This week’s question: The digging in the foreground is for the very first building to be used by one of our most important helpers. Do you know what the building would become? What is the location and what has replaced the buildings in the background?
Last week’s answer: Last week’s photo shows the McHarrie School building in its later years.
As early as 1789, New York state addressed the need for schools. The small building shown in last week’s photo began its life circa 1826 as a one-room log cabin school on the southeast corner of today’s Downer and Canton streets. Baldwinsville was not yet a village, but its residents were keenly aware of the need for an educated citizenry if the new republic were to succeed.
In remote areas, youngsters were home schooled with the Bible as the language arts/reader textbook and the mother of the house as teacher. As pioneers clustered and settlements developed, schools were a practical solution to the need for developing and fostering literacy. One teacher could free up time for several home schooling parents.
In the 1820s, the Erie Canal opened, Missouri became the 24th state to enter the union and the town of Van Buren had not as yet been separated from the town of Camillus. The south side of the river was sparsely settled and seemed remote from the busy hamlet of Baldwinsville. However, by the mid-1820s the need for a school became evident. John McHarrie Jr. donated land on the south east corner of Downer and Canton streets for this purpose.
A small log building was erected. Heat was provided by a large fireplace, small windows allowed minimal light, and furnishings were simple plank desks and benches built around the perimeter of the room.
The curriculum was basic reading, writing and arithmetic. Class usually opened with a prayer and a verse from the Bible. Spelling contests were frequent; they didn’t require much illumination. Paper was precious and scarce. Individual slates were the precursors of three-ring notebooks and smartphones.
The school was also a venue for community gatherings, religious meetings and even weddings. The marriages of Orrigen B. Herrick to Anna Scoville and John McHarrie Jr. to Jane Phelps were celebrated in the small school.
With time, upgrades were made to the building. The fireplace was replaced by a cast iron box stove which provided more heat and the exterior walls were covered with clapboard which reduced the drafts.
By 1844, the McHarrie School was crowded and attention was being given to environmental issues that would be more conducive to learning, including larger windows that could provide more light and cross ventilation, thus reducing eye strain and eliminating the “pestiferous atmosphere of bad air laden with impurities and foulness.”
A new two story frame school would be built on the same site as the McHarrie School. The little school was sold at auction for $18. High bidder was Orrigen Herrick who moved it to his farm on Syracuse Street, where it was placed on the east side of the road shortly south of Crooked Brook, approximately across from today’s Maguire Chevrolet. Additional improvements were made including a small addition and larger windows. The one-time school became a home for Herrick’s tenant farmer.
During the mid-1890s, the structure was destroyed by fire, thus ending the story of the little log school that ended up as a home some half a mile distant from its original site.
Email your guess to [email protected] or leave a message at 315-434-8889 ext. 310 with your guess by noon Friday. If you are the first person to correctly identify an element in the photo before the deadline, your name and guess will appear in next week’s newspaper, along with another History Mystery feature. History Mystery is a joint project of the Museum at the Shacksboro Schoolhouse and the Baldwinsville Public Library.
