Lunch Basket
This month we have two artifacts that are related in several ways: They are from the same donor, both were used in a one-room school setting over one hundred years ago, and the original owners were mother and daughter.
The first artifact is a one-room schoolhouse teacher’s lunch basket from the 1890s. Lunches were prepared at home and quite simple—sandwiches with fillings of meat or cheese and hard-boiled eggs were common. The contents in the basket were wrapped in a cloth. A metal cup would hold drinking water that was pumped from a well in the schoolyard.
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Brief History
One-room schools were often far away from the homes of the students. City students could go home for lunch, but rural students needed to bring their lunch with them. Before the turn of the 20th century, lunch food was wrapped in oil cloth, then tied into fabric or placed in a basket. Around 1900, the tin lunch bucket was popular with miners and became a safer and more reliable way for students to transport their lunches over long distances to school. Lunch buckets were often recycled containers that once held household products such as cookies, lard, or tobacco.
Brief History
One-room schools were often far away from the homes of the students. City students could go home for lunch, but rural students needed to bring their lunch with them. Before the turn of the 20th century, lunch food was wrapped in oil cloth, then tied into fabric or placed in a basket. Around 1900, the tin lunch bucket was popular with miners and became a safer and more reliable way for students to transport their lunches over long distances to school. Lunch buckets were often recycled containers that once held household products such as cookies, lard, or tobacco.
Donor
The donor is Molly McClanahan, a former mayor from Fullerton, California. Her grandmother, Lenora Perry, was the teacher who carried the lunch basket when she rode a horse on an English side saddle back and forth to Eight-Mile Grove School, her one-room school in Nebraska. Lenora had to quit teaching when she married, for married women were not allowed to teach school. A decade later, in 1906, her daughter Wilma attended the same school (see Writing Slate). Wilma once explained that in winter she loved to carry warm hard-boiled eggs to school in her pockets. They kept her hands warm. Special thanks to Molly McClanahan for taking the time for our interview (May 24, 2018) at the Fullerton Library, and sharing a wealth of fascinating information. |
Learn More!
If you would like to learn more about the lunch basket (or lunch boxes), we recommend these articles:
You can learn more about one-room schools here:
If you would like to learn more about the lunch basket (or lunch boxes), we recommend these articles:
- Beyond the Pail: NPR Unpacks the History of the Lunch Box (NPR.org, October 31, 2016)
- The History of the Lunch Box (Smithsonian.edu, August 31, 2012)
You can learn more about one-room schools here:
- Lessons to Be Learned from a One-Room Schoolhouse (CBSNews.com, June 1, 2014)
- Buchanan County, Iowa Historical Society website