Back in the day --- at least during the first 30 years or so of the 20th century --- nearly every rural school student in Lucas County (and elsewhere) received small commemorative booklets similar to this one not long before classes were dismissed for the summer. There are many of these in the Lucas County Historical Society collection.
This one, dated April 16, 1926, is from Braden School in Benton Township. I opened it up while filing another yesterday and discovered the small oval portrait of the teacher, my mother's first-cousin, Erma (Mason) Johnson, pasted inside the front cover. This booklet belonged to Leo Sellers, one of the students, and came into the historical society collection via the late Jimmy Durham.
Turning the page, here's a class list and other information about the school as it was more than 90 years ago.
Braden was located a couple of miles due south of Chariton --- a mile east of what now is Highway 14. I've located it on this segment of a land ownership map from the 1890s, also showing too the original location of Otterbein Church, now relocated to the museum campus.
Erma went on to marry Harold Johnson, a first-cousin of my dad, and they lived until retirement in Lucas and Wayne counties. Both were graduates of Chariton High School who had attended rural school in Benton Township's No. 4 District. That district had two attendance centers, Brush College, which the Mason children attended; and Myers, which the Johnson boys and my dad attended.
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