Mara Louis; Girl of Mystery

by Timothy Paterson

visitor center, Mara learned the location of the one room schoolhouse.

  When the car pulled up in front of the schoolhouse, Mara recognized it immediately as the building in her dream. As she and her parents walked into the building, the caretaker excused himself to use the restroom which was in a building a block away. “Feel free to look around”, he said. “I’ll answer all of your questions when I return.”

  Mara and her parents were not the only visitors at the time. There was also an elderly couple and six teenage girls who were a year or so older than Mara.

  “This is the school from my dreams”, Mara told her parents. “Somebody wants me to keep it from being torn down.” The other visitors overheard Mara’s words and when they turned around, one girl asked Mara “Aren’t you Mara Louis, the girl who solves mysteries?”

  “Yes, I am” said Mara. These are my parents; Don and Leann.” The other girl identified herself as Chantel Bradford and introduced her five cousins; Helen, Angela, Elizabeth, Linda, and their great grandparents; Tom and Rachel Bradford.

  “Do you really think that you can find a way to save this school?” asked Mrs. Bradford.

  “I am sure going to try,” said Mara. “In my dream, a man named Jedidiah told me that he used to teach here and that if I looked carefully, I would find a way to save the school forever.”

  Then, the woman spoke up. “My teacher’s name was Jedidiah Brady, when I attended school here. It may have been him that you dreamed about.”

  “Your maiden name wouldn’t be Rogers by any chance, would it?” asked Mara.

  “Why, yes it was” said Mrs. Bradford. “How in the world did you know that?”

  “I saw your name in my dream as well” replied Mara. “What can you tell me about the history of this school? Has it changed structurally since it was first built?”

  “Well. Let me think for a minute” said Mrs. Bradford, as she looked around the room. “There used to be a large fireplace at that end of the room, but it was replaced many years ago and replaced with a Franklin stove. That was before I attended the school. The space where the fireplace used to be was turned into a cloak room, and eventually it too was removed.”

  It was at this point, that Mara’s parents told Mara that they were going to see some of the sites of Vincennes and that they would be back in a couple of hours. They had seen Mara solve many mysteries, and they knew she worked better without her parents hovering over her.

  Mara walked to the end of the room, where the fireplace used to be. Mr. and Mrs. Bradford and their six great grandchildren were right behind her. Mara placed her hands on the wall and closed her eyes. Slowly, she walked along the wall, until she got to one corner. There was a file cabinet separating the end of the wall, from the adjoining wall. Mara found it curious that the back wall did not go all the way across. Mara put her hand on the back wall alongside the file cabinet and closed her eyes again, to see if she saw any visions. After sensing that there was something strange about the corner, Mara asked the other girls to help her move the file cabinet away from the wall.

  As the girls were moving the cabinet, the caretaker returned and asked them what they were doing. The man appeared to be in his seventies. Mara explained about her dream, in which a man named Jedidiah asked Mara to help him save the school from destruction. She explained to the gentleman that she frequently had psychic visions and dreams.

  All of a sudden, the caretaker became very interested. He explained that he had been fighting the city for almost two years, trying to save the school from demolition, and have it declared a historical site to be preserved forever. “The city wants to tear it down, so that they can build a new city hall on the land,” said the caretaker. “I welcome anything that you can do to help. But hurry, time is running out.”

  “What can you tell me about the school’s history?” asked Mara.

  “Well, this school was built in 1825” he said. “The first schoolmaster was John Brady. He was the headmaster from 1825 to 1850. When he retired, his grandson; William Brady took over the job and held the position until 1890. When he retired, his grandson, Jedidiah Brady was appointed headmaster. He was headmaster until the school closed in 1938. He remained the caretaker of the building until he died two years later, at the age of seventy-three. That was when the building was boarded up”.

  Mara and the Bradford family were eagerly listening to the caretaker’s story.

