My late mother-in-law, a native Texan, was named to the original board of
trustees for the Sam Houston Schoolhouse in 1943. The historic site was her
special project and one with which I became acquainted when I married into
the family. In looking for topics on which to create a Web site, I did not find
a page for the schoolhouse and thought it would be interesting as well as
provide information not available on the Web. The Blount County Chamber of
Commerce/Smoky Mountain Visitors Bureau Web page mentioned the schoolhouse
as one of Blount County's historic places of interest and gave its address
and phone number, but did not tell anything about it. As Tennessee's oldest
existing school building (1794), I thought it deserved more than just
mention. I will offer the Web site to the Sam Houston Memorial Association
Board of Trustees who care for the schoolhouse and make all decisions
concerning it.
In my original search for information on Sam Houston Schoolhouse, I used
Dogpile, Yahoo, Altavista, and various other search engines. This search
yielded information on Sam Houston, but little more than mention of the
schoolhouse. After my topic was approved, I did find a Web site created
several years ago by a Blount County fifth grader that told of her visiting
the schoolhouse for the first time. The page was coded and put on the WWW
by three students from McKenney
Middle School, Canton, New York (I was unable to tell from the page
exactly where the school is located, but I think, New York).
Another Web site address was given to my husband by one of the Sam Houston
Schoolhouse trustees. This page was put on the WWW without the
knowledge of the board of trustees; they are unhappy that they don't have
any control of the site, the information on the page, or how it is designed.
I don't know why my searches failed to connect me to this Web page, as I
looked for information on historic sites, Blount County, and Sam Houston. I
still feel that my Sam Houston Schoolhouse page provides different material
for the Web user and warrants placement on the WWW.
In gathering information for my Web page, I made two trips to the Sam
Houston Schoolhouse. The first was to obtain information, pamphlets, maps,
and post cards about the schoolhouse. The second was to take photographs to
be used as images on the page. I drove alternate routes to the historic
site, checking street and highway signs, and measuring distances so that I
could write directions to the schoolhouse.
I requested and received permission from the following persons to use their
material on my page:
Before beginning the Web site, I looked at other pages to see how they were
constructed, what colors and font sizes were effective, to get ideas, and
look at HTML coding. Through Dogpile I located the Texas State Library and
Archives. The Sam
Houston Regional Library and Research Center (part of the TSLA) has the
largest known collection of Sam Houston photographs and illustrations (these
are not on the Web). The Sam
Houston Memorial Museum in Huntsville, Texas, (found through Dogpile and
Yahoo) has the genealogy of the Houston family. Images of Sam Houston can
be found on the Sam Houston State
University Web page. The San
Jacinto Museum located on the Texas battlefield where General Sam
Houston won a decisive victory over the Mexican General Santa Anna is a very
interesting site to visit. GoTo.com had a link to the Lone Star Junction page that also had
some interesting information. Web pages of various historical sites like
Thomas Jefferson's Monticello proved useful in helping me get an idea of
what I wanted to achieve on my Web page.
I encountered some problems while constructing my page. One of the most
serious was disk space being full. CAS was able to help me by telling how
much space I had available and how to check the space used. I also inadvertently
renamed some files and removed a necessary one. Professor Casado and CAS
came to my rescue to help me retrieve them!
A problem that probably has more to do with my pickiness than anything else was my color selection.
I had a picture in my mind's eye of how the page should look, and I was frustrated when I could not
find the right color. I'm very satisfied with the font color against the parchment background, but
I'm not sure the link and vlink colors are exactly right. I used the color list and chart found on
Annabella's web page http://www.geocities.com/~annabella/graphics.html (from our class resources).
The parchment (called manilla) background on the schoolhouse pages was from
http://www.kelleypc.com/archives/backs6.html (I only had to credit the site to use the background).
Because I wanted a different but related background for my own pages, I used the same background
that I used on my menu page. I don't have the URL of the site from which I got it, but it was a
link from Annabella's page of backgrounds.
The horizontal rule that I used on the main schoolhouse page was on a link from
http://www.theskull.com/hor_rule.html (there is a huge variety of rules and lines on these pages).
I tried a rail fence but the color was too dark and drew attention away from the rest of the page.
The colors in this rule are correct, but I worry that the rule itself is too modern-looking for the
page. I would like to find an image of a wooden stick to use.
I tried to unify all the pages by using the same sizes of font for headings and text, but I
purposely used the black text for my own pages so they would be different from the schoolhouse
pages. I think I have achieved most of what I set out to in my Web page--at any rate, I had a great
time constructing it.
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