photo by: Cynthia Hernandez/Journal-World

This brick building at the corner of Iowa street and Clinton parkway was once the final site of a school mainly known just as No. 6.

Most of the rural schools in Douglas County are identified by a name as well as a number. An exception to this norm is “No. 6.”

Goldie Piper Daniels, in her 1974 history of the educational buildings in our county, notes that the name “Crutchfield” was found attached to No. 6 on an old list at the county courthouse, but that generally the school, which had myriad homes throughout its existence, was only known as “No. 6.”

Just for the record, however, Crutchfield refers to William Crutchfield, (1829-1917) who is described in a March 23, 1917, Lawrence Journal-World obituary as a Lawrence pioneer who “took part in the Free-State fight of the early days.”

The accompanying story noted that in 1865 Crutchfield purchased a farm in Wakarusa Township where he made his home for many years. His Free-State credentials and his Wakarusa residency were likely the reasons that No. 6 was named for him.

Daniels, in “Rural Schools and Schoolhouses in Douglas County, Kansas,” tells a story about how the first No. 6 was built on skids instead of a foundation.

This situation meant that the school was moved to the west and then back to the east during the territorial days of 1854 to 1861.

By 1867 a school site ­ was purchased from George and Elizabeth Gilbert, easily a mile and a half away from the then-city limits of Lawrence.

A 1912 tribute to Mary Savage recalled how she and her husband Joseph Savage in the 1880s made No. 6, “which corners their old home, a social center for that district. They organized a debating club, they had extension lectures and social teas, they made ‘No. 6’ a power for good in many other ways.”

The Savage home still stands today at 1734 Kent Terrace, about a half mile southeast of that No. 6 location at the corner of what is now Iowa Street and Clinton Parkway.

Daniels also notes that a frame schoolhouse that stood on the site from 1867 to 1924 “was torn down about 1924 in order to build a new one on the same spot.”

That school was in operation until 1959. But while it was being built, another place to hold school had to be found.

One half-mile north, Elmer and Clara Brown owned an old two-story stone grist mill that was attached to a large stone barn. This old mill served as No. 6 school, “while the youngsters awaited completion of their completely modern brick schoolhouse.”

Daniels tells us that the old mill also was home to a popular three-piece string band who “made sweet music for the many who waltzed and two-stepped their cares away.”

The mill in question was located on the northwest corner of what today is 19th and Iowa streets.

The district was disorganized and consolidated with Wakarusa Valley No. 98 on June 24, 1959. The Iowa and Clinton Parkway site was taken into the City of Lawrence and was sold to KU Endowment September 29, 1960.