St. Paul-Rehburg School

Duane's take

Here's my telling of what the official marker has to say, so take it straight from the record. Out here in Washington County, education had a way of starting before anyone thought to write it down. Local tradition holds that the St.

Paul and Rehburg Schools grew out of informal classes held right in the homes of pioneer farmers, sometime in the late 1840s. The earliest written records don't show up until 1880 for St. Paul and 1883 for Rehburg, but the story, they say, started long before the paperwork did.

Now that's a very Texas thing, if you ask me. Do the work first, file the forms later. In 1898 a proper schoolhouse finally went up on St.

Paul Lutheran Church property, and for a while that was enough. Then came 1909, and the two schools folded into a single district. Same building, twice the students.

Seemed efficient. The students, however, had a different opinion. They complained, loudly enough for the County Commissioners to hear, that the schoolhouse was simply too far from home.

So in 1914, the county built a new school building, closer to the center of the district, on land donated by Henry and Wilhelmine Kiel. That ought to have settled things. And for a while, it did.

Then in 1936 another local school, called Eberhardt, merged in, and a third room was added to keep up with the growth. Two years later, in 1938, the building burned. Gone.

But Washington County did not flinch. The following year a brand new three-room structure went up in its place. By 1942 the school was running three teachers and offering instruction all the way through the tenth grade.

But consolidation has a way of coming for everything eventually. In 1945 St. Paul-Rehburg merged with the Burton School District, and the school itself closed in 1946.

The building kept serving, though, used by St. Paul Lutheran Church for fifteen years after the school doors shut. Then in 1962, it was razed.

From pioneer farmhouse kitchens to a marker on the roadside, that school outlasted nearly everything except the memory of the people who sat in those rooms.

What the marker says

Although the earliest written records of the St. Paul and Rehburg Schools date to 1880 and 1883 respectively, local tradition suggests they originated with informal classes held at the homes of pioneer farmers in this area of Washington County in the late 1840s. A schoolhouse was erected on St. Paul Lutheran Church property in 1898. This structure served both the St. Paul and Rehberg students following the creation of a single school district in 1909. Complaints by students that the new schoolhouse was too far from their homes prompted the County Commissioners to construct a new school building nearer the center of the school district in 1914 on land donated by Henry and Wilhelmine Kiel. A third room was added to this structure in 1936 after another local school, called Eberhardt, merged with the St. Paul-Rehburg School. Although the building burned in 1938, it was replaced with a new three-room structure the following year. In 1942 St. Paul-Rehburg provided instruction by three teachers for students through the tenth grade. The school merged with the Burton School District in 1945 and eventually closed in 1946. The school building, used by the St. Paul Lutheran Church for 15 years, was razed in 1962.