Oaks School, or district 109, stands north of Baker’s crossroads in section 20 of Grassy Township.
William Pinckney Throgmorton, Baptist preacher and editor of the Illinois Baptist, taught this school during 1866 and completed a term for his successor the winter of 1868. His mother died in 1865 near Vienna, and the boy left his step-father to live with his uncle, J. P. Throgmorton, in Grassy. He attended school and taught three months at Pleasant Hill, where he was later ordained to the ministry. In the fall of 1866 he contracted to teach the Oaks, and went to Marion to be examined for a certificate. David G. Young, a Baptist minister, was county superintendent of schools.
During his second term at the Oaks, Mr. Throgmorton boarded at the home of David and Elisabeth (Sanders) Baker. Before he went on to his next school he married their daughter, Eliza Catherine Baker. On September 24, 1868 the bride was sixteen and the husband nineteen. Together they served a long ministry in many parts of southern Illinois, always returning to the old home near Baker’s crossroads.
(Extracted from Pioneer Folks and Places, Barbara Barr Hubbs, 1939 which is on sale at the Williamson County Museum)