3 School Days

Chapter 3 School Days When George woke up the next morning, he stepped outside. The owner of the barn, Mariah Watkins, saw him. She figured he was hungry, so she fixed him some breakfast in the main house.

"What's your name?" Mariah asked him. "I'm Carver's George," he said. That sounded as if Carver owned George. Mrs. Watkins, who was black, didn't like that. Slavery had ended more than ten years earlier, and nobody owned anyone else. So Mrs. Watkins called him "George Carver." George told Mrs. Watkins that he was in Neosho to go to school. He didn't have a place to live yet, but he'd figure something out. Mrs. Watkins was a kind woman, so she told George he could stay with her and her husband, Andrew. But she also was a strict, no-nonsense

woman. If George was going to live there and go to the nearby Lincoln School—named after Abraham Lincoln—he'd have to do his share of the chores. George was delighted with that deal. He already could clean house and do laundry. Moses Carver had taught George not to waste anything. Now Mrs. Watkins taught him not to waste any time. She expected him to go to school during the day, but to come home at recess and do laundry. After school, he would clean the house and maybe help cook dinner. George and Mr. and Mrs. Watkins read the Bible during the week, and they went to church on Sundays. Sometimes, George walked back to Diamond Grove to visit Moses and Susan and Jim on the weekends.

Neosho was different than Diamond Grove. There were about 3,300 people living there— almost three times as many people as in Diamond Grove. And about one of every eight residents in Neosho was black. Diamond Grove had only sixteen black people living in the whole town when George grew up there. George stayed in Neosho for a year or so, and learned just about all he could at the one-room Lincoln School. "This simply sharpened my

appetite for more knowledge," he wrote. He found that if he wanted more schooling, he'd have to move again... and again... and again. At the time, many former slaves were moving from the South into Kansas and other Northern states in search of a better life. In 1878, George hitched a ride with one such family on the way to Fort Scott, Kansas. George rode in the back of

a wagon for part of the eighty-mile trip and walked the rest of the way. In 1879, he moved to Olathe, Kansas. In 1880, he moved to Minneapolis, Kansas, and then to Paola, Kansas.