Site of Arnotville School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'll do my best to do it justice. Somewhere in Hill County, there's a story that starts with a man, a piece of land, and a schoolhouse that nobody can pin down to an exact year. The marker says the first building went up sometime between 1874 and 1879, on land belonging to a man named Albert M.

Arnot. His name stuck to the place. The school was called Arnotville School, and it carried that name all the way through to the end.

Now that first building, rough as it probably was, did double duty from the start. Education by day, church by another, serving the rural community that had settled in around it. That went on clear through 1915, which is when things got an upgrade.

A brand new two-room structure rose up that year to take its place. Two rooms doesn't sound like much, but consider this: that building was serving students from an estimated eighty families in the district. Eighty families.

That's a lot of children filing through one door. And it turns out the building had ambitions beyond arithmetic and spelling. Through the nineteen twenties and into the nineteen thirties, Arnotville School became the place for stage plays, community gatherings, all manner of activities that gave that rural stretch of Hill County a little color and occasion.

Then 1945 came, and with it, a merger. Arnotville School joined up with the Hillsboro School District, and that was that for its life as its own institution. But here's the part worth savoring.

The building didn't just get torn down and forgotten. It was relocated. Picked up and moved to Hillsboro, where it went on serving as a residence.

A schoolhouse turned home. Albert M. Arnot probably never imagined that when he let them build on his land, but then, the best stories rarely end the way anyone planned.

What the marker says

Arnotville School was named after Albert M. Arnot on whose land the first schoolhouse was built sometime between 1874 and 1879. The building was used for educational and church activities by the surrounding rural community until 1915. A new 2-room structure built that year served students from an estimated 80 families in the district and was the site of stage plays and various community activities during the 1920s and 1930s. Arnotville School merged with the Hillsboro School District in 1945. The school building was later relocated to Hillsboro for use as a residence.