Kelsey School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, in my own words. Back in the late 1890s, two brothers named John and James Edgar came and settled along Kelsey Creek. Now, they weren't alone for long.

Other Latter-Day Saints families followed them out of Alabama, and before you knew it, there was a genuine community taking root in the East Texas soil. By 1901, church officials had established the area's first branch and school both, with a man named Manasseh J. Blackburn stepping up as teacher.

That right there, a church school on Texas ground, was something you didn't see every day. Then in 1907, county commissioners made it official, forming Kelsey School District No. 45. Four years later, the school went and built itself a two-story brick building.

Two stories. Brick. Out here in the creek bottoms of Upshur County, that was a statement.

The 1920s brought more students as the smaller nearby schools closed up one by one, and Kelsey absorbed them all. It was growing, thriving, doing what a good school does. But then the crops failed.

The Great Depression settled over the land like a long, cold shadow, and the population dropped. The school that had drawn families, built in brick, welcomed children from across the county, closed its doors in 1943. What Kelsey School left behind, though, is a story worth telling.

It stood as a rare and deliberate partnership between the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the State of Texas, and Upshur County. Three different institutions, one schoolhouse along a creek. That's not nothing.

That's something.

What the marker says

In the late 1890s, brothers John and James Edgar settled along Kelsey Creek, and were soon joined by other Latter-Day Saints families from their native Alabama. By 1901, church officials established the area's first branch and school, with Manasseh J. Blackburn as teacher. County commissioners formed Kelsey School District No. 45 in 1907. The school built a two-story brick building in 1911. In the 1920s, smaller nearby schools closed and more students came to Kelsey. However, failed crops and the Great Depression caused the area's population to drop, and the school closed in 1943. Kelsey School is remembered as a unique partnership of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, the State of Texas, and Upshur County. (2010)