Rev. Bruce's grandson and namesake, John Bruce of the Oak Grove area, told us that he attended his first year of schooling at the Bruce Schoolhouse in 1906, when Rena Dahl was the teacher and Vernal Kelsey Shurte was the traveling music teacher, coming about once a week. He also remembers that the County Superintendent of Schools, Frank Heighway of Crown Point, would come quite often to see how everything was going at the school. After his first grade at Bruce School, the school was abandoned, and the fifteen or twenty children were driven in a horse drawn school bus to Lake Prairie School.
When we asked grandson John Bruce where he went to high school, he replied that he went two years at the old school on Main St. in Lowell, and one day all the students moved to the high school on Oakley Ave. (which is now a part of Lowell Middle School), each carrying their books and supplies.
It seems that the Bruce Schoolhouse was vacant for some years, and was then moved into Lowell by Howard Slocum. It is now a residence on North Liberty Street in Lowell.
Go to Schools--Bruce School, "Pioneer History Index," for further information.
Return to Lowell History.
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