Villages of Crawford County, Missouri - LITTLE SPRINGS--BUTTS One of the early schools established in Crawford County is known as Little Springs located on the Courtois about twelve miles east of Steelville. The school, the church, store, and postoffice were scattered on the hills and in the valley and never became a clustered village like many others. Until 1878 the Baptist congregation used the school building. The Fairview Baptist used their own building which they had recently completed on October 4, 1878. The Fairview Cemetery a short distance from the church had long before become the burying ground for the people of the region. Dowm the hill from the church Rowland Bass, senior, built a store and stocked it with a wide variety of staple goods desirable for rural needs. A post office called Butts was established and J. H. Sites was appointed the first postmaster. Others were Lytle Moutray and Loyd Gormley. The school called Little Springs now became the Butts School. A prominentt acher, Mr. Butts had arrived as a teacher and because of his influence in the community the name was changed. The old frame school was replaced with a stone one built with Works Progress Administration funds during the early 1930s. The old store was torn down after the post office was discontinued and a rural route established. At the present time Robert Bass is constructing two bui1dings on the same site- -a grocery store and a feed store. Both buildings are fireproof concrete block structure s. The school building was purchased by Jesse Osborne, a professor at St. Louis University, who uses it as a summer home. Today the valley is quiet, the only activity is the presence of weekend canoeing business on the Courtois operated by Robert Bass. ------ CRAWFORD COUNTY AND CUBA MISSOURI James Ira Breuer, 1972 p. 84-85 ==================================================================== USGENWEB NOTICE: In keeping with our policy of providing free information on the Internet, data may be used by non-commercial entities, as long as this message remains on all copied material. These electronic pages may NOT be reproduced in any format for profit or for presentation by other persons or organizations. Persons or organizations desiring to use this material for purposes other than stated above must obtain the written consent of the file contributor. This file was contributed for use in the USGenWeb Archives by: Joe L. Miller ====================================================================