The Bricked Window: Why Two Children Vanished From Callow Creek

The Bricked Window: Why Two Children Vanished From Callow Creek

A dry McGuffey Reader sat on frozen ground with no tracks around it after eleven days of hard freeze - and a school window had been bricked shut three weeks earlier for twelve dollars. What was sealed in that limestone wall, and how did a teacher's decision precede two children's deaths within a month?

In this episode, we trace the sequence recorded in the letters, board minutes, and coroner files recovered decades later to show what happened in Callow Creek between October 1898 and February 1899. Why did Marilyn Baker press the school board to seal the north window, and what do the records reveal about the Dray children's last weeks?

Person: Marilyn Baker Date: January 23, 1899 Location: Callow Creek schoolhouse north window Event: Board vote to seal window, cost $12 Case: Thomas and Clara Dray deaths, February 1899

- The McGuffey Eclectic Reader - Second Edition was found dry on February 9, 1919, with no footprints or drag marks in the surrounding snow. - Marilyn Baker had taught the single-room school since 1881 and was 48 years old in winter 1899. - Baker's eleven letters to her sister Agnes record classroom details and note the north window's morning light in 1893 and call it a "difficulty" in October 1898. - On January 23, 1899, the Callow Creek School Board voted four to one to seal the north window using limestone for a recorded cost of twelve dollars. - Thomas Dray, age nine, was found drowned in Fenwick Creek on February 9, 1899; his sister Clara, age eleven, died four days later.

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