OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Frayer/Fraser School
136th Ave. and 38th St.
Hamilton, MI 49419
The Frayer or Fraser School (District No. 1) was located on the southeast corner of 38th Street and 136th Avenue in Heath Township, Allegan County, MI. After being closed as a school, the building served as a privately owned residence. It was reported as demolished in the fall of 2016.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Tantie School House #14 (1909-1916)
1850 US-98
Okeechobee FL 34972
The first school in the region north of Lake Okeechobee, known as “The Bend,” was a thatched-roof structure built around 1897. Homesteader Peter Raulerson and family did not have enough children old enough to support a school, and were forced to bring in five students from nearby Platt’s Bluff. The children and the first teacher, Dr. George M. Hubbard, boarded with the Raulersons. In 1902, the area was renamed Tantie in honor of another local schoolteacher, Tantie Huckabee. A new one-room schoolhouse was built in 1909 by Peter’s son, Lewis, for the contract price of $500 and located on the west side of Parrott Avenue. The white frame building was designated School #14 by the St. Lucie County School Board and Hubbard became the first teacher of its 36 students.
Due to population growth, a one-room addition was built in 1914. A second addition was constructed in 1915, but the school was so crowded by the fall that a tent was set up for the overflow. It served as a school from 1909 to 1916. Construction began in 1916 on the Okeechobee Public School, and classes moved to the new building. Following the purchase of School #14 by the Okeechobee Historical Society, it was relocated to the present site in 1976. The society restored the building to serve as a museum. A historical marker was erected at the intersection of U.S. 98 and Northwest 18th Street, on the left when traveling north on U.S. 98, in 2016 by The Okeechobee Historical Society, Okeechobee County School System, Okeechobee County Board of County Commissioners, Okeechobee Retired Educators Association, and the Florida Department of State. The school is now the Okeechobee Historical Society Museum.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Fairview School
2612 130th Ave.
Hopkins, MI 49328
Located on the southwest corner of 130th Avenue and 26th Street in Monterey Township, Allegan County, Michigan, this two-story brick school is now a privately owned residence.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Newberry Little Red Schoolhouse
25815 SW 2nd Ave
Newberry, FL 32669
The Newberry Little Red School House (LRSH) takes its name from the town which was named Newberry by one of the first settlers who came here from Newberry, South Carolina. The first school was a frame building built before 1900. This was replaced with a wooden building on the site of the present “Little Red School House”. This building burnt and the red brick building was built ca. 1909/1910, and was used as a K-12 school until approximately 1930 when a two story high school was built, and then as an elementary school until 1975 when the current Newberry Elementary School was built. Several buildings were added over time. However, the building was not finished for the fall and school was started in the old building. On October 13, 1975, the teachers, children, and staff, carrying all their books and belongings in their arms, marched down the road to the new building.
The LRSH was used by the Alachua County School System until 1975 when Newberry Elementary School was built. Shortly after that, the City took ownership of the LRSH, kept it for restoration, and in 1999, began work with help from a State of Florida historic preservation grant and contributions from the local community.. The renovation of the LRSH took place due to the work of several civic groups, local businesses, and local citizens who worked diligently to raise funds. In 2002 local and state dignitaries were on hand to celebrate the official opening of one of Newberry’s most treasured city landmarks. It includes a museum established by members of the Friends of the Little Red School House and set as an original classroom, with class photos, report cards, diplomas, and other memorabilia.. Today the LRSH is used to house offices for the City of Newberry and is on the Historic Registry. This building is a source of pride for the Newberry Community and has many visitors to the school museum. Visitors are invited to come see what school was like over a half-century ago in the Little Red Schoolhouse.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Burton School (1886)
4302 128th Ave,
Allegan, MI, 49010
The Burton School (District #6) was built in 1886 on the southeast corner of M-40 and 128th Avenue (a.k.a. A42) in Heath Township, Allegan County, Michigan. This old school house sits on over one acre, and today its current use is as a privately owned residence with many improvements including a new roof. It last sold on June 2, 2021, for $36,000.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
1886 Narcoossee Schoolhouse
5026 Yukon Street
Saint Cloud, FL 34771.
