This was the Basswood School, across the road from the Basswood cemetery and church. Basswood gained some notoriety in 1907 when a man named John McDaniel was arrested for procuring dynamite, with which he intended to blow up the schoolhouse. The Freeport Journal-Standard reported that the arrest happened over a year after Mr. McDaniel and other accomplices placed a sack of dynamite in the school, where 5 individuals were inside the building, unaware of the explosives. A lady in the group sat down on the sack of dynamite and unknowingly extinguished the fuse which had already been lit (this is straight out of the November 27, 1907 edition of the Journal-Standard).

The building shown here was not the original school. The previous structure had been taken down sometime in the early 1900s and the one seen in the photo was constructed around the same time. Mr. McDaniel had previously owned the land on which the school is located, and was involved in an ongoing boundary dispute. When the new schoolhouse was under construction, one of the walls was dynamited. In November 1907, finally, a McDaniels accomplice came forward with explosive information about the dynamiting activities (get it?...."explosive"...came up with that all by myself) and the arrest was made.

It's unclear when the school closed, but newspaper articles suggest it operated into the 1940s. A photo of the school as it was in 1918 is archived on the Lena-Winslow school district website:

https://www.le-win.net/ourpages/auto/...

These photos originated from a 1918-19 Stephenson County school directory. It contained photos of each school, along with the names of teachers and school board members.