A total of 400 students in the Clear Creek School was recorded since the time accurate records were kept. The Clear Creek School District, organized in 1840, was the oldest school district in Daviess County, MO.

The first school building erected was built one-half mile west of the school in operation in 1840. At their 1940 centennial, the speaker noted the fact that when the school was built there weren’t any modern conveniences, such as electricity and cars. Times had improved and advanced. The school also had to improve and change or the doors would be boarded up.

The first Clear Creek school was across the road from the Clear Creek Christian Church on Hwy. 190. It had a door on the south and one on the east. One door was used by the girls and the other by the boys. A walnut puncheon desk, fastened to the wall with pins, extended the entire length of the east wall. Puncheon seats were placed on opposite sides with boys sitting on one side and girls on the other.

A second school was built one-half mile of the first site. It was constructed in frontier fashion of hewn logs and was 18 feet square. In one end of the room there was a fireplace of rock chinked with clay, and in the opposite end there was a small window. This, along with one more window, furnished all the light for the building. A desk made of walnut puncheon fastened on pins driven in the wall was all the equipment with which the room was furnished.

The following year at a regular school board meeting, the board voted to furnish the pupils with seats. The seats were made of split logs into which pins were driven for legs. This type of seat was used until 1911 when more modern seats were purchased by the school board.

In 1857, a levy of $38 was raised for the addition of a floor, a ceiling, weatherboarding for the outside of the structure, and for fencing the grounds with posts and rails.

Each fall prior to the opening of school, the parents and patrons gathered at the school building for a day of chinking at which time the foundation was covered again with clay and the cracks between the logs and weatherboarding were daubed with fresh mud.

One time the citizens neglected this duty and the teacher asked each student to help with the chinking of the building with mud. The students removed the backs of their seats and used the boards to punch the mud into the cracks. The building was thoroughly daubed from the ceiling to the floor by 4 p.m.

In later years, the school was destroyed by fire during the Civil War when two men were killed, one hiding in the school and one in the church.

— written, researched and presented by Wilbur Bush, Gallatin, MO

Clear Creek School was established about 1840, about three miles north of Lock Springs, MO, in Section 26 of Daviess County. The structure was of hewn logs, about 18 feet square, with a fireplace six feet wide in the west side. The east wall featured a “desk” — a rough hewn walnut plank — fastened to the wall with wooden pins. About 1857, weatherboards were added, the fireplace was replaced by a stove, floor and ceiling were added. The first school on the present site was built in 1874. It was destroyed by fire in February 1899. The structure shown here was erected in the fall of 1899.