The Harding Schoolhouse, in Corson County, South Dakota, near Trail City, is a wood-frame schoolhouse built in 1931, a late date for such a structure, and named for President Warren G. Harding. It is located about 5 miles west and 5.5 miles north of Trail City and represents a late example of a one-story rectangular pen plan one room school house. The Harding School house is situated in the treeless open prairie of Corson County. The property consists of the school house and a combination coalshed/outhouse contained within the school yard. Approached from the north, the school yard is bounded on the west by the driveway. The building consists of two rooms: a main classroom and smaller cloakroom. Overall dimensions of the building are 16 feet by 30 feet.
Wall construction is of a wood balloon frame covered with lapped siding, painted in the original white color. A gable roof covered with asphalt shingles caps the building. The heating system in the schoolhouse consists of a coal-burning stove and brick chimney, which is located on the east gable-end wall. The only exterior door is located on the south axial wall of the cloakroom. A single interior door connects the cloakroom and the main classroom. Five southern-exposure windows provide light to the classroom, and one smaller window on the west facade lights the the cloakroom. Interior features include original blackboards, wainscoting, wooden coat pegs, and the coal-burning stove.
A well, with a cast iron hand pump, is located approximately three feet from the west facade. To the south of the building is a metal flagpole. It has been painted white and sports a gold ball at the top. The rectangular coalshed/outhouse is located directly east of the schoolhouse. Resting on an original concrete foundation, the building is of wood frame construction, covered with weatherboard, and capped by a gable roof. Over the years, several coats of white paint and new asphalt shingles have been added to the building. Three doors are located on the south axial wall, with the central door used for access to the coal storage area. A small triangular-shaped vent is located on the west wall near the gable.
The school was closed in 1953. Restoration of the property in 1975-1976 was done under the supervision of the late Bertha (Mrs. Henry) Bieber, in time for the Nation’s Bicentennial. The project included maintenance, repair, refurnishing, reshingling and painting. Further repair took place in 1988 when a replacement concrete foundation was installed as part of the school’s restoration. The restoration work included less permanent features such as a water crock, lunch pails marked with former students’ names, and original textbooks. The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1989. Currently, the property is maintained by a group of volunteers and is used as a gathering place for reunions and picnics.
Hannah Rosenwald School is a historic Rosenwald school located near Newberry, Newberry County, South Carolina. It was built during the 1924-1925 school year, replacing the older Free Hannah School, and is a one-story, frame, three-teacher type school. The school followed the standard interior plan for a three-teacher school, which included three classrooms, three cloakrooms, an industrial room, and an entry hall. The school was affiliated with the Hannah A.M.E. Church and closed in the 1960s when it was consolidated with the Newberry and Silverstreet schools.
Hannah Rosenwald School is significant as a building associated with African-American education during segregation in South Carolina and as a building that embodies the distinctive characteristics of a Rosenwald school design. The Julius Rosenwald Fund focused on providing monies for the construction of modern school buildings for rural African-American children in the South that could serve as models for all rural schools. Twenty-six Rosenwald schools, the second-highest number in the state, were built in Newberry County.
Known in Rosenwald School records as the “Utopia School” after the local community, Hannah Rosenwald School was built on four acres of land near Hannah A.M.E. Church, which relocated across the road from the school in 1952. The Rosenwald Fund donated $900, the African-American community donated $1000, and the public (both state and county) donated $2000 to build this three-teacher type school on a north-south orientation. Three-teacher schools were common in South Carolina, but most of them were built on an east-west orientation. The current openings between the classrooms indicate where blackboards once hung. Hannah School was listed with the National Register of Historic Places on January 22, 2009.
Pullen Corner School, Lincoln, Rhode Island. National Register of Historic Places.
Pullen Corner School (Hot Potato School)
Chase Farm Park
671 Great Rd.
Lincoln, RI 02865
The Pullen Corner School is a historic schoolhouse located at Chase Farm in Lincoln, Rhode Island. It is a small wood-frame structure with a gable roof, set on a granite foundation, a single bay wide and two deep, with the interior divided between a small vestibule area and the single classroom. The property also includes a woodshed and privy. The schoolhouse was built c. 1840-1850, and was one of the first schoolhouses built by the town.
The Pullen Corner School is better known affectionately as the Hot Potato School. According to legend, it earned its nickname after a teacher donated a stove to the school. She baked and boiled potatoes donated by local farmers on the new stove so that children could enjoy a hot lunch every day. This one-room schoolhouse was used to teach students in first through eighth grade until it and all the other one room schoolhouses closed down in 1922 when Lincoln Community School opened.
