“Stuck in the ’60s”? Double-stuck!

Our Greene County project of properly honoring the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey” for their Civil War service takes us deep into old records, newspapers & hand-me-down memories.

RIPPEY, Iowa — It is occasionally said of me and other “Baby Boomers” that we are “stuck in the ’60s” with our deep feelings about that somewhat wild time in which we came of age — from the mid-1960s forward.

But after hanging out now for the past 10 months with Greene County High School students of today, who could really be helping me be more “with it,” I find that instead I’m sort of “double-stuck in the ’60s.” Yes, today’s students now have me deeply focused on the 1860s!

This all started, you might recall from earlier stories, when Iowa history teacher Dena Boyd at the high school in Jefferson asked me to speak to her classes last April. She asked if I would focus on local history, and specifically share any stories from the past that might have particular impact on high school students now.

I told them about the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey,” as I called them, 32 students and two teachers from one of the first schools in Greene County who in 1861enlisted in the Union Army and spent up to four years in combat. Ten died in service. “Most of them were your age and just older,” I told Boyd’s students. “This is probably the most under-told and under-appreciated story in our local history.”

Some of our “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey Memorial Committee” after our Jan. 8 meeting with our two state legislators, Senator Jesse Green and Representative Carter Nordman. They gave us an enthusiastic response when we explained our project and asked for their support. Left to right are playwright John Busbee, Margaret Hamilton, Sen. Green, teacher Dena Boyd, Rep. Nordman, Aden Bardole, Yaakov Gehling and Chuck Offenburger.

The students seemed stunned. How, they asked, could that happen? Where are the monuments that tell the story? Why doesn’t anybody now seem to know about this? Can we do something about it? Would you help us?

I certainly couldn’t say “no.”

So, beginning in May, the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey Memorial Committee” has been meeting monthly. Four student leaders, their teacher, and eight of us who are members of the Greene County Historical Society have met monthly. We’ve done a whole lot of research between meetings.

We’ve had input from people in their early teen years and from people in their 90s. We seem to have touched off a good-natured dispute over exactly where the young soldiers’ schoolhouse was, 166 years ago.

Our emphasis is education — of students and of the public — in all our planning. Our hope is that our project will be adapted as a part of the county’s official celebration next summer of the nation’s 250th anniversary.

We’ve already presented an introductory public program for the Historical Society. We have met with the county’s Board of Supervisors. We’ve met with our two state legislators, Senator Jesse Green and Representative Carter Nordman. We will meet again soon with the Supervisors and also with the City Council here in Rippey.

Here are the four major elements of our project, with a total estimated cost of $95,000:

—We want to erect two large monuments that tell the story of our Schoolboy Soldiers, one on the grounds of the Courthouse in Jefferson or indoors in one of its ground-floor lobbies, the other in the pioneer cemetery at “Old Rippey.” That was the original site of the town, 2+ miles west and south of today’s town of Rippey, which moved in 1870 to meet the railroad when it came through the area.

—We are “enlisting” a new “Civil War military unit” of 32 current high school students (boys and girls) and two “teachers/leaders” who will wear replica uniforms, march in parades and appear in programs, re-enacting and telling the story of the Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey. We already have documented biographies of all 34 of the Schoolboys and their teachers who were involved in the Civil War.

—We have contracted with Des Moines-based playwright John Busbee, well-known for his Iowa “Culture Buzz” radio show and columns, to write the fall 2026 school play for Greene County High, about the Schoolboy Soldiers.

—We are considering a large public mural in the county that would also tell the story.

We have currently received $5,200 in donations, nearly all from individuals. We now seek larger donations and grants from the State of Iowa, Greene County, a couple of local foundations, local companies and people everywhere.

The Greene County Historical Society, a 501(c)3 tax-exempt non-profit corporation, is our fiscal agent. Contributions, designated for “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey” memorials, can be sent to the historical society at its museum, 219 E. Lincoln Way, Box 435, Jefferson, IA 50129.

Roman Sebourn, a Greene County High School junior, signs his “enlistment” for the “Schoolboy Soldiers of Rippey” during our program this past Nov. 23 for the Greene County Historical Society. Left to right are committee members David Burkett, Aden Bardole, Sebourn, Oliver Harris and Chuck Offenburger.

