Potosi Schools

This brick building, two stories high, was dedicated in 1867 after a building cost of $7,500. Three departments (primary, intermediate, and high) ran two terms each year here. When an extra building was added for elementary pupils, this served as high school only until 1958. The spacious playground between the two buildings (elementary white building ahead) accommodated the Jack and Maude Brooks' tent shows of the 1920s and 30s. Education in Potosi began in a log cabin school in LaFayette in 1838 taught by Cornelius Kennedy, Revolutionary War veteran; and a miner's cabin under the hill at Van Buren taught by a pedagogue named Eayers in 1839. Other cabins held private classes, and a brick schoolhouse in the hollow completed in 1846 (vacated in 1867) had the Honorable J. W. Seaton in charge from 1847 to 1849.