Schools

According to Rhoda Vandivier, daughter of Enoch and Nancy (Bates) Vandivier, the Bates wagon train from Georgia to Arkansas brought everything the settlers would need in their new wilderness home, including teachers.

One early school at Big Fork was called "the Shed School" because it was located on land owned by a Mr. Shed.  Remember the Sheds (Shedds) were early settlers from Georgia.   Later this same land was bought by Washington Himer Smith.   Wash Smith was an early schoolteacher.  When a young man he burned and permanently injured his arm fighting fires during the Civil War.  He needed another way to make a living besides farming so his parents sent him to Atlanta for more education.  He had a farm and taught school in Big Fork.  He earned about $30.00 a month for teaching.  He was one of the first to teach at "the Shed School" located southeast of "downtown" Big Fork on what is now Highway 8.  The simple, board building sat on a hill and had glass windows.  The benches were made of split logs.  

Free school was held during three months of summer and sometimes a subscription school was held in the winter.  When it was a subscription school, the parents would pay a certain amount per student. 

A Big Fork School Class about 1893.  The boy on the back row on the far right with the intials, A.B., SR written across him, is Aaron Boston Michigan Dilbeck, known as "Boss" Dilbeck.   The girl in the middle row, sixth from the left, is Alice Smith, daughter of Wash and Sally (Bates) Smith.  "Boss" Dilbeck later married Alice's sister, Nancy Smith.   The fourth person from the left, in the middle row, has a white skirt and someone wrote "Edna"on it.  I don't know who she is.

Dilbeck & Putmans were among this group above taken about 1910.