So where was the schoolhouse?

That’s interesting, and questionable, at the same time. If you think you know, or can find out with some research, please be in touch with us.

An early newspaper, The Souvenir, had a news item in October of 1897, stating, “The old ‘Brand’ school district, in Washington township (where Rippey was and is located), bears an honored record for number of men sent to the war… (The paper reported that 34 former students and two teachers, led by Azor Mills, enlisted and served.) The Souvenir challenges any other country school in the state to make as good a showing.”

A July, 1969, edition of the Grand Junction Globe Free Press/Paton Portrait/Rippey News, noted, “The first schoolhouse in the county, sometimes called the Brand school, sometimes called the Old Rippey school, was built in the fall of 1856…. It stood near a big brush patch about 20 feet east of the Old Rippey cemetery, near the southeast corner, facing south… In 1866, while the school was still going on, the schoolhouse was moved to the west side of Main Street in Old Rippey. Later this school building was purchased by the Methodist Church and moved to (a nearby town) West Angus for their church building…”

Gillum S. Toliver, one of the older Schoolboy Soldiers, created a great historical archive for Greene County when in the late 1800s and early 1900s, he completed a memoir about his life — including his service in the Civil War. In that remarkable document, Toliver wrote, “Up to the fall of 1857 no school house had been built in the county. That fall three school houses were built in the county. One in Jefferson, one on the northeast corner of Section 6-82-29 called the Brand school house, and one in the southeast corner of Section 29-82-29 called the King school house.” He continued that Azor Mills was the teacher at the Brand school and led the students from there into the military. The location Toliver specified is about two miles north and just west of where the Old Rippey Cemetery is now.

The description of the schoolhouse’s location that I find most convincing appears in an article on page 1 of the Jefferson Bee newspaper of April 11, 1939. The editor, Victor Hugo Lovejoy, who refers to himself in the article as “the Bee man,” answered a question from “a Bee subscriber in Angus” who had inquired about the history of the Methodist Church on the west side of that town.

Lovejoy reported that he had called his own older brother, Dr. H.E. Lovejoy, then living in Rocky Ford, Colorado, who had attended that school when the Lovejoy children were growing up in Old Rippey.

The renowned Jefferson Bee editor Victor Hugo Lovejoy, in 1925.

“It was built in the late ’50s as the Old Rippey school house,” H.E. Lovejoy said, “and was all of native lumber and walnut siding, and it stood near a big brush patch about 20 feet east of the Old Rippey cemetery, and near the southeast corner facing the south. Walnut benches of the home made kind were used inside…

“I think about the year 1866 the school house was moved — while school was going on — to the west side of ‘Main Street’ in Old Rippey, close to the Gibson blacksmith shop. The school had the credit of sending 30 pupils and one teacher, A.R. Mills, to the Civil War…. The first school house — located on Main Street near the blacksmith shop — was bought by the Methodist people, probably when H.B. Kees was local minister, and moved to West Angus for a church, and during the years they have had wonderful revivals in it…”

What makes that convincing to me is that the reporting was done by Victor Lovejoy, regarded as one of Iowa’s most outstanding newspaper writers of his era, which spanned 1912-1942 at the Bee. He’d grown up in Old Rippey himself, the son of the town’s prominent physician and store owner, Dr. J.C. Lovejoy. The Lovejoys knew Old Rippey.

But most important about this whole story — since everyone agrees that the school that produced the Schoolboy Soldiers was indeed in the Old Rippey area — is what E.B. Stillman, editor of the Jefferson Herald, wrote of those soldiers in the 1907 history boook, “Past & Present of Greene County, Iowa.”

“No matter how far down the vista of time a new record of valor is made up and forms a part of the history of Greene County,” wrote Stillman, who could be wordy but in a very good way, “it will not outrank in devotion to country and in the sacrifices made upon the altar of liberty, the deeds of these pioneer young men who came to these western prairies to find homes and the enjoyment of life in the pursuit of happiness and a competency. They, and those who enlisted in like spirit, should be accounted the bravest and the best of all, no matter who were their contemporaries or who may have come after them.”

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