DUANE
Get the App
Duane's take
Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Somewhere around 1886, in what would become Mineral Wells, Texas, a schoolteacher named Robert E. Hendry had a vision.
Not the kind of vision that fades by morning, either. The kind you haul rocks for. And haul rocks they did, friends.
Stones pulled right out of nearby Rock Creek, loaded into mule-drawn wagons, brought to the site, and then cut by hand. Cut. By hand.
Every single one. Now, the marker gives Hendry the credit, saying this building was constructed largely due to his efforts, and when you picture a schoolteacher out there wrangling mule teams and stone cutters to raise a public school from scratch, you start to understand why his name stuck to this story. He was born in 1847 and died in 1910, and somewhere in between, he left Mineral Wells something that would outlast him by a long stretch.
What went up on that site was no rough-hewn shack, either. One story, flat roof, concrete coping, a central end-entry crowned with a segmental arch, and an enclosed belfry. That belfry.
You can almost hear it calling kids in from the creek on a cool autumn morning. This was the first public school in Mineral Wells, the oldest existing school building in town, and it kept right on serving as an educational facility all the way until 1972. Over eight decades of chalk dust and recitations and small boots on stone floors.
Robert E. Hendry picked up those rocks from Rock Creek, and Mineral Wells built something that lasted.
What the marker says
Constructed in 1886 largely due to the efforts of schoolteacher Robert E. Hendry (1847-1910), this was the first public school in Mineral Wells. Stones were hauled from nearby Rock Creek in mule-drawn wagons and hand cut on the site. Features of the one-story structure include a flat roof, concrete coping, a central end-entry with segmental arch, and an enclosed belfry. The oldest existing school building in town, it served as an educational facility until 1972. (1987)