Some 1-room schoolhouses still standing
Just after the turn of the 20th century, schoolhouses dotted the undeveloped landscape of Butler County.
While the vast majority of the simple school buildings either burned or deteriorated and were torn down, some continue to stand today.
Most of the remaining schoolhouses have been converted into homes, and many have been renovated and expanded so extensively that the untrained eye would never know they once housed pigtailed farm girls, pot-belly stoves and practical schoolmarms grasping a stick of chalk.
The Whitmire School on Mahood Road in Oakland Township was remodeled into a home after its closing, and it remains a residence today.The original school near the site burned down in the early 1920s, according to the book “School's Out!” by historian Pat Collins, and the new school was erected on the Whitmire farm 500 yards away.It was one of the first schools in the county to feature indoor bathrooms, as schoolhouses normally had two outhouses for boys and girls.According to the book, school reunions continued for many years after the Whitmire School closed, with former students traveling in for the annual events from all over the United States.
One former student, the late Rose O'Donnell Filges, recalled in the book bringing her baby brother to school while her mother visited her father at a Pittsburgh hospital, where he was recovering from severe burns.Filges said little Bill slept on her coat on the schoolroom floor while she pursued her lessons.She carried the tot home at dismissal and made dinner to relieve her exhausted mother of the chore when she returned from Pittsburgh each evening.The Whitmire School was converted into a home after its closing, and a dormer, siding and newly placed windows were added.
The three-room Forestville School on Boyers Road in Mercer Township is now a handsome home that a passerby would never imagine once educated elementary students, as many renovations and additions have taken place over the years.A bay window in the front of the home marks the former location of the school's front door, where hundreds of pupils entered and exited carrying their lunches.Collins' book says one set of owners were startled and delighted to discover during renovations a wall that had been painted black to be used as a chalkboard.The chalkboard contained a note stating that the school closed in 1911, but a picture of students lined up along an exterior wall of the school is dated 1912.
The McCalmont School in Butler Township remains in mostly the same footprint as it was when it educated children in the Meridian area.The former school is now a home along McCalmont Road.It was built in 1910 on the former Philips farm and closed in 1930, when its elementary-aged students moved to the Meridian consolidated school.The long, narrow windows on the sides of the brick house still belie its origin as a schoolhouse.
Stemm SchoolThe Stemm School on Brownsdale Road in Forward Township still stands, but is badly deteriorating on a farm, where it is used for storage.Many Evans City residents of a certain age recall their carefree early years at the school, where games like Kick the Can and Annie, Annie, Over were played in the yard at recess.Evans City Mayor Dean Zinkhann easily recalls his time at the school, which lasted from first grade in 1951 until third grade in 1953.Zinkhann carried his lunch for the half-mile walk to the school, which traversed the hills and farms outside of the borough.He remembers students were not permitted to touch the handle of the water pump in the schoolyard unless they had been assigned to fill a pitcher or other receptacle for wider use by the entire student population.Although students used outhouses at the Stemm School, the building had electricity due in large part to Zinkhann's mother and others.Zinkhann explained that many of the students' mothers were members of the Ash Stop Quilters club, and made and sold quilts to fund the addition of electricity to the Stemm School.“We helped each other and worked together and played together,” Zinkhann said of the school families. “It was one big community.”He fondly remembers the teacher who instructed multiple grades at the Stemm School, Florence B. Hamilton.“She was stern because she had to be,” Zinkhann recalled, “but she was nice, too.”Lunch in a metal lunch box usually consisted of a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and a few simple sides.The students washed their meals down with water that had been collected from the outside pump.In class, the older students helped the younger students with their lessons.“My older brother helped me with my math,” Zinkhann said.On the way home from school, Zinkhann would check his trap line in a small stream he had to cross on his commute.If he had caught a muskrat, he'd skin it and sell the hide for about 85 cents.“We set the trap line right in the creek,” Zinkhann said. “If we caught a muskrat in the morning, the creek would keep it fresh until after school.”Attending a one-room schoolhouse did not produce the bullying and other problems seen in school systems today, Zinkhann said, because all of the Stemm School students came from similar backgrounds of farming and other blue-collar occupations.He summed up the thoughts of many county residents whose early years were spent in a one-room schoolhouse.“It was more social then,” Zinkhann said. “Everybody got along.”
