Warren Local Schools Superintendent Kyle Newton gestures to a wall in the new elementary school that will be used to chronicle the district’s history. The school is scheduled to be open for classes at the beginning of the 2020-21 school year. (Photo by Michael Kelly)

VINCENT — With its $63-million-plus building project underway, Warren Local Schools is being careful to honor the past while heading into the future.

A group of amateur historians has been given more than 40 feet of wall space in the district’s new elementary school to trace the district’s rich past.

Like districts around the region, Warren schools began with one-room schoolhouses in the 19th century. Members of the group – Sidney Brackenridge, Bruce Kelbaugh, Sue Kesterson and Hugh Coffman – said at a meeting Monday they had so far identified 79 such buildings in Warren Township alone, some still standing, others demolished long ago and remembered only through photographs and documents.

“They had to be located within walking distance of their students,” said Kelbaugh, explaining why the buildings were so numerous in the past.

Collecting the information has been a lengthy and finicky task. Coffman said the schoolhouses are frequently mentioned in old documents “but it’s mostly a little vague, it goes back 200 years.”

Kesterson said the old documents are a window into education as well as buildings.

“We’ve got a register from a schoolhouse in Fairfield Township that shows the teachers and students in 1862,” she said. “We’ve got so much information from those days, like the old class schedule. It can show people how things used to be.”

The district is providing some support for the group beyond just offering them the wall space. Superintendent Kyle Newton told them Monday that a graphic design firm in Zanesville is working on presentation ideas to show them.

The display won’t necessarily be static. Coffman mentioned a system of portable pull-up screens that could be changed occasionally, and suggested the permanent decoration of the wall could include a history of the railways in the area, which determined much of the community growth patterns in the early days.

Newton said the wall dedicated to tracing Warren’s history will be in a prominent location in the building, which is scheduled for completion in time for classes to begin there in the fall.

“It’s at least 40 feet long and eight feet tall, it’s perfectly located, visible from the entry vestibule,” he said.

In addition to the research being done by the historical group, the old buildings in the Warren district occasionally divulge chunks of the past. Newton said a disused room in one building was discovered to be stacked to the ceiling with old trophies. Occasionally, he said, alumni and other members of the community bring in old boxes with photographs and documents that reveal more of the district’s history.

Another feature of the building project being assembled by the district staff is a digital archive of photographs, which will be connected to a touch-screen television in the high school building.

“With that touch-screen, people will be able to search for historic photos. It will also be available on the website,” he said. Photos of school events and portraits of alumni are being downloaded from yearbooks, he said, and digitally archived.

Newton said later the project is going forward without difficulty but the district is still evaluating software to manage the search utility.

“With digital, it will be there forever, and we can just keep adding to it,” he said.

On Friday, Newton gestured to the wall during a tour of the partially finished building. Anyone coming in the main entrance will walk along it, after clearing the security vestibule, to reach the school’s interior.

People who have documents or photos that might add to the district’s history project can contact the district administration office.

Michael Kelly can be contacted at mkelly@mariettatimes.com.