County of school: Elk County
location of school: 10th St. & Montgomery St., Elk Falls
Plaque erected by: friends of Elk Falls
Marker erected: 2002
Plaque on School Text:
Pershing / Praire [sic] Gem
School House
District #26
Elk County, Kansas
1879 - 1944
Originally located 2 miles west of Elk Falls
Moved in 2002
By Friends of Elk Falls
Plaque donated in Loving Memory
Edie Baker
BAKER, EDITH LUJANE (Olney)
- Edith Lujane Baker, 56, of rural Elk Falls, died Thursday at her home.
"Services will be at 2:30 p.m. Wednesday at Calvary Chapel in Elk Falls with Pastor Steve Bliss officiating. Interment will be in Elk Falls Cemetery.
"Memorials are suggested to Friends of Elk Falls, and they may be left with Zimmerman Funeral Home, Howard.
"Ms. Baker was born on May 31, 1949 at Newton to Harold and Vesta (Everett) Olney. She graduated from high school at Sedgwick.
"She attended Venus Hairstyling Academy and founded "The Albatross" hairstyling business in Newton which she operated for 12 years. She later completed a degree in nursing at Hutchinson Junior College and was employed as a registered nurse at Halstead Hospital in Halstead and Wesley Medical Center in Wichita. In 1995, she moved to Howard and founded "Old Church Quilts and More." She operated the quilting business for several years before moving to Elk Falls in the late 1990s. She was currently the owner and operator of "Quilts and More" in Elk Falls.
"Ms. Baker was a member of the National Quilting Association, the National Machine Quilters Association, the American Legion Auxiliary of Newton, the Friends of Elk Falls, and Calvary Chapel in Elk Falls.
She is survived by two brothers, Bill Olney, Moodus, Conn., and Joe Olney, Newton; and two sisters, Jessie Kahle, Americus, and Peggy Koehn, Halstead. (Unknown Newspaper, June 2005)
The old school is a museum now, used as a meeting place for the Friends of Elk Falls, and housed the outhouse collection and is only open during the Great Outhouse Tour & Contest every Friday before Thanksgiving.
"A 40 foot inflatable obstacle course will be provided for the kids by Elk Konnected and Elk County, a craft show at the gym, the quilt show at Calvary Chapel, Homer Allison’s outhouse collection at the Prairie Gem Schoolhouse and the open house at the Elk Falls Pottery. In a sneak peek of things to come, Elk Falls Pottery will be having their first open house at their future location at the Rock Garden north of the highway." ~ Elk Falls Outhouse Tour
"The matter of the education of the youth received early and liberal attention by the settlers of Old Howard County. No sooner were there a sufficient number of children within easy distance of each other than there were means provided for their instruction. Districts thus became organized as the necessities required, so that as early as October, 1872, there were 118 organized districts in the county, 113 schools, and 1,069 pupils enrolled.
"The division of the county in 1875 severed also the schools, and in 1879 Elk County alone numbered seventy-four organized school districts with an enrollment of 2,181, requiring the employment of eighty- eight teachers.
"For the year 1882, the report of the County Superintendent shows the following:
"The number of children in the county of school age, 4,150. Of these 2,025 are males, and 2,125 are females. There are seventy-five schoolhouses in the county, and four districts that have no schoolhouse. Three graded schools in the county, these being at Longton, Grenola and Howard City. There were eighty-two certificates issued during the last school year.
"The endeavor of the citizens of the county to add to the efficiency of the schools is zealous and unremitting. Greater care is now being taken, year after year, to have none but competent teachers employed, and incompetent men are now excluded from the office of County Superintendent; the aim being to elect only such as are properly qualified for the discharge of this, the most important of official positions. The standard for the qualification of teachers is being gradually promoted, County Institutes being held annually for the drill and preparation of teachers in the latest and most improved methods of school work." ~ History of Elk County