Union School

Union School

This article was written by Frank Borror of the East Peoria Historical Society in 2015. Used with permission.

No one recalls where Union Grade School got its name, but on Oct. 12, 1875, William Mooberry donated a half acre of ground in the southwest quarter of section 31 to the School Trustees of Washington Township with the reservation that it revert to him if it was no longer used for a schoolhouse.

The parcel is located on the south side of Farmdale Road approximately one quarter mile east of Bittersweet Road. The school may have existed there prior to the formal transfer because Washington Township School No. 9 is shown at that location on an 1872 map of Washington Township. This school became School District No. 55 on July 1, 1901, and on Sept. 16, 1907, a new schoolhouse was opened.

It is believed the original structure was destroyed by fire. A concrete block building, built in 1933, still stands and is believed to be the third structure to serve there as a schoolhouse.

Martha Herm, one-time executive director for the Center for the Prevention of Abuse, attended Union School as did her father and grandfather. Herm, who attended Union from first to fourth grade, recalls the lighting as two electric light bulbs hanging from a very high ceiling and when it was really cold being "ordered" to march around the room to stir up the heat rising up though the two registers from the coal furnace in the basement. Herm states: "All of the families were fairly poor and generally uncultured. But then, we didn't know any different." There was a privy on each side of the schoolhouse, one for boys and one for girls that served as safe spots when playing tag at recess.

Herm relates that the school closed in 1954 because the school board could find no one who wanted to teach in a building that had no running water (the teacher had to carry two pails of water into the building every morning - one bucket to wash hands and one bucket to put in a drinking dispenser) and where they had to stoke a furnace located in the basement.

Efforts were made to join Washington School District and then East Peoria District 86, but both districts refused to offer bus service. Upon finding Morton School District would provide bus service to the area, Herm's mother, Dorothy Herm, who later served on Illinois Central College's first board of trustees, organized a petition for part of the district to join Morton School District. The area containing the south one-half of section 30 in Washington Township and the southwest one-quarter of section 25 Fondulac Township transferred to District 50. The remainder of District 55 students transferred to Morton. After the school closed, the County Board of School Trustees sold the property to Herm's father, Richard A (Dick) Herm, at a public auction held in Morton School District's gymnasium on July 7, 1955. Herm currently owns the building. Dick Herm is well remembered for his farm reports that he gave on radio and television for 30 years and his familiar, "It's a beautiful day in the bullpen" remark at the start of each program. Many people also remember his annual steam show that was operated on his farm adjacent to Union School for a number of years. Today, most of District 55 remains part of Morton District 709.