The Narcoossee Area Chapter of the Osceola County Historical Society has been helping to raise funds for the recently restored Historic 1886 Narcoossee School House located at 5026 Yukon Street, adjacent to the Narcoossee Fire Station. Built in 1886, it is the oldest school house in Osceola County. The chapter is providing period furnishings and materials for the 1886 Narcoossee Schoolhouse. The exterior and interior restoration of the 1886 Narcoossee Schoolhouse took place from 2015 to 2017. The chapter received recognition by the Florida Trust for Historic Preservation with an Outstanding Achievement Award in the Restoration/Rehabilitation category for the 1886 Narcoossee Schoolhouse in 2018.
The Narcoossee Chapter of Osceola History is selling engraved bricks to benefit the restoration of the historic Narcoossee Schoolhouse with the creation and installation of a commemorative brick display at the schoolhouse from 2018 to the present, and other chapter projects, with ongoing fundraising for restoration and preservation goals through community BBQs, art, craft and food markets, plant sales, bake sales, and other events and activities. There are still plenty of opportunities for members, volunteers, and donors ahead as the Chapter works to obtain period furnishings for the historic schoolhouse, install attractive landscaping and informative signage, and complete the steps necessary to be able to open the schoolhouse to the public for tours, school field trips, and other events. The potential for establishing a local area museum in Narcoossee is also under review.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Eureka School
Grayson County
Providence, VA
Eureka School is a school and is located in Grayson County, Virginia, United States. The elevation above sea level is 2438 feet. Built in early the 1900s, this two-room schoolhouse was once warmed by a pot-belly stove, and to ensure that all of the students had a warm classroom, one student would have to come to school early to light the fire. This schoolhouse would educate the surrounding community of farming families for fifty years before it was retired to storage. And while its foundation is sagging and its walls are beginning to buckle, one can tell that it was once a special place.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Kenansville Schoolhouse
Kenansville Community Center
1180 South Canoe Creek Road
Kenansville FL 34739
Kenansville is a small community located just 12 miles north of Yeehaw Junction and 27 miles south of St. Cloud. It was given the name Kenansville after Mary Lily Kenan Flagler, the wife of Henry Morrison Flagler. In 1910, Henry Flagler made a deal with the town of “Whittier” that he would bring his railroad, the Florida East Coast Railroad, through the area to assist in their turpentine operations if they were to move to a new location and rename the town to “Kenansville.” He also made a promise that if the town’s name was changed, he would make a $10,000 contribution to build a new school. In 1913, Henry Flagler fell down a flight of marble stairs at Whitehall, his winter residence located in Palm Beach, Florida. Never recovering from his injuries, he died two days later. In 1914, Mary Lily Kenan Flagler Bingham (1867-1917), widow of Henry Flagler, kept the promise her late husband had made and donated five-acres of land and $6000 to the community to build a new brick schoolhouse to replace a smaller wooden school.
The two-story masonry vernacular brick building of late 19th, early 20th century design was erected in 1916 by architect, A.J. MacDonough and contractor Track and Nash on South Canoe Creek Road (County Road 523) 0.6 miles west of South Kenansville Road (U.S. 441), on the left when traveling west.. Classes began in 1917. At one time, from 1917 to early 1920, the school had five teachers with as many as 100 students and went all the way through high school. Three grades were taught in each of the four rooms. By 1922, only 29 students were enrolled in grades one through six and were taught by one teacher. For several decades, the school was considered one of the state’s most outstanding rural schools. In the 1950s, one county school official stated that Kenansville pupils were better grounded in the fundamentals of learning than most any other in the county.
