Deseret Utah’s public school, built in 1894.
The following was posted to my facebook group by Doug Cahoon:
This school was built in 1895, replacing an early school on the same site. It only served as a school until 1914 when a larger school was built. It was sold at auction in 1919 when Louis Schoenberger purchased the school. He remodeled it into a home and boarding house for school teachers. He lived there until his death in 1972. Locally the old school is known as the “Schoenberger Place.”
My grandfather went to this school and lived next door. He remembered, ““I started school at six years old. I attended elementary school in Deseret, Utah. The schoolhouse had three big rooms with a big pot-bellied stove in each room. They let bids out for the wood; they hauled cedar wood from the hills. And the older boys in the class would feed the stoves with this wood, and we seemed to be very comfortable. There was one teacher in each room in the school. Two years had passed after I had entered school, and my brother Clayton started to school. And my mother had made him a book sack, and he was in the same room with me. And he would keep putting the book sack over his head. The teacher told him to stop, and the children in the room were laughing at him. And so, the teacher finally had to take him up to the head of the class and put him on a stool and put the book sack over his head. That made me very mad and disturbed, and I went up to the head of the class and took him by the hand and took him home. We had no more landed home than the schoolteacher was there, and my mother and the school teacher talked it over. We lived just over the fence from the school.”
The Deseret school in Deseret UT is up for sale. Does anyone know who built the school in 1894?
Exploring Utah ·
Ashlie Stevenson Facebook post:
History of old Deseret public school building in Utah
**Update: I did a little deep online searching and found one lead: the last record of owner before this current owner who received it through inheritence is a Louis and Iva May Schoenberger.
“Louis was quite a guy. He was a sailor on the Great Lakes. He and his brother-in-law Willie Baker were Homesteaders in North Dakota. He was in the National Guard of North Dakota. Louis was a steam engine operator and a finish carpenter. He Married Iva May Baker in 1905 and came to Calif. where he worked for the Los Angeles Railway. Later working for Henry Krock building homes. The family moved to Deseret, Utah in 1912. Martha was the only child at the time. Farming was the only thing going in Deseret at that time so Louis did some prospecting in the Drum mountains. He and Charlie Crafts were partners for some 30 years. They did some real mining and shipping of manganese and iron ore. The family moved to Jerome, Idaho in 1917, returning to Deseret in 1919 after Lewis having won the closed bid for the old school house in Deseret. ($900.00). Louis did all the carpentry work to make the five bedroom in the old schoolhouse. Iva May rented to school teachers for several years,anywhere from two to five at a time.”
The 1895 Deseret School in Millard County, Utah, was built by Grace Brothers of Nephi. The building, which served as a school until 1914, was designed by architect Richard C. Watkins.
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