Bellview Community and School
Plainview, Hale County, Texas
Marker Inscription
Much of this rural community's early social and religious history is closely associated with its schoolhouses. Area residents built their first schoolhouse in 1903, one year after organizing a rural school district. Named for trustee John Bell, the Bellview School began with 12 students. A 4-room school building erected near here in 1918 was the site of social and church activities for the next four decades. Bellview School was merged with Plainview schools in 1942. The last Bellview School building, once the center of community activity, fell into disrepair and was razed in 1968. 1992
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
The story of this rural community is really the story of its schoolhouses. Residents organized a school district in 1902 and built their first schoolhouse the next year, naming it for trustee John Bell; it opened with 12 students. A four-room building erected in 1918 served as the hub of social and church life for decades until the school merged with Plainview in 1942, and the last building was razed in 1968.
Why it matters
Bellview shows how the one-room schoolhouse served as the social and spiritual center of scattered farm communities on the High Plains.
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Related people
- · John Bell
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Happy Union
Plainview, TX
Drawn by cheap land and a healthful climate, families like the Matslers, Pearsons, and Neils began settling this stretch of Hale County around 1890, ranching and raising feed and hauling supplies by rail from Amarillo. In 1897 they built a single room that served at once as school, church, and community center, and chose the hopeful name Happy Union. Cotton gins, a store, and a grain elevator followed, and irrigation later made it a prosperous farming area that kept its close-knit identity even as growth stayed modest.
Lamar School
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Plainview's first schoolhouse, a half-dugout sod building, went up in 1887, the year the town was founded, and doubled as a community center where local churches were organized. A Masonic-built frame structure followed, briefly styled the Llano Estacado Institute, until fire destroyed it in 1902. The reorganized school was renamed for Mirabeau B. Lamar, second president of the Republic of Texas and a champion of public education.
Emma Grigsby Meharg
Plainview, TX
Born in Tennessee and brought to Texas as a child, Emma Grigsby Meharg became a teacher and, with her educator husband, a fixture of Plainview civic and church life after 1902. In 1925 she won lasting renown as the first woman to serve as Texas Secretary of State, appointed by Miriam A. Ferguson, the state's first woman governor. Her rise came just five years after American women won the vote, placing two women at the top of Texas government in a single stroke.
Three Miles Northeast to Site of Seth Ward College
Plainview, TX
Erected in 1906-07, this school opened in 1907 as Central Plains College and Conservatory of Music under the Nazarene Church, then passed to the Methodists, who renamed it Seth Ward College for Texas' first native-born Methodist bishop. Its 35-acre campus centered on a four-story, 27-room main building, but fires that consumed both dormitories and the main building forced the college to close in 1916.