Located in Blooming Grove (Bloomington Township section 22), Walker School is generally recognized as the first school in McLean County. Residents of Blooming Grove organized a subscription school (the tuition was $2.50 for the four-month school term), and Delilah Mullin held classes at the Dawson cabin. Area residents erected the first log schoolhouse in 1827, and formally organized a school district in 1834. William Walker donated a half-acre lot (hence the school name) and the district erected a small frame schoolhouse.
Recent interest in Walker School dates to the presidency of George Herbert Walker Bush. One of the school district's early residents was George E. Walker. While he was not related to the school’s namesake, he became the great-great grandfather of the nation’s forty-first president (and thus the great-great-great grandfather of George Walker Bush, the forty-third president).
This collection contains three nineteenth century attendance rolls; information on the school’s history and connections to the Walker and Bush family lines; as well as reunion materials dating to the twentieth century.