Murrell School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say about Murrell School in Coryell County. Now settle in, because this one starts the way a lot of good Texas stories do: with people leaving somewhere else and deciding this is home. Many of the early settlers in this area came from Sardis, Mississippi.

They put down roots, built a community, and named it for their postmaster, Joe Ater. That's the kind of detail that tells you exactly how tight-knit a place was. Your postmaster gets naming rights, you've got a real community on your hands.

Not long after those settlers arrived, a man named Lemuel Murrell, another early resident of the area, built a log schoolhouse. This was the late 1870s. Logs.

A schoolhouse. Out here. And to stand at the front of that room, they brought in Robert Earl Timmons, a native of Alabama, who became the first teacher Murrell School ever had.

Now here's where the story gets interesting, because that little log schoolhouse didn't stay small. By the late 1800s, Murrell School had nearly one hundred students in its attendance area. Nearly one hundred.

In a rural Texas schoolhouse built from logs. So they built a new schoolhouse, constructed in 1909 and 1910, a proper frame building this time. And it kept growing, because in 1920 they added a third room to that frame building.

The school ran on the rhythm of the land, the way schools out here had to. The school year often started in mid-October, after the students had helped their families bring in the local cotton crops. You didn't fight the harvest.

You worked with it. Then you went to school. Murrell School kept on that way until 1948, when it consolidated with Jonesboro School.

But here's what the marker wants you to know before you drive on: that schoolhouse is still standing. Today, it is one of the few remaining rural schools left in all of Coryell County. Lemuel Murrell built something out of logs in the late 1870s, and it's still here.

That's not nothing. That's everything.

What the marker says

MURRELL SCHOOL MANY OF THIS AREA’S EARLY SETTLERS CAME FROM SARDIS, MISSISSIPPI, ESTABLISHING A COMMUNITY NAMED FOR POSTMASTER JOE ATER. LEMUEL MURRELL, ANOTHER EARLY RESIDENT, BUILT A LOG SCHOOLHOUSE IN THE LATE 1870s. ALABAMA NATIVE ROBERT EARL TIMMONS WAS THE FIRST TEACHER. IN THE LATE 1800s, MURRELL SCHOOL HAD NEARLY 100 STUDENTS IN ITS ATTENDANCE AREA. A NEW MURRELL SCHOOLHOUSE WAS BUILT IN 1909-10, WITH A THIRD ROOM ADDED TO THE FRAME BUILDING IN 1920. THE SCHOOL YEAR OFTEN STARTED IN MID-OCTOBER, AFTER STUDENTS HELPED THEIR FAMILIES HARVEST LOCAL COTTON CROPS. MURRELL SCHOOL CONSOLIDATED WITH JONESBORO SCHOOL IN 1948. TODAY, THE MURRELL SCHOOLHOUSE IS ONE OF FEW STANDING RURAL SCHOOLS IN CORYELL COUNTY. (2010)