by Emily Rinaman, Technical Services Manager
It is estimated that as people moved west towards Ohio and beyond during the late 1700s and early 1800s, that the Midwestern portion of the United States eventually saw around 90,000 one-room schoolhouses. Today, the Midwest is divided into just slightly over 5,000 school districts.
School classifications are city, county, vocational or an independent community. Seneca County has either full or partial portions of three city districts (Tiffin, Clyde-Green Springs, and Fostoria), seven county districts (Old Fort, Hopewell-Loudon, New Riegel, Buckeye-Central, Mohawk, Seneca East and Lakota), one vocational school (Sentinel Career Center) and two independent schools (Calvert Catholic and North Central Academy).
One-room school houses existed in several individual townships in counties of Ohio in the 1800s but during the early 1900s, school districts were forming. They slowly but surely absorbed one-room school houses yet some of the more rural areas, like Iler, retained their one-room school houses much longer than others.
When one-room school houses were first erected in our area, they were often a multi-purpose building. Classes were held during the week, and religious ceremonies and other social gatherings were conducted when school wasn’t in session.
The first school house in Tiffin on East Market Street by the Sandusky River was the location for Methodist congregations, theatre events, and briefly served as Tiffin’s “town hall”. On the north side of the Sandusky River, once a separate town called Fort Ball, students attended school in a two-room frame building on Franklin Street. A later version of Tiffin’s main school building hosted “various religious denominations.” In Risingsun, the original school house was referred to as the “community cabin.”
Academies and preparatory schools like the Seneca County Academy were the closest equivalent to high schools in the 1800s.
There were no official school district territories for many decades throughout the 1800s. One-room school houses in rural areas were simply built about two miles apart to allow all children to be within walking distance of their school.
As early as 1826, Melmore residents, James and Laura Latham, operated Eden Township’s first school in the second room of their log cabin. One of Fostoria area’s first schools also functioned out of a settler’s home – that of Dr. Marcus Dana in Risdon.
By the 1840s, Eden Township had 11 schools (Rock Creek, Fleet, Baro, Downs, Barrick, North Bond and more) with over 200 students. Bettsville and Liberty Township of Seneca County through the latter half of the 19th century saw about the same numbers – 10 schools (Beech, Feaselburg, Cromers, Puffenberger and others) with almost 600 students. At this same time, Bloomville and Bloom Township had 400 students dispersed in nine schools.
New Riegel Rectory School, year unknown. It was much more common in the 1800s for religious education of some form in all schools, not just parochial private schools of today.
When these one-room school houses operated, children were responsible for fetching drinking water. In Fort Seneca carried water to the school in a pail from a pump by the Fort Seneca store and “everyone drank from the same long-handled ladle.” Around the turn of the century, children in Bascom collected water in buckets at Crum’s House and placed it in a six-gallon crock at the school house. Boys at Possum Hill School in Clinton Township enjoyed fetching water for their fellow classmates, venturing “40 rods distant” to a spring in a ravine near the school house.
If parents could not financially support their children attending school, households paid taxes by stocking the wood-burning, pot-bellied stove in the winter. (Before the 1850s, schools charged tuition fees). Possum School’s families were on a rotation for supplying wood and the amount was factored by the number of students in each family. Therefore, larger families were required to supply more wood than others. Families also helped maintain the school grounds, if it wasn’t already located on personal property.
Families also took turns boarding the teacher in their homes throughout the school year because teachers sometimes were brought in from other areas and could not easily make the commute (for example, Fostoria hired someone from Ashland County in the 1830s).
Union School building in eastern Seneca County after one-room school houses gave way to larger, consolidated schools.
Before more standardized districts were formed, teachers for one-room school houses had much more freedom in what his or her students learned. It is said that young adult males were often teachers in rural school houses because they were “better able to handle unruly farm boys.”
The school day often opened with reading a Bible passage as the “moral development” of children was just as important as their intellectual development. “The main purpose of these schools was to instruct in reading and literacy so that children would be able to read the Bible and participate in religious activities,” explains an article on the website of Morning Ag Clips.
