The Turnbo Manuscripts
by Silas Claiborne Turnbo
1844-1925
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By S. C. Turnbo
Some of the old time incidents which occurred on Brattons Spring Creek in Ozark County, Mo. Is the following which was related to me by W. C. (Carroll) Johnson on the 14 of November 1906. Mr. Johnson is a son of Sam Johnson who many years ago lived on the farm in the forks of Spring Creek and Little North Fork where Carroll Johnson was born May the 7, 1852. Mr. Johnson says that in the latter fifties his father and John Nave and Isaac Mahan built a small log house in the upper end of the bottom on the west side of Spring Creek one half a mile above his father’s residence. This new log hut was built for a school house and was floored with rough puncheons and one half of two logs was cut out on one side for a window. A year or two after the house was done the puncheons was taken out and replaced with lumber that was sawed at Mike Yocums mill at the mouth of Little North Fork. I do not remember the man’s name who taught the first school in this building but I call to mind that the second school here was taught by a man they called William Sears. I was sent to this last school with my brother Pate and my two sisters Huldah and Polly Johnson. Bill and John Mahan sons of Isaac Mahan, Asa Nave and his sister Lizzie Nave, and Dedric Simmons all attended this school. Asa and Lizzie Nave were children of John Nave. Asa died at Rolla Mo. during the civil war. Lizzie his sister married a man of the name of Barrette. I call to mind a small incident in connection with the building of this house" said Mr. Johnson "that would be of a little interest to print. On the morning of the first day when my father Sam Johnson, John Nave and Ike Mahan had went out in the creek bottom on the west side of Spring Creek to cut the logs to build the house Mr. Mahan cut down the first tree and he says boys "my tree is the first one felled toward the building of our school house."
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