The school board voted to close the school in 1961 and it remained closed for 30 years. In 1992, the school reopened as a response to a petition signed by 140 residents. During its reopening, the school served students from pre-K to third grade, saving the younger children the 35-mile bus ride to St. Cloud, while older students were bused to Ross E. Jeffries Elementary and other schools in St. Cloud. It was permanently closed down in 2003. In 2005, the school was deeded to the Kenansville Community Association Inc. with the help of the School Board of Osceola County and the Board of County Commissioners of Osceola County. The association applied for the National Register of Historic Places in 2008, but were rejected due to the lack of “historic physical integrity.” It was at this time that it was decided to restore the school, now known as the Kenansville Community Center, to its original historical condition. Though a lot of progress has been done, work continues on restoring it to this day. In 2009 a historical marker was erected by the Kenansville Community Association, Inc. and the Florida Department of State on the grounds in front of the school.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Clayville Log Schoolhouse
Clayville Town Historic Site
125 Co. Hwy. 9C
Pleasant Plains, IL 62677
The Clayville Town Historic Site is an open air museum in Sangamon County, Illinois. John Broadwell and his wife Betsy arrived on the prairie near the site of today’s Clayville, IL, in December of 1819. They began establishing a home as they waited for the remainder of the Broadwell Family to arrive. Moses Broadwell, the family patriarch, his wife Jane, daughter Sarah, and sons William, David, Thomas Jefferson, Charles, and Euclid arrived in the spring or summer of 1820. Moses Broadwell was born in Elizabethtown, New Jersey in 1764. He was fourth generation of Broadwells in America, as the Broadwell family was originally from England. Moses was orphaned at the age of ten. He served in the Revolutionary War in the Third New Jersey Infantry Regiment, he then married his second cousin Jane and moved to Ohio in 1800, near the present site of Cincinnati. Moses gained substantial wealth while in Ohio as a land speculator. In 1819 the Broadwells began their trek westward, taking a keel boat from Cincinnati to St. Louis.
When Moses and the remainder of the family followed John up the Illinois River, they traveled on the first steam boat to go up the Illinois River. The first four years that they resided along the Richland Creek in Illinois they were squatters. In 1824 the first land sales took place and Moses bought nearly 3,000 acres of land. That same year, the Broadwell family began constructing two brick homes, one of which still stands today and is known as the Broadwell Inn. The other Moses built as his mansion house, that home apparently burned at some point unknown and was torn down completely by the B & O Railroad when they brought the railroad through the area. The Broadwell family was energetic and business minded. The Broadwell Inn, built in 1824, served as a stagecoach stop and public house until 1847 when John Broadwell sold the property. During those years, they catered to stagecoach passengers, freight caravans, freight carriers, cattle drovers, circuit riders of the legal profession, such as Abraham Lincoln, and many others. They also owned and operated a tannery, wood mills, and established the town of Sangamo Town.
Sangamo Town was designed by Moses Broadwell with the intent of making it the county seat of Sangamon County. He designed it with over 80 lots for residential, mechanical, and governmental sites. The story goes that the delegation sent by the governor of Illinois to Sangamon County to determine the location for the county seat was taken on a rather out of the way swampy ride to make it appear that Sangamo Town was nearly unapproachable. Consequently, Springfield won the county seat and Sangamo Town began a downward spiral to oblivion. One interesting aside about Sangamo Town is that a very young Abraham Lincoln boarded with Charles Broadwell at Sangamo Town while building the raft that carried him first to New Salem then to New Orleans. Moses passed away in 1827 and was buried on the family property near today’s Broadwell Inn. His remains were moved to Oakridge Cemetery in 1862, where he is the only Revolutionary War veteran buried in that cemetery.