Attica resident Alice Covert Martin recalled in “Lacon: A Forgotten Ohio Hamlet” that the small one-room school house she attended as a child “was only a little country place of learning but a few of the higher subjects (Beginning Latin and algebra) were taught.”
F.R. Stewart of Fostoria also recalled some of his school days at Possum Hill School, stating that beyond the normal reading, writing and arithmetic, “great stress was put on spelling and penmanship.” He explains that history lessons were student-led on topics which interested them. In fact, Fort Seneca’s teacher specified that her salary was divided by room & board, savings and a dictionary.
An academy near Green Springs was for a time the most elite school in the area. As a preparatory school, its teachers provided instruction for Greek, Latin, vocal and instrumental music, commercial math, and science.
When Ohio and the immediate area of Seneca County continued to grow in numbers with immigrants from a multitude of European nations, the need for more structured schools arose. In the 1870s, the solid eight-year school program would be established. By this point, Fostoria had already become an official district (1863). And according to “Bascom: Then and Now”, communities were divided on the benefits of consolidated school systems and stricter guidelines.
Additions were sometimes built onto existing schools to enlarge them. Green Spring’s transition from its one-room school house started with the two-room Union School with an additional two rooms being added later with “some high school subjects”.
Columbian High School’s original building was completed in 1893. Around this same time, Risingsun, a precursor to Lakota, built a new building for its 200-300 students. It continued to grow and after incorporating families living in the Bradner area, eventually became the “San-Sen-Wood Alliance” by the 1950s.
New Riegel, then known as the “Big Spring Rural District” had created a separate school district from the parochial school, but there was still some interloping between the two. Its first high school graduation for a three-year high school program was held in 1929 (the two-year high school program had started ten years prior).
Calvert began as a convent school for girls in 1963 but by 1923 had established itself as a more traditional (as we know it today) high school. The school houses in Eden Township were slowly disbanded between 1935-1956.
Works cited
https://koordinates.com/layer/97252-ohio-school-districts/
Bascom Garden Club. Bascom Then and Now. 1976. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29193
Calvertana 1940, Calvert Catholic High School. Seneca County Digital Library.
Durrett, John. History of Bettsville. 1984. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29643
Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial Committee. “Fort Seneca Sesquicentennial 1936-1986. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/82516
Fostoria Centennial Committee. Fostoria Centennial Souvenir Program 1954. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/31504
Green Springs Centennial Committee. Green Springs Centennial. 1972. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29439
Hall, Glenn and Edith Hemminger. “Republic High School: Memories of RHS, 1890-1970.” https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/42311/rec/1
Hansen’s Histories series. “Back to School: The One-room Schoolhouse and American Rural Education.” Sept. 14, 2023. https://www.morningagclips.com/back-to-school-the-one-room-schoolhouse-and-american-rural-education/
Historical Sketches of the Churches and Schools of Tiffin, Ohio. (1903). Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63795
History of Eden Township and Melmore. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29665
Memories 1906-2006: Melmore Alumni Banquet June 3, 2006. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29761/rec/1
McIntosh, Phyllis. “One-room Schools: An American Tradition.” English Teaching Forum. (2005). https://americanenglish.state.gov/files/ae/resource_files/05-43-2-h.pdf
Peddicord, Lura. Green Springs Ohio Centennial. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29438
Risingsun, Ohio Centennial Book.
Sketches of Bloomville and Bloom Township, Bloomville Sesquicentennial Committee. 1987. https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/41807/rec/1
Stewart, Francis. “Historic Sketch of Possum Hill School”. (1930). https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/63796/rec/1
Tiffin City Schools History, 1927.
Village of Iler. Seneca County Digital Library. https://ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/40807
Waterfield, Marge. “Lacon: A Forgotten Ohio Hamlet.” (1981). https://www.ohiomemory.org/digital/collection/p15005coll27/id/29312/rec/1