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Comparing school then and now

By now, school has started just about everywhere. New supplies, new clothes, and new shoes have been purchased. Some schools have had renovations, some of them major, but nothing compares with what the settlers in this area were faced with – entirely new schools! Thanks to a timely Facebook post by the Beverly Branch of the Washington County Library, I was reminded of a book written many years ago by local historian Winnie Smith Johnson entitled “That’s Where It All Began”. My copy was printed courtesy of the Beverly-Waterford Chamber of Commerce by The River Press and dated 1988, while the library listed their date as 1997. See how many places and names from long ago are still used today and think what it must have been like to go ‘back to school’ in the late 1700’s. In Winnie’s own words?

“Education was very important to the citizens of Waterford Township. Major Dean Tyler taught at classes in Tyler’s Blockhouse as early as 1790. He was soon joined by Lieutenant Joseph Frye, both men being well educated in the east. Susanna Dodge, wife of Captain John Dodge, instructed the children, both at Plainfield and Millsburgh.

The settlement at Round Bottom was about four miles downriver from Fort Frye. It received its name from the rounded bend on the Muskingum River which nearly encircles the fertile plain. Samuel Cushing, Allen Devol, David Wilson, Benjamin Shaw, and Andrew Story began improvements on their lands and build their cabins in 1795. As soon as their crops were planted, these men set about the important task of constructing a schoolhouse for their children. The land was donated by Cushing. There is a very old brick, one-room school house there today. Whether it was the original building is not known. However, it is thought to be the oldest brick one-room school house still standing in Ohio. It stands beside the Round Bottom Cemetery near Coal Run.

Names of the schools are mostly memories from stories told by parents years ago. They included such names as Corey, Ruraldale, Laurel Hill, Wolf Creek, Righteous Ridge, Ross, Maple Grove, Wall Street, Tick Ridge, Noulton, Congress Run, and many others. By 1850 there were more than 24 schools within a six mile radius of Round Bottom.

As time passed, larger classrooms were needed. Buildings became wood sided and better windows were added, as many as three on a side with two outside doors for entry. This provided better light as schools went from kerosene lamps to electricity. Each early school had a hand-dug well which was laid up to a depth of fifteen feet with large rocks. A well house would sit on top of the well and would have a windlass inside. A bucket for water was attached to a rope or chain and would be brought up full of water. It would either be poured into a bucket or left fastened with water in it by use of a block of wood inserted in the end of the windless.

Inside plumbing had not been heard of in the early days, so each school had an outhouse. Usually there was a sliver of a moon designed in the door and the only light was through the cracks of the sides and through the moon on the door. There was no Charmin or Cottonelle in those days. Sometimes corncobs, large leaves, or catalog sheets would be available.

Teachers assigned the biggest students to build the fire and carry in wood or coal for the big potbellied stove in the center of the room. You could burn for the stove reflection on one side while others would freeze on the backside.”

Thanks to Winnie for her timeless tale and to the library for reminding me of this story. I must add, however, that when my aunt started teaching in rural West Virginia in the 1960’s, she taught in a one-room schoolhouse with these same ‘amenities’. (I recently came across a picture of my sister, my uncle, and myself standing outside this ‘one-room wonder’, so the tales of Aunt Kay’s first school is not just a piece of family history that has become distorted over the years.) Ah, the beginning of another school year. I wonder when the ‘hardships’ our children face today will become ‘tales of days gone by’.

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Sue Sampson is a longtime columnist for the Parkersburg News and Sentinel.

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