The festival went from 5-10pm Friday night in addition to Saturday, so I had a chance to try out the rechargeable LED lighting. It worked much better than I expected! Good crowds Saturday. Had a nice time meeting people from East Kansas/Bourbon County who shared some great info and stories about area schools.
I'll be taking the Kansas One-Room Schools art booth down to Fort Scott for their annual Good Ol' Days festival. It should be a non-muddy event for a change as the arts and craft booths will be set up on the brick surface of North Main Street. I had some schoolhouse paintings printed on Mugs, so those will be available for the first time.
Updated: May 29
Last weekend, I took the Kansas schoolhouse project down to Parsons, KS, in Labette County. If you're looking at a map, Labette is the second county west of Missouri, right on the Oklahoma state line. Parsons holds an impressive Katy Days Festival weekend every year celebrating the history of the town and the connection to the old MKT (Missouri, Kansas, Texas) railway route that passed through Parsons and was such an important part of the town's history. Along with music, food, and other activities, arts and crafts tents are set up around the Park.
Weather, again, was an issue. But, I had a day and a half to hear some stories and memories people shared about schools in that area. I met a gentleman from Montgomery County (one county west of Labette) who told me about (and later email to me) a hand drawn map of all the districts and school names in that county from the early/mid 1900s. Information like that is super helpful in piecing together even the most basic information about schools, like district number and local name. I just traveled through and photographed several schools in Montgomery county in mid March, so his map helped fill in some missing information.
Hand drawn map of Montgomery County school districts. Not dated, but likely around 1940.