The building was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1984. The Pullen’s Corner School was originally located elsewhere in the northwestern section of town and relocated to Chase Farm Park in 2014 in order to restore and preserve it. It was carefully restored n 2016, and re-opened in 2018 to visitors and school groups. This one-room schoolhouse has now opened once again, nearly a hundred years after hosting the last class of children from nearby farms during the mid-19th to early 20th century.
The Hollygrove National School is a school building in Hollygrove, County Galway, Ireland. This plain two-room school house is a fine example of one of the most simplistic ‘factory school’ designs supplied by the OPW at the turn of the 20th century. Despite their pivotal role in education in rural Ireland at the time, many of these buildings are not recorded in the National Inventory of Architectural Heritage.
Like so many disused national school buildings present in the rural Irish landscape, the simple ‘to-plan’ architecture of Hollygrove and its isolated location in north Co. Galway reflects somewhat juxtaposed concepts of rural homogeneity, a school building like many others, built cheaply and ‘to-plan’ by the state administrators for a homogeneous local rural population, and the uniqueness of each rural area in its isolation (built in a isolated spot near the shore of Ballaghdacker Lough, seemingly far removed from the offices of design and planning – like so many other civic buildings planted in these locations from afar.
The building comprises a detached four-bay single-storey school, dated 1899. It is now derelict with the square-headed windows now boarded up. It has a pitched slate roof, with rendered chimneystack, and cast-iron rainwater goods. The walls are rendered with cement, having an inscribed limestone plaque reading ‘Hollygrove National School 1899’. The main entrance is a square-headed door opening, head being about mid-point of windows, and having timber battened door. There are also fixed timber paned windows with limestone sills. This is a typical small rural school of the end of the nineteenth century. Although disused it retains historic fabric and the plaque gives important information.
Hesthammer school is the oldest school in Tysvaer, build in 1863. It’s located close to the Statoil gas sentre at Karsto. It was the first school in the Falkeid area. The school is located next to the old road from Hesthammer to Arvik. Next to the road to Herstal is also an old stone monument, in memory of Cleng Peerson. The school has authentic interior from 1939. Today the school operates as a division under Karmsund Folk Museum. It is open at night every year during the Mid-Summer Night Festival and by arrangement.
The Federal School is a historic one-room schoolhouse located on Darby Road in Haverford, Pennsylvania, near the Allgates Estate. It was established in 1797, and was called the Federal School because of the community’s pride of being part of the Federal United States. At the end of the 19th century the busy suburban neighborhood of roads and houses we know today was farmland with dirt roads and horse-and-buggy transportation. There were a number of 1-room schoolhouses to teach the young reading, writing and the basics of math, but the fieldstone Federal School in Haverford was unique. Its founders recognized the need for education. Initially, the young attended on a subscription basis, but not much else is known about it until 1849, when the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania purchased the building, officially renamed it the Haverford Seminary Number 1, and by law now provided public education.
Haverford Seminary No. 1 served as a public school from then until the surrounding land was purchased privately by Horatio Gates Lloyd in 1940 and public education moved to larger schools. After the Lloyd family moved out, the little school house served as a storage building. The building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1971. The Historical Society of Haverford Township restored it in 1991. The Federal School now has 1849 school re-enactments for 4th Graders in the school District of Haverford Township, and to this day has been used as a venue to reenact the one-room school experience of over 200 years ago for contemporary school students. The desks and chairs inside are not original but were recreated by students of Haverford High School’s industrial arts students.
The historic Damascus School, also known as the Damascus Pioneer Craft School is a historic schoolhouse located at 14711 Southeast Anderson Road in Damascus, Oregon, built in 1876 in the old Damascus settlement on Foster-Barlow Road. One of the oldest rural schoolhouses still standing in the state of Oregon, it is listed on the National Register of Historic Places. Original a one room schoolhouse, it was expanded to two rooms in 1911. The school building is contemporarily home to the Damascus Fiber Arts School, a private art studio and training facility which offers classes in textile crafts on Tuesdays through Thursdays from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., and Saturday workshops. Visitors are welcome to come see shows of student and faculty tapestry and knitting. The building is located a few hundred feet south of the Center of Damascus and Hwy 212.
The quiet village of Dunvegan, in Eastern Ontario is home to the Glengarry Pioneer Museum, which opened its doors in 1962 under the auspices of the Glengarry Historical Society. Its mandate has been to preserve, maintain, interpret and promote the artifacts, records, culture and events of the pioneers who settled in the area in order to create a tangible link with the past, and to ensure that the present generation and those to come might know and appreciate the experiences of their forebears. The Museum’s original structure started life as the MacIntosh store in the 1840s. It is this period in which it remains. Once established as a museum, eight other buildings have slowly been relocated to the site from the surrounding areas to help interpret and house its rich history. The area in which the Museum covers is primarily Glengarry county, the oldest in what was Upper Canada, now Ontario. All artifacts, whether archival documents, photographs, objects or even oral histories are items which have some link to this area, and are predominantly from the 19th century.
