Where in the World Was Hazel Dell?

During the approximately 120 years between the organization
of Adams County in 1825 and the consolidation of small school districts in
Adams County in the 1940s, numerous local schools existed all over the county. Some
had unimaginative names such as Brick School (both Mendon and Richfield) and
Center School (Camp Point, Coatsburg, Marblehead, Mendon, and east of Quincy).
Others evoked the geographic or natural features of the area, such as Elm Grove
(Mendon and Augusta), Elmwood (Liberty), Fall Creek (Marblehead), Maple Grove
(Columbus), and Oak Forest (Tioga).

One name is particularly enigmatic: Hazel Dell. Hazel
Dell School was in Concord Township in eastern Adams County. A Google search
for the meaning of the name stated: “We couldn’t find any results for your
search.” But there are communities, churches, and schools named Hazel Dell in
Sessler, Illinois; Crescent, Iowa; Vancouver, Washington; Carmel, Indiana; Noblesville,
Indiana; Springfield, Illinois; Pottawatomie and Grady Counties in Oklahoma; and
Cleveland, Ohio. What does Hazel Dell mean?

There were only clues, not explanations. Hazel Dell,
WA, was reportedly named by first settler Sarah Anderson “after a stand of
filberts on their land.” Merriam-Webster
says a filbert is “a cultivated hazel tree that bears edible oval nuts.” Google
Dictionary says hazel is a shrub or tree in the birch family and a dell is a
small valley, “usually among trees.” Did
early settlers in many places in the US, including Adams County, Illinois, find
stands of birch or hazel nut trees and name their areas, churches, and schools
Hazel Dell? No one seems to know.

A map of the locations of the almost 150 country
schools that once existed in Adams County shows that in some areas there were
vast spaces without schools, but in others, they were built just two or three
miles apart with fields and forests, ravines and creeks between them: schools had
to be within walking distance of the homes of the children who attended them. At
first, schools were not built where there was road access, although roads
sometimes followed, and until roads and bridges were eventually built, many of the
children in eastern Adams County and western Brown County had to navigate rough
terrain and cross long and winding, rising and falling creeks to get to school.

Bear Creek near Ursa and McKee Creek in the eastern
townships of Adams County and western Brown County were particularly prone to
flooding. A place in which the creek could be crossed on foot when the water
was low was called a ford. A covered bridge was built over Bear Creek in 1851
but burned in 1923. South Fork Bridge was built over the South Fork of Bear
Creek in 1880. The Wilson Bridge was built over Bear Creek on present 1050th
Ave. in 1922.

McKee Creek and its tributaries drained several
townships. The Buskirk Ford Bridge was built over McKee Creek about 5 miles
west of Kellerville in 1885 and the one in the Siloam Valley followed. No bridge
crossed McKee Creek north of the Ferguson Valley in Brown County’s Buckhorn
Township, and when the creek rose there; many children there simply couldn’t
get to Reddick School.

After the Civil War, at least five mineral springs had
been discovered in the long valley that lay across the border between McKee
Township in Adams County and Buckhorn Township in Brown County, and was named
Siloam. With the construction of the Forest Hotel and a “Bath House” for
soaking in hot mineral spring water in the 1880s, the springs had been
developed into a noted tourist destination, drawing guests from the US and
Europe. The community that grew up around it included homes, stores, a livery
stable, a post office, the bridge over McKee Creek, and on a hillside that is now
submerged under Crabapple Lake in Siloam Springs State Park, about two miles southwest
of the village, Happy Hollow School.

But all the Siloam children did not attend Happy
Hollow School. Outside the valley, fields, forests, and farms extended for miles
in every direction. Because of the oddity of lying across a county line and
having both a town and dozens of farms in the Siloam area, the Siloam children may
have been friends and relatives, but they attended a number of different
schools in two counties.

Two of the one-room schools were almost due north of
the valley, about two miles apart, between Siloam and the community of Clayton,
which had the railroad station that served Siloam. Hazel Dell School was on
what is now N. 1700th Ave. and Pea Green School was near what is now
N. 1500th Ave., closer to Siloam. McKee Creek separated many other
areas from each other in McKee, Concord and Buckhorn Townships, but it did not
separate Hazel Dell from Pea Green or from Siloam.

In the mid-1930s, the teacher at Hazel Dell was Miss
Ruth Darnell. The teacher at Pea Green was Mrs. Geneva Peacock Stevens. Mrs.
Stevens had been orphaned as an infant and reared on a farm just south of the
Siloam Valley by her uncle and aunt, Marcellus and Mary Peacock Mayfield.

One April Fool’s Day Miss Darnell told the children to
stay outside and play because she felt ill. The children did stay outside, but
they didn’t exactly play. The entire student body walked about two miles south to
the Pea Green School. Mrs. Stevens was, of course, suspicious, and asked them
if their teacher knew where they were. They assured her that she did. (April
Fools!) So instead of adding the enrollment of Hazel Dell School to her own, Mrs.
Stevens sent her children outside to play, as well, and the students of the two
country schools had a ball game.

In 1949, Hazel Dell School was sold at auction for
$560. By 1979 it had been painted barn red, the country road that passed it was
improved enough to be passable in dry weather, and although children and their
teachers were no longer there, it became something of a tourist attraction.

Sources

Adams Count IL Historical Schools.

Dell. Google Dictionary.

Filbert. Google Dictionary.

Hazel. Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary.

Hazel Dell. Wikipedia.

Hazel Dell, Washington. Toponymy and history. Wikipedia.

History of Brown Count, Illinois: 1880-1970 (1972).
Brown County Board of the Schuyler Brown Historical and Genealogical
Society.

McKee Creek. Google Maps.

McKee Creek Bridge. Bridgehunter.com: Historic and
Notable Bridges of the U.S.

Scenes from the Past (June 7, 1979). Clayton
Enterprise.