North School of district forty stands on a little knoll in section 29 of Carterville Township. Marvin C. Martin is the teacher this year, and has interested his twelve pupils in the more practical aspects of biology by bringing some of the fish of Horse branch into an aquarium in the schoolroom.
The school once stood farther south, across the road from the cemetery. The district was divided about 1890, Hayton School built to the south, and the North School built in a more convenient location. Miss Nettie Powell was the first teacher in this school, and at the close of her term she became the wife of Robert Hayton, son of the doctor.
The name North first appeared on maps, if there were any, of that neighborhood when Abraham North rode to Shawneetown in 1812 and made a land entry in the same section where the school now stands. He went back every few years, making entries in his own and his wife’s name, until North ownership was well established. Much of the land remains in the North name, passed on from father to son as the generations grew.
Abraham North (1794-1856) was a teamster in Manchester. England and came to Philadelphia with the lace makers from the mills there. After a few years he moved west to establish a new home, and married in turn Nancy and Eliza Tyner, daughters of an early settler on Eight Mile prairie.
George J. North, the oldest son, went with Captain Cunningham’s company to the Mexican war, and made the long march to Santa Fe without seeing any fighting. The homecoming and public dinner at the Marion courthouse was a taste of glory, but the one person Private North wanted most to see was absent. He went to Kendall County to bring back his bride. Miss Fredonia M. Ryburn, for whom the post office of Fredonia was named. They returned by steamboat, young Mrs. North stayed two days at Willard’s Landing on the Mississippi while her husband walked across country to get his steers and wagon to haul her boxes home. The house they built and lived in still stands near that where their son John T. North has lived since he started out for himself in 1884.
The second Abraham North (1835-1911) drove to California in 1859 with one span of mules hitched to his wagon. He stayed several years, served in the California cavalry during the Civil war, and returned to marry and live on the old home place. His son Richard H. North lives in a house not fifty yards from that in which he was born.
West chapel is the church of the North settlement. It stands on an acre lot Riven by George J. North on condition that Joseph Hayton would give a strip from his farm as a hitching rack. Simon Hiller of the Christian church used to come regularly every Saturday for dinner in the North settlement on his way to preach in one of the nearby churches.
(Extracted from Pioneer Folks and Places, Barbara Barr Hubbs, 1939 which is on sale at the Williamson County Museum)