Water
break at a one-roomer - 1916. McClure School. Edna Wintringham, teacher. Gathered at the
outside water pump from left are first graders Frances Richards, Clarence Schwartz, Loella
Pressler, Natilda Chancellor, Howard Fugate, Jeanette Richards, and Ruth Tearnon. Miss
Wintringham (in back) was 19 years old at the time. The one-room schoolhouse still stands
on Society member Vera Hall’s farm on State Route 705 northwest of Sidney. It is used
for farm storage. Miss Wintringham, now Mrs. Lewis F. Warbington, recently celebrated her
102nd birthday. She resides at Fair Haven Home.
John Munch’s daughter, Nancy Denning,
was born near Xenia in 1831, but lived most of her life in Anna. She recalled her early
life there, including school days, in a Dec. 22, 1905, interview with the editor of the Shelby
County Democrat:
"John Munch built a cabin on the corner of his land (160 acres north of Anna pike
and east of the Wapakoneta pike) and moved into it when Mrs. Denning was eighteen months
old. The forest was cleared away and
other families came into the neighborhood. She said deer was so plentiful that her father
sometimes went out and killed a deer before breakfast, and one time she saw five bears
pass their home near where the Lutheran church stands. And that Indians camped on the
Gueth farm...What is now the Wapakoneta pike (25-A) was a way cut out through the almost
unbroken forest between Sidney and Wapakoneta...
A school was organized and a log school house built about three miles north west of
where Anna now stands... about the same time the church (Anna M.E.) was organized. She and
the other pupils in the vicinity of where Anna now stands had to walk three miles through
the woods and the trees were blazed along the way so the children would not lose their
way. The fire-place of the school house occupied about one half of one side of the
building. The windows were made by cutting out a log in the side of the building and
greased paper was used in place of glass in them. The writing desks were held to the wall
by forked sticks pinned into the wall. The pupils set at them facing the wall. The seats
were without backs and made of split logs. She was ten years old before she began going to
school, but had been taught to read by an older brother...This was many years before the
C., H. & D. railroad and before Anna was laid out."
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