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Perkins Hollow
Schoolhouse
1853 First used with a group of students.
1910
School closes and is left untouched.
1977
Schoolhouse donated and moved intact to the
Washington
County
Fairgrounds
1984 Received Washington Co Historic
Preservation Award
The white clapboard
one-room schoolhouse stood a top a hill in Perkins Hollow in Salem, New
York for over a century. Built during the 1850’s it was where the Beaty
family and neighbors were educated until it closed in 1910. By 1977 it
was well weathered on the outside and over grown with brush when the
Beaty family donated the school building and contents along with the
combination woodshed-outhouse building to the Washington County
Fairgrounds for the newly formed museum.
Amazingly,
the four shuttered windows, two on each side of the building, still held
their original glass. The wide wood board and plaster walls were still
intact as were the nine wooden desks made by a carpenter. Placed in
three rows of three desks each, the desks are double so that they
accommodate eighteen pupils. The seat for the back desks is one long
board across the width of the room. The recitation bench on the wall at
right angles to the desks is a long seat where the pupils sat to recite
their lessons. The blackboard, a board painted black, still hangs on
the front wall.
The furnishings of the room were the
teacher’s desk and chair, another chair for company and two charts as
teaching aids. There was a low bench, which could be used as an extra
seat or pulled up by the stove on cold mornings. A water pail and a
long handled dipper stood at one end of the recitation bench.
Care was taken to preserve the
schoolhouse and outbuilding in their original condition while offering
visitors an opportunity a step back in time. Each year multiple
generations visit the schoolhouse and interact with stories of when they
went to school.
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