Elder Grove School - Custer County, Nebraska, 1884-1957

The one-room school house was synonymous with education in Nebraska for over a century. In 1901, most of the state's 6,773 schools were identified as one-room schools. While the national movement away from the one-room school house was also occurring in Nebraska, its 385 one-room schools were the most of any state in 1986 (McKee, 2013). The following is an account of the history of Elder Grove School located near Litchfield in Custer County along with University of Nebraska emeritus professor John Ward's experiences as a student there. The learning community of Elder Grove, as with other rural one-room schools of Nebraska, offered a sense of belonging and responsibility not always found in the larger, urban schools. While the era of the rural one-room school house is over, nostalgic memories of those days live on in the students who were privileged to attend. One could even go so far as to suggest that the success of this great nation is intertwined with the history of its one-room school houses.