Last week in this space we looked at one-room schools in our area. Once upon a time there were about 400 just in Steuben County alone. It seems hard to believe, but a number of these were in use up until at least 1961. By then their time had really passed, and there was a lot of pressure on hold-out communities to face the fact that we were in the second half of the twentieth century, when children required a different sort of education. I don’t know this for a fact, but I’ve been told that what finished off the last remaining few was a requirement for flush toilets, rather than outhouses. After that they tossed in the towel.
Like many things in days gone by, they’ve become cloaked with nostalgia. But the truth, of course, is that they had their plusses and their minuses, just like everything else. Some were great experiences, and some were just ghastly. Some were steppingstones, and some were dead ends. Here are some odds and ends about the one-room schools.
*First of all – they weren’t all one-room. Stephens Mills in Fremont had a two-room school. Pleasant Valley, near Hammondsport, had a lovely four-room school. So while most were a single room, perhaps calling them rural schools would be more accurate.
*Even out in the rural towns, multi-room graded schools already existed back in the 19th century. Howard is a good example of this.
*The population in New York keeps going up, but the number of schools districts has been going down for 150 years! Mostly this is because better transportation (especially cars and buses) makes the little local one-room districts unnecessary.
Number of school districts in New York
1865 11,780
1900 11,000
1925 9,950
1960 1,292
1999 705
*How many rural schools (school districts) in selected towns?
Bath 24
Caton 11
Jasper 14
Wayne 5
Wayland 14
*In 1956, consolidation of 62 school districts formed the Corning-Painted Post School District. Some students there still attended one-room schools until 1957, and in Bath until 1961. Until consolidation, scarcely half of the one-room students in the Corning area went on to high school, even though that option was available to them. That percentage shot up instantly with consolidation into larger elementary and junior-high schools.
*One-room schools are having a revival in our area. Conservative Anabaptist (Amish or Mennonite) communities have their own schools. Though operated like the schools of days gone by, they are private religious schools, rather than public schools.
*Bath Village had a one-room school for African American students on Howell Street until the schools were integrated in 1867.
*Here are some folks who went to one-room schools in Steuben County:
-Joe Paddock (Brundage [Cold Springs] School): veterinarian, president of Steuben County Historical Society
-Tom Watson (Campbell Red School House): president of IBM
-Benjamin Bennitt (Mount Washington School): lawyer, lieutenant colonel in the Civil War, Judge of Sessions
-W.W. Averell (Gulf School): West Point graduate, Civil War general, diplomat
*Here are some one-room schools still open to the public…
-Red School House, or Watson School (Campbell District 5), Watson Homestead… built 1839
-Babcock Hollow School (Bath District 11), Steuben County Historical Society (at Steuben County Fairgrounds)… built 1849
-Browntown School (Caton District 5), Corning-Painted Post Historical Society (at Patterson Inn Museum)… built 1878
-Northrup Hill School (Rathbone District 10), Middletown Historical Society… built 1853
-Hornby Forks School (Hornby District 11), Town of Hornby Museum… built 1876
-Cooktown School (originally built and operated privately for children of employees of Constant Cook), now Bath Head Start… built in the 1840s. I believe this is the oldest school building in our region still operated as a school. By the way, Mr. Cook also welcomed the African American children of Bath to attend his school.
-Slate Creek Road School (Town of Hartsville Museum)