New Milford, CT Hill and Plain One Room School House

Shortcuts

• Address
• Telephone
• Alerts
• Claim ownership or report listing

• 

  Want your organization to be the top-listed Non Profit Organization in New Milford?

THE COLLECTION

One-Room Schoolhouses

Connecticut was one of the 13 American colonies of the Kingdom of England settled in the early 1600’s. In the western area of Connecticut a valley was known to its inhabitants, the Potatuck Indians, as Weantinock and in 1703 the area was purchased from them by a company of individuals chiefly from Milford, Connecticut. The first permanent settlers arrived here in 1707 and in 1712 New Milford was officially chartered by the General Assembly as a town. By 1721, there were twenty-five families in residence, and it was decided that a public school was necessary, to be open for six months each year. The town would bear half the cost, and the students’ families would pay the rest in taxes. The cost to these families could be paid in monies, labor, supplies, or firewood. The first school opened in 1729, twenty-two years after the first permanent settlers arrived here, and was available to children of seven to twelve years of age, and those younger or older could attend at additional cost. Due to sc****ly kept records, many details, including the location of the first schoolhouse, have never been determined. The school was run by one teacher, a schoolmaster or schoolmarm, who taught all of the grades, sometimes spanning pre-school to eighth grade. Often girls sat on one side of the room and boys sat on the other side of the room, with the youngest students near the teacher. The teacher’s desk was in the front of room with a blackboard behind the desk as in the Hill and Plain and Ga***rd’s Schoolhouses. In the rear of the classroom was pot belly stove for heating and cooking. Samuel Orcutt’s “History of New Milford” states that one of the early schoolteachers was the celebrated Sarah Noble, daughter of John Noble. As additional colonies settled in outlying areas of the town, the area was divided again and again into school districts. It was not until after the American Revolution, in 1782, that the town voted to assign permanent names and numbers to each district. As town boundaries shifted and the population increased, moved around, and clustered in different areas, school districts were also divided, combined, re-named and re-numbered. Between seventeen and twenty-five districts were in existence at any one time. Before the public schools opened, in-home schooling provided children with grade school educations. Until close to the twentieth century, higher learning to prepare one for college or business schools was available only at private institutions, a number of which were located in New Milford. As the town grew, the school system established high school programs, and became more centralized, closing the schoolhouses one by one. Three one-room schoolhouses remain in the Town of New Milford.