Site of Primrose School

Duane's take

Here's how the official marker tells it, and I'm passing it along to you straight. About a mile outside of what's now Ropesville, out in Hockley County, there's a spot where something remarkable got started, and the story begins, as so many good Texas stories do, with people who simply refused to wait for somebody else to do the work. Half a mile southwest of where this marker stands, that's the site of the first public school in Hockley County.

They called it Primrose School, named for a wild prairie flower growing out there on the open range. Which seems fitting, if you think about it, something delicate and determined blooming in all that flat, wide-open country. Back in 1902, homesteaders had begun farming that land.

They put down roots, they worked the ground, and by 1909, enough children were running around those farms that the parents looked at each other and said, these kids need schooling. Now here's where the story gets good. There was no lumber nearby.

So those parents hitched up their wagons and hauled lumber all the way from Big Spring, about a hundred miles to the south. A hundred miles, by wagon. And when the wood finally arrived, they didn't hire it out.

They donated the labor themselves and built a one-room schoolhouse with their own hands. Classes began on December 13, 1909. And the children who filled those seats came from families whose names still echo across this part of Texas: the Ardis family, the Baker family, the Blankenship, Brown, Carter, Cowan, Dixon, Perritt, Rose, and Witherspoon families.

Ten families trusting their children's futures to four walls and a roof they'd built themselves. That little schoolhouse didn't just teach reading and arithmetic, either. It pulled extra duty as a polling place, a church, and a public meeting hall.

It was the center of community life out here. Then 1917 came along, and Ropesville was established about a mile away, bringing better facilities with it. The schoolhouse's moment had passed.

But before it stepped aside, it had already done the thing that mattered most. It was the first. And those ten families, a hundred miles of wagon road, and one December morning in 1909 made sure of it.

What the marker says

(About one-half mile southwest) First public school in Hockley County; named for a wild prairie flower. In 1902 homesteaders had begun farming here. By 1909 their children needed education, so the parents hauled lumber by wagon from Big Spring (about 100 mi. S), donated labor, and built a one-room schoolhouse. Classes began Dec. 13, 1909, with pupils from the Ardis, Baker, Blankenship, Brown, Carter, Cowan, Dixon, Perritt, Rose, and Witherspoon families. The schoolhouse served as polling place, church, and public meeting hall in 1917, when Ropesville was established about a mile away, with better facilities. (1974)