Prairie View Community Building

by Howard Buffam

It was a great day in the rural community of Prairie View when they built the community building.

Neither the Prairie View schoolhouse nor the church was large enough for the expanding community activities. From 1912 until the hall was built in 1926, basketball was played in the large barn on the Arthur and Mabel Swain place.

The whole commuity chipped in, with money, labor and supplies, and on April 14, 1926, the first event was held in the just-completed community building. It was a play by students at the Dover school, located three miles north and one and a half miles east of the community building.

In addition to plays, activities included oyster suppers, watermelon suppers, pie suppers and all sorts of literary functions.

But still, basketball reigned supreme two nights a week, and the Builder Epworth League team really shone. The team was coached for a time by a pastor of the Prairie View Methodist Church, the Rev. Robert Selle.

The church still stands, and services are held there every Sunday. But after 30 years, the community building ceased to be used. It was sold in 1950 and converted into a hay barn.

(Column note: We're indebted to Pauline [Kennedy] Jones, Prairie View's historian and Courier correspondent for 52 years, for furnishing this material. Her father, Earl Kennedy, was one of the top basketball players. Pauline is the third generation of the Kennedy family to live on the homestead. She and her husband, Roy, still farm 125 acres of wheat.)