Church Met in School

Kansas One Room
School House Project
Church Met in School

The Kansas Heritage Server would like to thank Linda Morgan Clark (lindamorganclark@juno.com) for contributing this article.

While I don't have anything concrete about a particular one-room school, I do know from my research on early day Methodism in Kansas that in most communities it was the one-room school house that was shared with the local religious community for Christian worship services. I know this is true for early Methodism in Kansas, and I imagine it was true for most of the other "frontier" denominations as well. I understand that the church would meet in the school for quite some time in some places before the congregation could get enough financial support to build a church building.

I've been told that my mother's parents and grandparents had a particular philosophy about education and religion that bears out this paradigm -- when settling into a new location in their migration pattern from Maryland to Illinois to Kansas the first thing they did was to help establish a school and church -- in that order.

My own immediate family still bears the marks of this joint emphasis on getting a good education and worshipping God.

Sunday, May 22, 2005 9:02 PM

West Valley -- Franklin County

Arvonia -- Osage County