Tag Archives: Schoolhouse

 

 

A few days ago, I posted some pictures from a nature preserve on Lake Ontario.

The lakeshore there has stretches of coarse gray sand and a fair number of fallen trees, where the clay bluffs eroded during winter storms.

And lots and lots of rocks, what they call a cobble beach.

I wanted to show what folks in the area did with all those “cobblestones.”

This is a one-room schoolhouse, built around 1820-24 and used for over a century.

 

 

I was happy to run across it and see the local historical society is maintaining it in fine shape.  But it did strike me, that perhaps because it was a schoolhouse and not a bank, store, or private residence, the stones may not have been selected with as much care as usual, for uniformity and smoothness.   It’s seven or eight miles from Ontario, so they may be rocks from local fields or a glacial dump and not the lakeshore, there’s moraines and eskers a bit farther south.  But nonetheless it’s a mellow, handsome little building.

 

 

 

1820's, architecture, Great Lakes, History, NY, Ontario, Upstate New York

Walks Around Upstate New York. Cobblestone Schoolhouse, Wayne County, October, Late Afternoon

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19th century, 20th century, Early American History, Finger Lakes, FLX, NY, Upstate New York

Walks Around the Finger Lakes. Yates County. A one-room schoolhouse

 

 

It’s not uncommon to see colonial-era churches, and those from the early days of the republic, surrounded by burial grounds.  In those days, churchyards = graveyards, and no doubt it was a successful business strategy, helping to keep folks on the straight and narrow.   The “rural” or “garden” cemetery movement didn’t begin until the 1830’s.

 

But it always struck me as odd, driving by this schoolhouse, to see it with its own cemetery, like a perpetual after-school detention for wayward and recalcitrant pupils.

The epitaphs probably have misspellings and tell of fatal miscalculations and deadly grammatical errors, “died of a dangling participle,” etc.

 

“John Smith ~ We’re Just Spitballing Here”

“Billy Schmeider ~ Never Added Up to Much ~ And Has Now Been Subtracted” 

“Here Lies Nathaniel Johnson / Under This Slate /  Lies the Late Nate / Always Late / To Class”

“Jane Jones ~ Death is a Debt to Nature Due / Which I Have Paid and So Must You / Altho Death / Could Not Thwart / I Still Owe a Book Report”

 

 

 

Never send to know for whom the school bell tolls…kind of rang a bell with me, so I never stopped, just thumbed my nose and sped by.

But finally, one autumn day, I pulled over to take a few photos, and found the explanation for the strange combo – – the 1869 building was moved to this site, along Route 14A, in 1991.

 

 

After the move and restoration, the county historian wrote “The Baldwin Cemetery directly behind the school…has recently become active again,”  which sounds mildly alarming, if you believe in ghosts, but I suppose it just means, they’d resumed burying people there again.

 

 

The new setting seems appropriate, because when I drove out to the original site – – there was another burial ground there, too, the abandoned “West Woods Cronk Cemetery.”

So now I can’t pass by with mentioning  the Cronks, a name I’ve run across before, on farms and roads all around Upstate, and while reading about the early Dutch days of this state, when it was New Netherlands.

When I visited Pixley Falls (north of Rome, NY), there was a historical marker not too far away, for an old-time countryman named Hiram Cronk.

Even though he was a small-scale farmer, in an area that seems like the hind end of beyond, when he died in 1905, Hiram rated a funeral procession through Manhattan, and reportedly 50,000 people paid their respects as he lay in state in New York’s City Hall.

It was not just his extraordinary age.  When he passed away, at the age of 105, Hiram was the last veteran of the war of 1812.  He’d joined the army on August 4, 1814, as a drummer boy.

Another branch of the family kept a longer version of the original Dutch name, something like Krankheyt, and eventually produced a famous newscaster of the ‘60’s and ‘70’s, Walter Cronkite.

And that’s the way it is.

 

About 20% of people in Yates County are Amish, and many others are Mennonites. Two buggies going up the road in front of the schoolhouse.

 

Standard

 

 

Wood, brick, or cobblestone, one-room schoolhouses still dot the Finger Lakes region.

