On June 18, 2013 the Lemon Grove School District will be 120 years and three months old. The district was officially born on Mar. 18, 1893 when the San Diego County Board of Supervisors and Harry Wagner, County School Superintendent, approved the boundaries of the fledgling Lemon Grove district and separated it from the Hemet, Oak Grove, North Chollas, Spring Valley and Bloomdale school districts.
The boundaries had been proposed by 11 Lemon Grove families with 16 children, ages five to 17. In their appeal to the county, they wrote:
"We reside within the limits of the proposed district, and at a greater distance than two miles from any public school house; and that, by reason of remoteness from schools now established, our children are, in great measure, deprived of school facilities to which they are justly entitled.
"We therefore pray for the formation of a new school district, said district to be known as Lemon Grove School District…"
In a hallelujah moment, Harry Wagner wrote, "I therefore approve said petition and recommend that said district be formed under the name of Lemon Grove School District…"
The 11 families, encouraged by the Lemon Grove Fruit Growers Association, which was simultaneously finalizing its own organization and bylaws, had begun lobbying for a school district in 1892. On Feb. 21, 1893 they had sent the required letter to the above school districts, informing them of their action.
The families, anticipating success, had ceased transporting their children by wagon to distant schools and had already begun holding classes in fruit grower William Hurst's large barn on Central Avenue near modern Corona Street. This bucolic, Horatio Alger style setting was short-lived -- from March to June 1893.
One-Room School: Over the summer of 1893 the town retrofitted a small house and turned it into a one-room school house, replete with bell tower, on land near the corner Main Street and Central Avenue (see photograph above).
First School Bond: Though donated funds paid for part of the retrofit, the little district actually floated its very first school bond on Aug. 8, 1893 when the Board of Supervisors ordered "the issuance of bonds of Lemon Grove School District in the sum of $1,500 with interest at 8 per cent per annum, payable annually."
School's In: When the school year began just after Labor Day, 1893 Miss Ada Samples (see photo) became the teacher of grades 1 - 12 seated at wooden desks. Most of the children were in grades 2 - 6 with a handful of tykes in grade 1 and a couple of rangy teenagers in the upper grades.
School Wardrobe: Mostly homemade cotton dresses and pinafores, denim overalls and cotton, long sleeved shirts, long socks and buttoned leather shoes comprised the garb of choice. Bonnets on the girls and straw hats on the boys to shield them from sun and dust were hung on hooks inside the school door and/or lost going to and from school. Old letters indicate that they were found and returned.
Class photographs of the period show barefoot children -- not because of poverty, but because they were ranch kids who ran barefoot to school and nobody minded. And all those shoe buttons took time to do up with one of Mama's many button hooks--the girls usually managed this, but what self respecting boy would do that if he could run barefoot through the orchards with pals?
Mrs. Bell: By now, many Lemon Grovians are familiar with the story of our school bell and how she was purchased in 1894 by the Lemon Grove Fruit Growers Association for $6.15 from Sears Roebuck's first catalog. Indications are that she arrived before the close of the 1893-1894 school year and was installed in the little bell tower.
She rang in the 1893, 1908 and 1924 school before her story took a dramatic turn in 1976. But she was back home in 2002 and, today, hangs resplendent on home turf in the classic bell tower of our beautiful, joint use Lemon Grove Library, designed by Raul Diaz, on the campus of Lemon Grove Academy for the Sciences and Humanities.
Who Were They?: Those 11 families, who were bound and determined to educate their young and ensure a future, not only for their families, but for the town, included:
Frank Allison built the first house in Lemon Grove in 1892, a "small shack" on the corner of Imperial and Golden (site of modern Union Bank). He was the son of Robert Allison whose fortuitous purchase in 1869 of the Santiago Argüello Mission Rancho land led to the formation of Lemon Grove, La Mesa, Spring Valley and part of southeast San Diego.
George and Eliza C. Bates, ranchers with a big orchard on the southwest corner of Central and Buena Vista.
Lucena Elford (Mrs. Peter), a rancher who also ran a laundry.
Horace and Alta Fuller, ranchers with land on Broadway west of New Jersey.
George Hall, a rancher and co-owner of San Diego Engraving Company.
W. B. Ingraham, a rancher on the northwest corner of Massachusetts and Grove (today, North Avenue).
William E. Montgomery about whom we know little, alas.
S. L. Roberts, a rancher on the northeast corner of Kempf and Lincoln.
M. Weir, variously listed as an accountant and "businessman."
C.E. Wood, a rancher.
John A. Wood, a rancher who came here in 1880 as a water boy to serve the men building the Cuyamaca Railroad.
In other words, nine of the 11 families were directly involved in growing citrus and were instrumental in founding the Lemon Grove Fruit Growers Association and building the town into an agricultural powerhouse.
The famous Allison family lives on as Allison Avenue in La Mesa. Robert Allison did not live to see the fruits of his vision as he died in 1891. His wife, Tempa, may have named Lemon Grove. Their sons, Frank and Joseph, built a flume for Lemon Grove and carried on their father's investments in railroads and land.
All of the above were Midwesterners, Congregationalists and Baptists, and independent minded. They were hands-on ranchers with only one or two (Levi Geer and Col. Theodore Bryan) who could be termed "gentlemen farmers." A significant number had asthma and sought the gentle climate of California in a period when colds and flu could result in sudden death.
And so it went, dear readers, at the onset of summer, 1893 when a tiny crossroads became a town, a real place, thanks to the hopes and aspirations of a handful of Americans with dreams of growing far more than fruit. They raised up children who became teachers, lawyers, soldiers, ranchers, industrialists, nurses, doctors, business owners and so much more all those 120 years ago.
About this column: Compiled by Helen Ofield, president of the Lemon Grove Historical Society, from newspapers archived at the H. Lee House Cultural Center. Each week, we take a peek at the past with some news and advertising highlights from a randomly chosen edition of the Lemon Grove Review. In 2012 Ofield was awarded second place in non-daily reporting and writing from the Society of Professional Journalists for the column.
