One Room Rural Schoolhouses – 1850s-1960s

One Room Rural Schoolhouses – 1850s-1960s. . , The establishment of rural schools in Waupaca County, primarily one-room frame structures, dates from the 1850s; the last of the nearly 130 that once served the rural populace closed in 1969. This area being frontier country in the 1850s, roughly one/third of the nearly 30 school districts established in that decade were initially hosted in private homes or log cabins. , Wisconsin’s “School Laws” of 1848 authorized town boards to organize school districts within their townships… an 1861 law created county superintendent oversight positions. Records indicate the Ware School, established in 1850, the county’s first rural school district, was a joint district of Waupaca and Farmington townships. It was probably followed by Post Corners in Dayton and Oak Grove in Mukwa. The last rural districts were established in 1920; Langdok in Iola, Harrison Center in Harrison, and Lebanon (Maple Hill). , Some published references recount an unconfirmed early rural school location east of Iola. The Twin Grove (1861), Dow (1868) and Fairchild (1871) schools were established along what is now State Highway 161 in Helvetia township. Twin Grove and Dow were closed in 1943, but Fairfield continued in use until 1965. , Many rural schools closed in the 1930s and early 1940s when declining enrollments dipping into the single digits made them operationally inefficient. In 1940 the state Superintendent of Public Instruction established a master plan requiring rural school districts to consolidate with adjoining rural, or nearby city of village school districts, if their assessed property valuations were less than $100,000. The last county-wide rural school (8th grade) graduation exercises were held in 1962. The last one-room schools to close were Sheridan in Farmington (1967) and Knowledge Hill in Union (1969). , Waupaca County’s rural school districts were typically named after the landowner donors of the land on which the school was built, or the building site’s physical characteristics. Interesting exceptions include Norske in Harrison, Little Mountain and State Road in Union, Bunker Hill in Waupaca, and Rainbow in Weyawega. This schoolhouse is a reproduction of the Townsend School (opened 1896; Closed 1956) located at State Highway 49 and Smokey Valley Road. The bell atop was salvaged from the Twin Grove School in Helvetica (organized 1861, discontinued 1943). , (Acknowledgements to Rural Schools of Waupaca County by lifetime Waupaca County residents and teaching veterans Donald Hanson and Joan Paulson; published in 2000.)