As the Broadwells were prominent members of the Whig political party, Clayville hosted a grand Fourth of July celebration in 1842 to mark the birthday of the Republic. Sometime in the early 1930’s, a Dr. Fink acquired the property and shortly thereafter the Broadwell Inn was listed on The Historic American Buildings Registry. About 1961 Dr. Emmett and Mary Pearson purchased the property from the family of Dr. Fink and began a restoration process. Two log cabins, two large barns, a blacksmith barn, and other outbuildings were acquired and moved to the site over the next few years. In 1972, the Pearsons donated the site to the Sangamon State University Foundation; the university operated the site until 1992 as the Clayville Rural Life Center. In 1992 the site was sold into private ownership and over the next several years deteriorated to a point that in 2007 it was declared one of the ten most endangered historic sites in the State of Illinois. In 2009, headed by Jim Verkuilen, The Pleasant Plains Historical Society was formed with the purpose of purchasing and saving The Clayville Historic Site, in May of 2010 the purchase of the site was finalized. In 2012, Landmarks Illinois, the organization that in 2007 had declared the site to be one of the most ten endangered sites in Illinois, awarded The Pleasant Plains Historical Society it’s advocacy award for saving the site.
A newly constructed log cabin serves as a one-room schoolhouse at Clayville Historic Site. The Sangamon County Historical Society awarded $1,000 to the Pleasant Plains Historical Society, which owns the site, to secure materials to stage the log cabin as a schoolhouse as it would have looked in the early 1800s. They’re trying to get the grounds to depict what the area was like as close as they can during the early 1800s. Other than the Broadwell Inn, they really don’t know where other buildings were. A centerpiece of Clayville Historic Site is the inn, a stagecoach stop and public house built in 1824 that closed in 1847. A school wasn’t originally on the property. But it was close by. They’re just not exactly sure where. There was a school called ‘Clayville School’ that was south of there. The only information they can find out about it is it was the later 1800s and Clayville dates from the 1820s.
Aaron Hagood of Hagood Construction and Old Fashion Cabins of Sullivan, Missouri, constructed the 20-by-16-foot log cabin schoolhouse. Four of the logs Hagood used had been placed on the property in the 1970s and were from an 1800s cabin in the New Salem area that belonged to Jesse Gum, a friend of Abraham Lincoln’s. There are four of the original logs in that log cabin. Rest of them were rotted, said Hagood,, who noted that other logs came from a cabin taken down that was built in 1822. The schoolhouse will include a copy of a United States map from the early 1800s, a U.S. flag from the early 1800s, slate boards, quill pens and inkwells, lunch buckets, as well as pegs on the wall to hang hats and coats. From reading about other schools of the area at that time, they found out that the desks were slanted wood, mounted to the outside walls. So when the kids were working at their desks, they were actually sitting and facing the wall. The benches will be split logs with wooden legs. They want to furnish it with things that the children, the teacher would have used to make it look like there is school going on there today. Education the primary focus for Clayville.
OLD SCHOOL OF THE DAY
Apollo School or Olympia School
9141 SE Apollo St.
Hobe Sound, FL 33455
The Apollo School or Olympia School, also known as the Picture City School, the Hobe Sound White School, the Apollo Street School, is an historic two-room elementary school building located at 9141 Southeast Apollo Street in Hobe Sound, Martin County, Florida. The building’s two-room schoolhouse plan is illustrative of a local school building constructed to serve a small town population with a “modern” school design. The building is one of the early elementary schools in Martin County and the only surviving two-room schoolhouse in the county. It is further significant for its long service as the Hobe Sound Elementary School. In the area of architecture the building is a good example of 1920s Mission style architecture applied to a small school building. Its design is ascribed to noted Florida architect Maurice Fatio.
The Apollo or Olympia School was erected in 1924. The school closed in 1963 upon the opening of the Hobe Sound Elementary School on Gomez Avenue. No longer needed as a schoolhouse, it was used as a thrift shop and, later, fell into disrepair. In order to save the beautiful old building, in 1999 interested members of the community joined together to procure the resources necessary to acquire and rehabilitate the building. The Apollo School Foundation was born. On December 20, 2002, it was added to the U.S. National Register of Historic Places. The building’s rehabilitation was complete in late 2013, and the former two-room schoolhouse formally reopened in 2014 to be used as a local historical museum as well as an educational, cultural and historical facility.
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