The newest building on the museum’s grounds is the SS#1 Kenyon Schoolhouse, which is nicknamed the Big Beaver School. It was built in 1910, and was the third school to be built as School Section #1 (the first was built in 1842, and the second in 1874). This school was located west of Laggan on the 8th concession of Kenyon. After that, it was located behind the present day Laggan Public School for close to 20 years until it was moved to the museum in 2011. SS#1 Kenyon, more commonly known as Big Beaver School, educated elementary-aged children in the Kenyon Township for 140 years. It stood as the heart of the community and acted as a center for activities like meetings and social events. Children took pride in their schools and many Glengarrians share fond memories of their time spent in one-room schoolhouses scattered along county roads. Take a virtual tour of the building and travel back in time for the student experience in a 19th and early 20th century schoolhouse.
Big Beaver School first opened its doors in 1842 on lot seven in the eighth concession of Kenyon. Boys sat on one side of the room and girls on the other and all faced the center with an aisle between them. To accommodate the growing pupil attendance of 90, the school was rebuilt in 1874 on almost the same site (also known as Battle Hill School). The second school was larger and had a raised platform at the front for the teacher and benches across the room. Eventually the school was found to be getting out of date and in poor repair. In 1910, they built the current version. A change in government attitude towards the usefulness of one-room schoolhouses resulted in their closure and the opening of central schools. Big Beaver closed in 1969. Former student Christena Longmore purchased the school and in 1992, she donated it to the Laggan Book Committee. They moved the school one mile to Laggan Public School for its 25th anniversary where it was restored and used as a learning module. In 2011, Big Beaver moved to the Glengarry Pioneer Museum.
Because of the small and isolated settlements in early Glengarry, education was often held in the home. The development of communities resulted in the demand for public education. The District Schools Act of 1807 provided the first public funds for grammar schools in Ontario. In 1816, the Common School Act authorized funding for the establishment of common schools (elementary). These acts, along with the development of the General Board of Education in 1823 resulted in the development of the one-room school system. Originally planned for the sons of the wealthy, interest in education for all children grew in Upper Canada. It wasn’t until the 1840’s that education and schools began to grow in Glengarry. In 1871, Ontario had a free and universal educational system funded by provincial and municipal taxes.
At the sound of the nine o’clock bell, students lined up outside; girls on one side and boys on the other. Most children had walked to school, which could be a quarter mile through any type of weather. During extreme weather, some children were fortunate to get a ride by horse. The day began with a Bible reading, the Lord’s Prayer, a hymn, the National Anthem and a salute to the flag. After this, the regular schoolwork began. The teacher was responsible for eight grades and taught all subjects including arithmetic, spelling, composition, literature, reading, history, geography, health, art, music, and writing. While one class was taught, the others worked independently at their desks. Attendance in school fluctuated depending on the season. Older boys and girls attended only in the winter as they were needed on the farm during planting and harvest. Big Beaver students spent their breaks on the west side of the school where an acre of flat-dry land afforded them one of the best playgrounds.
In the early 19th century, teachers were scarce and teaching was considered a very low status job. They often had little education and no qualifications, and were often retired army officers. Early schoolteachers were more likely to be men than women. It wasn’t until the 1880’s-90’s that more women began teaching. Early female educators were typically young and single who taught until they married. The creation of the General Board of Education resulted in requirements for teachers to have qualifications and higher education. There were three levels of qualifications. The 3rd class must have completed Fourth Form (grade 12).The 2nd class must have attended a model or normal school (teacher’s college) for one year. The 1st class must have completed Form 5 (grade 13).After you completed the fifth form, you would attend a Faculty of Education (such as a university). All teachers were allowed to teach in public schools. Teachers were paid with a small salary and a government grant. The earliest recorded salary for a Big Beaver teacher is to Miss McLean in 1878 for$120.00. Sarah Jessie was the first teacher in the new 1910 school. Throughout Big Beaver’s existence, the board never hired a teacher who was not of Scottish or Irish decent and never did the school have a Roman Catholic teacher. This is evidence of the prominent Scottish and Irish residents who settled in Glengarry County during the 18th and 19th centuries.
In 1807, an act was passed that resulted in the opening of a few grammar schools. Originally created to prepare the sons of well-to-do families for university, the Common School Amendment Act of 1871 changed this and secondary and primary education was open to all children. Until 1947, students had to successfully complete an entrance exam to attend high school. Only those successful and whose parents could afford it sent their children to High School. In early June, there were morning classes and sometimes “after-four classes” to prepare students for the exam. Prior to 1945, grammar schools were located in towns and cities which forced rural children to board with someone in town. Unfortunately, the move resulted in a large number of dropouts.
