Waring Schoolhouse

Duane's take

Here's the story as the official marker tells it, and I'm going to let it breathe a little. The Waring Schoolhouse, Kendall County. Now, picture this.

It's 1891, and you've got a pocket of Anglo pioneers doing something ambitious in the middle of country that had been settled mostly by German families. They decided they were going to build a school. Not wait for one, not petition somebody far away to come build one.

They were going to do it themselves. And they did. That west wing went up that very year.

The land itself was a gift from a man named Robert Percival Maxwell Waring, a native of Ireland, and the town had already taken his name three years before, back in 1888. So the school sat on the ground of the man the whole town was named for. Citizens showed up with their labor, their money, and their materials.

And then, once the building was standing, they paid tuition on top of it. One dollar to a dollar fifty a month per child. You chipped in to build the place, and then you chipped in to keep the lights on.

That's the kind of community that gets something done. The story didn't stop there. In 1903, the east wing was added, the building stretching out to meet a growing need.

Decades rolled on, and somewhere in the 1930s, exterior braces were applied, the old schoolhouse settling into itself, getting a little extra help to keep standing tall. It kept standing and kept teaching until 1954, when the school finally closed. More than sixty years of children walking through those doors, and the building is still there to tell the tale.

What the marker says

Anglo pioneers in a predominantly German-settled area built the west wing of this building in 1891. Land for this first public school was given by Robert Percival Maxwell Waring, a native of Ireland for whom the town had been named in 1888. Citizens volunteered labor, funds, and materials for the building, and paid their children's tuition of $1 to $1.50 per month. The east wing was added in 1903, and exterior braces were applied in the 1930s. The school closed in 1954. Recorded Texas Historic Landmark - 1986