Rural Butler County schools recognized at Poplar Bluff Museum

Rural Butler County schools will be recognized at the Poplar Bluff Museum through a new addition.

Over the past few months, board member Clinton Salyer has collected photographs of different rural schools throughout the years. The photographs will be displayed on one of the walls in the schools room next to a hand-drawn map of the county, marking where each school once stood.

Salyer has collected at least one picture of over 80 schools that once resided in Butler County, but is aware of some that he’s missing.

“There were upwards of 150 (county schools) at one time. So, there’s room for growth here,” Salyer said. “What I’m hoping that happens with this project is that the word gets out, other people are going to come and say ‘I have a picture of Elk School. Do you have it?’ I’ll look and say ‘no’ and they’ll say ‘Well, I’ll supply you with it’ so I can add it to my collection.”

Salyer said there are nearly 40 schools he’s aware of, but doesn’t currently have a picture for, including Elk, as well as Greenwood, Liberty, Keener, Ten Mile and River School.

The idea for the new inclusion came when Salyer renovated the room last winter and started finding photos of these county schools, but realized he didn’t really have a place in the room where they fit.

He realized that, while every local town school is represented in the room, most of the rural schools weren’t included.

“I just think we’re a generation away from people having no recollection of them at all,” Salyer said. “This might be one step in helping to preserve some of that memory. I’ve got some from the 1800s of people standing in front of the schools and it was a source of pride for people because it was their community school.”

These schools served not only as educational facilities, but also as meeting places or community gathering locations.

After taking the idea to the rest of the board, Salyer started work on the new project by looking for what schools should be represented.

He came up with a list of over 150 schools and started looking for available photos. Through connections with different historical and genealogical organizations in the area, he built a collection of photos.

The schools are organized by what township they were part of, including St. Francis, Black River, Epps, Beaver Dam and Gillis Bluff, among others.

The pictures were scanned and edited to have a number — which will correspond with a tag on the map — and information about the school, as well as the person or organization that supplied the photo. Each were then printed and put in a frame.

For the map itself, Salyer needed to find a space to put it. One of the walls in the room previously held class pictures from Poplar Bluff High School, dating back to the early 1900s.

Salyer opted to move those pictures into the hallway behind the schools room, which also has a bookcase of PBHS yearbooks. All of the photos are still on display in the hallway.

This opened up a large wall for Salyer to use for the new project.

Using a projected Butler County map, Salyer traced it onto the wall and used paint markers to make it more visible.

Along with the outline of the county, Salyer added state highways and county roads, as well as the rivers and the bottom of Lake Wappapello. Red areas mark the Poplar Bluff R-I school district, Fisk, Qulin and Neelyville schools.

Salyer started hanging the photos earlier this week in lines on either side of the map. Once those are all hung, he plans to return back to the map.

Each photo will have a tag on the map to show where it once stood, color coded based on the township. However, Salyer also plans to add the names of the roads.

While Salyer said he isn’t sure when all the work will be done, visitors to the museum can come when it’s open on Sundays to see the work in progress.

At it’s core, the goal of the project is to highlight the county schools.

“This is kind of a tribute to them, because I think they had such a great importance in our educational history in our county,” Salyer said.