Remembering When Harper Creek Elementary Was The Spaulding School

Harper Creek Public Schools services a portion of the Battle Creek and Springfield Michigan communities and has been doing so for decades upon decades. Instilling their core values into what will be beavers for life, but every school or school system has its origin story, and for many, they started much smaller and under a different name.

Harper Creek is no different in this regard as they are also a school system that derives from a single schoolhouse that has later grown into an elementary, middle school, and high school.  After some photos resurfaced and some discussion was had many were able to piece together that the location of this school building is the current day Harper Creek grounds.

To make this even more compelling, in one of the photos, many were able to point out that a building in the background is the current-day Harper Creek Elementary School. Now, Facebook can be my friend sometimes and it came in clutch with this one, as you can see below, these are some of the pictures referencing the school grounds.

The schoolhouse and map are from the late 19th and early 20th century showcasing the physical makeup of the schoolhouse but also which streets it was located on. Many parents would send their kids to the Spaulding School for years before Harper Creek was founded.

The Spaulding School sat very close to the Spaulding family farm, which both were named after local settler and farmer Nirum Spaulding. Spaulding married John Harper's daughter and everything was built near Harper's farm which had a mill named Harper Creek. It is unknown if Harper owned the creek or not.

This is what lead to the creation of Harper Creek schools, combining the name of his family and the land around him. Harper Creek Elementary which is pictured above sits on the corner of Beckley and Beadle Lake Roads. There's much more history connected to the schools and the family, but this is an interesting place to start.

I don't know about you but I would consider the Spaulding School to be the beginning of what is the present-day Harper Creek Public Schools. Some may not agree, but it's hard to argue against the evidence pictured above. It's always cool to find out what happened at the beginning of something.