Editing Seligman, Missouri (section)

===Setbacks===
A series of major fires had a disastrous impact on Seligman,<ref name="Mitchell et al, p. 8"/> beginning on January 22, 1883, when a fire broke out at the Exchange Hotel which destroyed it completely along with a large part of the town; W. J. Piper's Witchita [sic] House Hotel, four saloons, a grocery, a meat market, a barber shop, a general store, the Seligman Hotel, a drug store, a bakery, a hardware and a shoe store, as well as the office of the ''[[Seligman Sunbeam]]'' went up in flames. Exactly two months later, the stables of the Seligman and Eureka Springs Stage Coach Company also burned down. Then, on January 13, 1884, another fire destroyed part of the remaining town.<ref name="Mitchell et al, p. 16"/>

Residents began rebuilding immediately, and in the process constructed Seligman's first public school, a two-story frame building completed in circa 1892, replacing the subscription school.<ref>Mitchell et al, p. 229. It was a two-story frame building later replaced by a brick building, also used by the Masonic Lodge.</ref>