Burke School
Burke, Angelina County, Texas
Marker Inscription
The community of Burke was established along the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad in 1882. S. J. and Nancy Arrington conveyed one acre of land adjoining the town on which to establish a public school. The first building, a one-room structure, was enlarged to three rooms within a few years. The 1887 enrollment was about fifty students. Voters approved a bond in 1910 to erect a brick schoolhouse for grades 1 through 7. For many years, Burke was an independent district. The brick edifice was torn down in 1935 and replaced with a larger schoolhouse built with Works Progress Administration funds. After the Burke Independent School District was consolidated with the Diboll schools in 1964, the Burke schoolhouse remained in service to the community as a senior citizens center and polling place. (1999)
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
When the Houston, East and West Texas Railroad reached this piney-woods country in 1882, the new community of Burke needed a school, and the Arringtons deeded an acre for one. A single room grew into three, then into a 1910 brick schoolhouse, and finally into a larger building raised with Works Progress Administration labor during the Depression. Even after Burke's district merged with Diboll's in 1964, the schoolhouse kept serving its neighbors as a senior center and polling place.
Why it matters
The little schoolhouse traces the arc of rural East Texas education from railroad-era one-room beginnings through New Deal public works to mid-century consolidation, a story shared by thousands of American farm communities.
Own a business near here? Add it to the map.
Related people
- · S. J. Arrington
- · Nancy Arrington
Related events
- · Works Progress Administration construction
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
Old Diboll Library
Diboll, TX
Around 1908, lumber magnate T. L. L. Temple built this hall for the workers of his Southern Pine Lumber Company, pairing a downstairs reading room and recreation space with upstairs living quarters for family, single men, and schoolteachers. Over the decades it doubled as a Red Cross sewing room during World War I and a food distribution point for struggling families during the Depression. It is a rare survivor of the company-town institutions that once organized life in East Texas.
Fairview School
Burke vicinity, TX
Created in the late 1800s, Fairview Common School District No. 69 opened with a one-room schoolhouse and a five-month term in 1898, serving children across a wide rural stretch of Angelina County. Beyond classes for grades one through seven, the school became the community's heart — a voting place, social hub, and site of county sporting events and farm-improvement programs teaching better methods for raising cattle, peanuts, corn, and cotton. It closed in 1963 when it consolidated with Lufkin.
Prairie Grove
Diboll vicinity, TX
Prairie Grove took shape in 1845 as a gathering place for East Texas settlers, its cemetery beginning in 1849 with the burial of a young Stovall daughter. A combined school and church built in the 1880s became the community's heart, evolving into the Prairie Grove Missionary Baptist Church by 1921. Though the school closed in 1948, the church and cemetery have served the area for well over a century.
Beulah School
Lufkin vicinity, TX
Beulah School opened in 1903 in buildings that local residents put up and furnished themselves, serving as both schoolhouse and church. State funds paid for the community's first full-time schoolhouse in 1917, which grew to hold 75 students and three teachers before older pupils began transferring to Diboll in 1928. A tornado destroyed the building during classes in 1954 — the students escaped with minor injuries — and after rebuilding, the school consolidated with the Diboll district in 1963 and became a community center.