Benjamin School

Munday, TX

Across rural Knox County, tiny one-district schools sprang up between 1891 and 1923 to serve scattered farm families. When Texas passed a rural aid law in 1929 to fund consolidation, four of these districts—Gillespie, League, Prairie View and Jungman—merged and built a high school here in 1930, eventually serving more than 400 students. The consolidated district lasted until 1951, when it joined the Munday Independent School District.

Bomarton, TX

When the Wichita Valley Railroad pushed from Seymour to Abilene in 1906, it gave rise to Bomarton and drew settlers to the surrounding Baylor County plains. Trustees organized Mary's Creek School in 1908, one of thirty-eight rural schools in the county, starting with a single room and adding a second by the mid-1920s. Attendance peaked at sixty-nine pupils in 1930 before waves of consolidation eventually folded the district into Seymour.

Crowell, TX

Crowell's schools grew up alongside the town itself, which took root on the West Texas plains in 1891 when Foard County commissioners carved the area into nine school districts. Early settlers pooled resources—Benjamin R. Blankenship helped fund the first schoolhouse—and rebuilt after fire destroyed the original in 1897, earning state accreditation and holding the first graduation by 1908. Depression-era federal programs like the Public Works and Civil Works Administrations helped raise new buildings in the 1930s, and the district produced standout figures like football star Dick Todd, who set state scoring records before playing for Texas A&M and the Washington Redskins.

Seymour, TX

Charles Holman, a builder-carpenter from Sweden, raised this stone building in 1877 from rock quarried south of Seymour. Over the decades it did duty as a school, churches, a newspaper office, and a community center before being bought in 1949 and restored as a private home.