  “A mysterious fire burned down an old shed in back of the school, a few weeks after Jedidiah died. I believe that all of the old school records were stored in that shed. Those records may have proven the historical significance of the school, giving us enough reason to preserve the school, and save it from demolition.”

  “Why are you so interested in saving this school?” asked Mara. “Did you ever attend school here?”

  “Well, it’s like this,” said the caretaker. “My name is James Brady. Jedidiah was my grandfather. My family taught at this school for the entire one hundred fifteen years of its existence. This school is very near and dear to my heart.”

  After hearing that story, Mrs. Bradford added more information. “My great-great-great grandfather helped to build this school and both my family and my husband’s family attended the school for five generations. That is why we want to save it as well.”

  Mara put her hands on the side of the wall where the file cabinet used to be, and closed her eyes. Suddenly, she opened her eyes and asked Mr. Brady, “Do you have a crowbar, or a claw hammer?”

  Mr. Brady went out to his truck and brought in his toolbox.

  “May I have permission to remove a few boards from this wall?” asked Mara. “I think that there is something behind this wall.”

  After receiving permission, Mara carefully began prying a couple boards from the wall. There was a lot of excitement in the room, for they could see storage shelves full of boxes behind the wall. The other girls began helping Mara remove the remaining boards. After the boards had all been removed, nobody said anything. They just stared for a moment. They were all speechless.

  Very carefully, everyone began removing boxes from the shelves and putting them on the floor of the schoolroom. When the closet was empty, everybody began examining the contents of the boxes. There were several grading books, which recorded all of the grades for all of the students from 1825 to 1938. There were several old textbooks dating back to the late 1700’s, and early 1800’s. They found antique writing slates, chalk, which the students used to practice their numbers, letters and their arithmetic. They found old lunch pails, kerosene lamps and many other valuable antiques from the 1800’s. One box was filled with old photographs, most of which were class photos dating way back to the late 1830’s. All of the photos were dated on the back, along with the names of everyone in the photos.

  Mr. Brady thanked Mara for finding the historical treasures. “I guess the records weren’t in that shed after all,” he said. “This looks like a complete collection of school records, to me.” As Mr. Brady looked at the names on the back of the photos, he was amazed at how many names he recognized. He saw names of many Indiana’s early lawmakers, as well as ancestors of the current governor of Indiana. There were also names of the ancestors of Indiana’s most prominent citizens.

  Suddenly, Mara closed her eyes again and said; “There is still something missing” she said, “something very important that Jedidiah wants me to find. It’s a thick brown envelope.”

  Everybody thoroughly searched the boxes, but no brown envelope was found.

  Mara started carefully checking every shelf in the closet. Finally, she got down on her hands and knees and felt under the bottom shelf. There, she found an envelope taped to the bottom of the shelf. Mara carefully removed it and set it on a table in front of Mr. Brady.

  Mr. Brady told Mara that she should open it, since Jedidiah wanted her to find
it.

  Mara opened the envelope and removed several documents. Mara read the documents very carefully, while everyone waited impatiently.

  “Well, what do they say?” asked Mrs. Bradford. “Don’t keep us in suspense.”

  Mara had a huge smile on her face. “It looks like the city can’t tear this building down” she said, “that’s because; the city doesn’t own the building or the property.”

  Everybody was stunned by Mara’s statement. Mara continued. She turned to Mrs. Bradford and said; “If Samuel Rogers was your ancestor, then the property and school now belong to you. You see; when the early settlers of Vincennes decided to build a school, in 1824, Samuel Rogers; one of the founding fathers of the city, and one who owned several acres of the land, offered a parcel of his land to be the site for the school, but under certain conditions.”

  “This document states that the land could be used by the city of Vincennes, for ten dollars per year, as long as the building was being used for the education of students. It also stated that if the school was ever closed, the lease would automatically be cancelled and the property and any buildings on it would revert back to the Rogers family that is, turned over to the oldest member of the Rogers family still residing in Vincennes at the time.”

  “The city agreed to pay any taxes