Some are simply boarded up and slowly collapsing.  Every week, I used to drive past an abandoned school on Route 96, a small but handsome brick one, like the photo below, but it has fallen down and disappeared, since I was in high school.

Some have graduated to new roles, like this first photo, as cottage homes, or farm storage, like the second.

I haven’t known that many people, who attended one, but have read of countless famous folks who did, and they all have nothing but praise and appreciation for the experience.

 

Fayette NY. In 1900, there were sixteen schoolhouses in that town, with a total population of 2.711 residents, so some of them must’ve been almost one-student affairs.

 

But they’re really not completely ancient history, are they.  One of my teachers, who retired three years ago, attended a school like this in Cayuga County.  And there’s plenty of Amish schools all around us that are still active, for grades 1-8.  One of my grandmothers, who graduated from teachers college around 1950, was still required to do a term of student teaching in a one-room school.  But there are only a few hundred left in operation in this country.

I’d thought Herbert Hoover held the record, but actually Lyndon Johnson was, I think, our last “one-room schoolhouse” President.

LBJ, like nine other Presidents, did some teaching himself, before going into politics. And he achieved some important gains for education, like Head Start.

He briefly attended a one-room school at the age of four, and when he signed the “Elementary and Secondary Education Act,” in April 1965, he was sitting next to that school again.

LBJ Library

“In this one-room schoolhouse Miss Katie Deadrich taught eight grades at one and the same time. Come over here, Miss Katie, and sit by me, will you? Let them see you. I started school when I was four years old, and they tell me, Miss Kate, that I recited my first lessons while sitting on your lap.”  LBJ

 

But according to his biographers, apparently his conception of “domestic affairs” was a pretty broad, er…I mean, a pretty broad one, so to speak, and I think Miss Katie might have been a tad dismayed, if she’d learned just how many women LBJ invited to sit in his lap, throughout his married life.

 

Currier & Ives print of an 1858 painting by George Henry Durrie (from the MMA website). James Garfield, who might’ve been remembered as “The Education President,” if he hadn’t been assassinated, was our last “Born-in-a-Log-Cabin” President, also attended and taught in some one-room schools, including one in Poestenkill, NY. There’s a beautiful 1881 two-room school, in neighboring Brunswick, named in his honor.

 

The two-room “Garfield School” in Brunswick, NY. (Photo from Wikipedia). I haven’t been systematically photographing this old-time schools, but may do another post – – there’s some octagon ones in the area that might be of interest.

 

 

 

You may be surprised to learn, that I attended this school. (Well, for a day.) The Ansley School (1849 – 1953) is south of Geneva, and they bring grade-schoolers there for the one-room experience. I believe we practiced cursive writing on slates.

 

 

Winslow Homer’s “Snap The Whip” (1872)   A number of older folks have told me, they remember having prints of this hung in their schools.  This is the Met’s version – –  the original, larger version, exhibited at the 1876 Centennial in Philadelphia, had a mountain range in the background.

 

 

 

Butler Institute of Art

 

I doubt public schools would hang these pictures anymore – – bare feet!  no adult supervision!  dangerous single-sex game!  head coverings! unstructured play!  possible bees in the wildflowers!  children having fun!  etc.

I love both versions.  The mountains make it look more secluded, like it’s probably a small community, in a little valley.

In the other one, without the mountains hemming them in, the scene looks giddier somehow, and the open sky makes it seem like one of those kids might just escape the gravity of their little town, and get airborne, if they can just spin fast enough.

 

“The Country School” Winslow Homer 1871 (St. Louis Art Museum). I’ve read many times, that the teachers were often young, unmarried women. One of my grandmothers, teaching in a city school in the ’50’s, was married, but concealed the fact that she was expecting as long as possible, because they didn’t allow pregnant teachers in her school!

 

 

 

1820 cobblestone schoolhouse. Butler, Wayne Co., NY

 

 

1880's, architecture, Finger Lakes, FLX, History, NY, United States, Upstate New York

Walks Around The Finger Lakes. April, Italy Valley Schoolhouse #4

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