A couple essays ago I wrote about a small lard oil miner’s lamp. Customarily some wrote stating they had never heard of such a lamp but they had known about the carbide lights (or lamps). My little lamp was popular before World War One, so that is a generalized authentication that my old miner’s lamp is easily 100 years old. Big deal. There is a ten foot long bookcase (golden oak with walnut trim) behind me, with six doors on it (half of them still have the antique glass in them) that was most likely built on the premises of the Fairfield County Children’s School 127 years ago or 27 years before my little lard oil lamp was manufactured in What Cheer, Iowa. This bookcase is filled with books, as are over a dozen other bookcases because we are “book people”.
When I was twelve years old my Grandfather Harry E. Keadle told me stories about a long stick having been made from a school house where one of our presidents taught school. He told me that story many times and as I grew older he promised that one day that stick would be mine. Really it wasn’t just a stick, it was a pointer like school teachers of years gone by used to point out places on a map or in drills of the letters and ciphers (as reading and arithmetic were “taught to the tune of the hickory stick” as the old song goes.).
My Grandfather Keadle’s father, John R. Keadle, taught school and to my obvious dismay I never either knew or had wondered if my great grandfather had once used this pointer. But what I do know, my Great Grandfather John R. Keadle did teach school in Missouri when his son, my Grandfather Harry E. Keadle was born in Trenton, Missouri, in 1880. This old pointer is 41-1/8″ long and the most narrow diameter is 5/8″ at its point and 1-1/8″ diameter at the end held by the teacher. It is obvious the pointer had been carved or shaped using a draw knife with the “hickory stick” held in a shaving horse. What is most impressive to me is the hand-cut (carved with a penknife no doubt) 1/4″ high lettering on this antique school master’s pointer:: “MADE FROM OLD SCHOOL HOUSE IN HARRISON TP, MUKINGUM CO., O. WHERE PRESIDENT JAMES A. GARFIELD TOT SCHOOL IN 1848.” (With such a hand-carving job one has to allow the carver some license in not spelling out “taught” but carving “TOT” instead and he also left the “S” out of “Muskingum”.)
Today, I now wonder if my Great Grandfather Keadle might have been the one who had used a draw knife to carve that pointer before his son was born in Missouri. Perhaps the words carved in the pointer were simply authentication of the pointer, where the hickory lumber came from and became part of his teaching aids. All this is conjecture obviously, but it sure makes a good story that I can now say I have shared about my interesting ancestors. Oh yes, I almost forgot. I also have an Autograph album he had passed around to his students (scholars as they were called) in Hooksburg, Ohio (Morgan County, just south of Muskingum County). On October 21, 1883, Lillie Fisher wrote:
To my teacher –
Tis sweet to be remembered
By those we trust are true,
Please think of me sometime
And I’ll often think of you.
Apparently my great grandfather only taught in Missouri for a while and after their son was born he returned to Ohio where he continued teaching. There are only faded notes here and there so how long he taught cannot be determined. It is my understanding he was a student at Ohio University, Athens, Ohio, about the time the school became co-educational.
Do you get the idea that I enjoy old stuff?
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After I wrote “This Little Light of Mine” a good friend of mine, James Saddler in Huntsville, Alabama, sent me another lard oil lamp to add to my collection. The oil lamp Jim sent me was made by J. Anton & Son of Monongahela, PA., and has a patent date of 1904. MANY THANKS, JIM!
THE WORDWRIGHT