Site of Dozier Schoolhouse

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and here's how I'm gonna tell it to you. Way out in Collingsworth County, in a community called Dozier, the year was 1893, and the men of a newly-settled town had a problem. Children.

Children who needed schooling, and nothing to school them in. So they did what newly-settled Texas men did. They built.

One room, four walls, a roof to keep the weather out, and just enough space to hold the future of that farming and ranching community. And the moment that schoolhouse was ready, someone had to stand at the front of it. That someone was Seigniora Russell, who went by Laune, and she was the very first teacher to walk through that door.

Now, that building wasn't just a school. It pulled double duty, triple duty, really. Church met there.

The community gathered there. It was the kind of place that holds a town together when a town is still figuring out what it is. But here's the thing about that schoolhouse.

It could not seem to stay put. Before the dust ever really settled on it, that building was picked up and moved. Then moved again.

Then moved a third time, all within the same vicinity. Three times it wandered, and then in 1913, they stopped moving it and just tore the whole thing down and built it fresh. A new schoolhouse standing where old ones had shuffled around for years.

Dozier kept on educating its children, year after year, until 1934, when the rural school consolidated with Samnorwood. Now, that wasn't quite the end. An elementary school held on right there at Dozier, keepin' the lights on, keepin' the lessons going, all the way until 1941.

One room in 1893. One last classroom in 1941. That's a long run for a little schoolhouse that couldn't even stay in one spot.

What the marker says

In 1893, the men of the newly-settled Dozier community built a one-room schoolhouse to serve the educational needs of the children of that town and the surrounding farming and ranching area. Seigniora Russell (Laune) served as the first schoolteacher. The school building, also used for church and community activities, was moved within this vicinity three times before it was torn down and rebuilt in 1913. The rural school consolidated with Samnorwood in 1934, although an elementary school remained at Dozier until 1941. (1985)