Biddle School Newspaper Clippings
Semi Weekly Iowegian Published at Centerville, Iowa Friday, December 4, 1908
Miss Cora McDanell is teaching the Biddle school this week in Edith Morrow's place.
Centerville Daily Iowegian and Citizen Published at Centerville, Iowa January 10, 1934
Had School in Two Rooms of Home in Taylor Township
Biddles Had a Horse Between Them on a Trip From Keokuk to Appanoose County
One of the very early settlers in Appanoose county was a young teacher and farmer by the name of William Morgan Biddle. He was born in Pennsylvania, leaving there at the age of 23 to take up government land in Iowa. In 1853 he took out two claims in Appanoose county, one a timber tract between Unionville and what is now Moravia, the other prairie claim west of Moravia on the Iconium road. After one year of solitary homesteading he returned to Pennsylvania to marry Eunice V. Patterson, to whom he was engaged when he went west. They set out immediately after the marriage on the return trip to Iowa, traveling by boat to Keokuk, and from there by foot and horseback to their new home. The bride's father had given her a horse for a wedding present, else they would have had to travel this part of the journey entirely on foot as had the young husband the year before.
During that spring and summer they built a log cabin on the timber claim in which they spent the following winter. The next spring Morgan burned enough brick to build a two-room house up on the prairie claim, where he had already started to farm. For several years this house was both their home and the neighborhood school house. Mrs. Biddle teaching in one room, while her husband held his classed in the other. The frame school house which was finally built was always known as the Biddle school, in honor of these two and their early efforts to bring the fruits of their own schooling in Green Academy in Pennsylvania, to their children and the children of their intrepid pioneer neighbors.
Along with their teaching Morgan Biddle and his wife felt also the need for a religious center for their community, and helped to organize the Cumberland Presbyterian church in Moravia. They were active in all of the neighborhood interests, and Mrs. Biddle has been called by old friends, the "Red Cross society" of the community. Never did she refuse a call to help in time of sickness or need, and often she carried with her the doctor book which she used in caring for her own family of nine. Life on a pioneer farm was not easy for babies, even with a devoted mother and father, and of these nine only six grew to maturity.
These six, Retta, Minton, Olive, Cora, Newton and Eloise, they brot (sic) with them when they moved to Centerville in ???? and here these children grew up and were married. Two of them, Eloise Vermilion (deceased) and Olive Strickler made their home permanently in Centerville.
Mrs. Biddle died at the home of her daughter Eloise, in Nov. 12, 1904, and five years later, on Aug. 20, 1909, Morgan Biddle joined her, having lived to see the wild land transformed into a fruitful farming community; the wide gaps between the early homesteads fill up with neighboring farms, the school houses rise and the churches dot the landscape, the railroads bring settlers and prosperity to the country he had first traversed alone and on foot.
Centerville Journal Published at Centerville, Iowa Wednesday, September 3, 1941
County Landmark Falls to Flames
Old Biddle Schoolhouse West of Moravia Is Leveled by Fire of Unknown Origin
An Appanoose county landmark of the past 60 years, was erased by flames two miles west of Moravia this morning. It was the unoccupied Biddle school. Flames of an unknown origin leveled it.
The school was built by Morgan Biddle, later of the firm of Biddle & Riggs, old time grocers of Centerville. His daughter, Ollie Biddle, who was the late Mrs. George Strickler, of this city, was one of the first teachers there. The building had been vacant for 15 years.