come and so those would have been the earliest schools and then there were also church schools and subscription schools around.”

Hartman said one of the first districts in Doniphan was organized in the 1800s.

“in the 1850s district 1 at Wathena was considered one of the first districts,” said Hartman. “Wathena was one of the first districts organized by Benjamin Harding.”

Life-long Troy resident John Wiedmer attended a one room school house from 1954 until its closure in 1958.

“I started at LaGrange school when I was in first grade,” said Wiedmer.

LaGrange was also known as District 30 and was located about five miles northwest of Blair and around eight miles northeast of Troy. Wiedmer not only attended school there but has family ties to the school’s founding.

“Around 1914 my grandfather whose name was John also, donated the land so that they could build the school,” he said. “It was just a couple of hundred yards from his house and he had nine children.”

The school was completed on Dec. 15, 1914.

“There was no running water in the school, we had outdoor bathrooms and we would bring our lunches and we would put them in the cloakroom with our coat that’s where we would put our sack lunches and the desks were all connected to each other and they were in a row maybe six or eight desks,” said Wiedmer. “A lot of kids said they learned a lot because while the teacher was teaching the older grades the younger kids would listen and so they would be learning things.”

LaGrange was forced to close its doors in 1958 because there were not enough kids in District 30 left to attend. Hartman said that was a common issue for the consolidation of many rural schools.

December 2014 would have marked 100 years for the building of LaGrange if not for a fire that burned it to the ground Tuesday morning of Nov. 25.

Wathena Fire Chief Tony Libel was the first responder on scene and said when he got there he saw flames spanning 50-feet into the air. He said saving the structure was not an option at that point.

“Worked around it a little bit, the grass was on fire around it a little but we just put that out and wet it down a little and let the fire itself burn inside the building,” said Libel.

Doniphan County once had more than 70 schools but now students in the county attend one of only three. Hartman said the 17 rural school buildings left standing have either been turned into homes, churches, community buildings museums, or stand in ruins. The histories of the structures have been documented and are available for anyone to learn about at the Doniphan County Library, Dist. 1.