. Pot belly stoves were usually found directly in the middle of the schoolhouse. It was the teacher’s job to make sure the chimney was cleaned. The task of bringing in firewood and ensuring the box was full of logs and starting the fire was left to the students. The biggest expense for schools was the firewood. According to minutes from the 1876 Meeting of the Freeholders and Households of SS#1, a motion was moved and seconded that every parents within the section must send, “before the 5th of February, half a cord of good wood or be liable to pay One dollar.” The stove served two purposes; for heat and to warm up lunches. Many children would place soup or milk on the stove to reheat, as well as potatoes from the morning walk they carried to keep their hands warm. Schools were built about a mile away from any settlements and many children in the township walked as far as a quarter of a mile.
Water coolers were a staple item in many one roomed school houses. Before school started, students would collect water from the well to fill the cooler. The cooler would be left at the back of the school for children to fetch a drink from when needed. Students who were well off would have their own cups to drink from, but in most cases, rural schools would have one tin cup beside the water cooler to be shared by everyone. This often led to germs being spread quickly and was eventually against school rules as it was deemed unsanitary. According to students who attended Big Beaver in the 1940’s, students fetched water from the well on E.L.D MacMillan’s homestead, only a couple yards away because the well on the school property had been contaminated by a cesspool.
Babbs (formerly named Babbs Switch) is a community in Kiowa County, Oklahoma, 4 miles south of the intersection of state highway 9 and U.S. 183. It was named for Edith “Babbs” Babcock. Babbs is 6 miles south-southeast of Hobart, and is at an elevation of 1,535 feet. Babbs was the scene of the nationally known Babbs Switch Fire on December 24, 1924, in which 36 people died in a school fire while attending a Christmas Eve party in a one room frame school house. Many of the dead were children, and several families were completely wiped out. According to the National Fire Protection Association, it is the sixth-deadliest school fire on record in the United States.
The fire was started by a candle on a Christmas tree. The party was attended by over 200 people. The Christmas tree decorated with lighted candles stood at the front of the room, and presents were placed on the tree to be distributed to the children in attendance at the end of the program. The fire began when a teenage student dressed as Santa Claus was removing presents from the tree to give to the children. The flames ignited paper decorations, tinsel, and dry needles and spread quickly to the tree, stage, and the greater structure of the building. People rushed to the building’s single door, which opened inward and was soon jammed with people. Escape through the windows was blocked because they were covered with secure metal screens to prevent vandals from breaking into the school. One boy was able to escape through a window because someone succeeded in prying open a corner of one of the screens.
In 1925, a new school building, Babbs Memorial School, was built on the site as a memorial and a model to point the way to safer county schools the nation over. The school was discontinued and closed in 1943 when the Babbs Switch district was annexed into the nearby Hobart and Roosevelt districts. It was dismantled and sold. A stone monument, which bears a short description of the fire and a list of the dead, currently stands on the site of the former school. The marker is in Babbs, Oklahoma, in Kiowa County south of Hobart, on U.S. 183 north of County Road E1420, on the right when traveling north. The nationwide publicity over the fire led to stricter fire safety codes for schools and other public buildings.
Convenience is a community on US 35 at the intersection of Camp Grove Rd. in Wayne Township, Fayette County, Ohio. Convenience was on the Toledo, Delphos, & Burlington Railroad (later the Cincinnati, Hamilton, & Dayton Railroad). Its original proprietors were Noah Hukill (1805 – 1887) from Ohio County, West Virginia (formerly in Virginia) and Susan (Smith) Hukill (1801 – 1877) from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. They got married in Fayette County in 1831, had 5 children, and ran a stagecoach stop tavern and inn prior to the arrival of the railroad in the area. The school land was donated by War of 1812 veteran James Bryant (1787 – 1848) from Virginia and Catharine (Eyeman) Bryant (1792 – 1869) around 1844. German Baptist church services were held in the school until a wood frame church was constructed in the southwest corner of the intersection in 1853 – 1854. The church has since been lost to time, but the town’s last one-room schoolhouse in the northwest corner of the intersection appears to be in decent preserved condition for its age.
A son of Noah and Susan, William R. Hukill (1834 – 1904) and his wife Mary (Kelso) Hukill 1836 – 1909), took on proprietorship of the town in the mid to late 1800s. They got married in 1858 and had 3 children. War of 1812 veteran and county pioneer John H. DeWitt (1785 – 1855) from Clark County, Kentucky was the first postmaster. William was appointed to the postmaster position after John passed away. He also served as justice of the peace and the train station attendant. The post office was discontinued from the late 1860s to mid-1880s, and William again held the postmaster position until the office was discontinued. The train tracks ran through the northern side of town and its former bed is now part of the Paint Creek Recreational Trail, a 35-mile paved path running from Washington Court House to Chillicothe in Ross County.
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