Returning again to the hills of Columbus this week we will relate the facts regarding District #10 known as the Carter School. Regretfully this school house no longer stands as it burned several years go. The Carter School was on the corner of Shawler Brook and Kelly Roads and was last owned by Walter Harsnett. The photo accompanying this article gives one and idea of the style of the schoolhouse and shows what was a chimney located at the rear, also that this school had a bell tower on the roof. Also note that the door was not on the front but on the side with two windows towards the rear of the building.
The below documentation of Carter School was written several years ago by the Columbus Historian contained in “Columbus Cronicles” that she wrote documenting the history of Columbus through a series of articles. The article written below is quoted verbatim as she wrote it and all credit for the information should be given to Mrs. Avery.

GOING TO SCHOOL IN THE 1920S AND 30S
“My dad, Donald Brown, who was born in Columbus in 1911 and lived on what is now his son’s Roger Brown, farm, walked to school at the Carter School House. At the end of the Eighth grade, the children continued to school in New Berlin at the High School.
“Some children drove a horse to school each day! My dad boarded in New Berlin for the week. My grandfather, George Brown, would sometimes tale Dad to South Edmeston to the train station on Monday mornings and Dad would ride the train to New Berlin at a cost of twenty-five cents per ride. By the time the train arrived in New Berlin, it was around ten o’clock which was too late for Dad to go to school that morning (which was OK by him). He boarded with Mr. and Mrs. Pugh (where Margaret Spicer lives today) on Cushman Street, paying five dollars a week board. On Friday’s, around four o’clock in the afternoon, he boarded the train for South Edmeston, was met by my grandfather with horse and wagon, and was taken home for the weekend. If the weather was good. Dad sometimes would ride his bicycle to New Berlin to school. He kept his bicycle in the Hotel barn, free of charge. Sometimes his father would take him all the way to New Berlin with the horse and wagon. Other times he would ride with whoever was driving the milk team taking the milk to South Edmeston and would catch the train.
“One Friday night, when he was supposed to take the train to South Edmeston, the passenger train had derailed. He called Hubert Spurr, who was stationmaster at South Edmeston, and asked him to notify his father to come to New Berlin and pick him up. The men at the train station noted that the work train was headed to South Edmeston and that Dad would ride on that. So he called Hubert Spurr back with that information and boarded the train, riding in the engine. He says this was the highlight of his life.
“Dad was seven years old when he started school. His first teacher was Jessie Horton (Donald Horton’s sister). School that year started on September 3,1918 and ended on July 25,1919. He finished eighth grade in the year 1924 at the age of twelve in the Carter School. He being in a one-room school, he doubled up on his subjects and that way finished elementary school in six years instead of eight.
“He was transferred to New Berlin for his freshman year. He had not passed spelling so was hoping that would keep him in the Columbus School. But my grandfather went to New Berlin and talked with the principle and they worked out a way for Dad to go to New Berlin and take his spelling class the first semester.
“If Dad had really worked hard and passed all of his subjects, he would have graduated high school at the age of fifteen. He didn’t like so many children in his classes, didn’t care for some of his teachers and besides that, he missed his family and friends and so he didn’t do too well. It took him several years to earn his diploma and graduated at the age of seventeen in the year 1929.
“Around the years of 1925 and 1926, a law was passed that required children under the age of sixteen to be accompanied by an adult when they went to the movies. New Berlin’s movie theatre (the entrance of which is the arched door of the controversial building owned by Richard Ackerman in 1994) was one place the teenagers wanted to be. (Note: this building was eventually demolished for a parking lot). They would gather in a gang around the outside of the theatre. Linn Angell, the village patrolman, would come along and ask the kids if they wanted to go to the movies. Of course they answered they did! He would walk them into the theatre, see that they got their tickets and made sure they got their seats and them he would leave them. My Dad, who was one of these teens, still speaks of Linn Angell and the movies. It was one of the ways he entertained himself while boarding in town.
“Ralph Holdridge, who was three years older than my dad and born on the same farm where he now lives, went to Brookfield for his first year of high school and stayed there with his grandparents. His second year of high school was spent at New Berlin where he drove a horse to town each day.
“Ralph also has a memento from the District #10- Carter School in 1899, when Grace Spurr was the teacher. Myrtle Benjamin King, my great-grandfather, was the trustee. The students were Claude H. King, Mildred G. King (mother to Floyd Calhoun, Ardath Hendrickson and Dora Johnson), Floice S. King, Marjory King, Grace E. King, (all of these Kings were children of Myrtle B. King and my aunts and uncles. Their sister, Bertha A. King, married George C. Brown, George and Bertha who were my grandparents. The Kings lived on Kelly Road (where Milton Lum lived until recently.) The other students were: Lena C. Miller, Frank J. Lottridge, Lynn Miller, Luta Miller, Bert A. Lottridge, Clyde Spaulding, Maude F. Miller, Ines M. Lottridge, Zeilena Miller, Pearl Lottridge, Erio Oliver, Melda Oliver.
“My mother, from Shawler Brook Road in the Town of Columbus, would bring a car full of kids down to South Edmeston and meet the bus so those children could ride the bus to high school.
“Donald Norton was born on the farm which he still owns and lived on. The land is in the fourth generation of his family. Donald went to school at the Columbus Hill School by Sears Pond. For high school, he went to Sherburne, via horse, for one year. He said the school by Sears Pond was always known as the Columbus Hill Meeting House.
“Percy Risedorph, another Columbus born, attended school at the Park school on Lamb’s Hill. He also boarded at the Pugh’s in New Berlin when my dad, Donald Brown, boarded there.”
This concludes what Mrs. Avery wrote of her father’s early education and it is hoped that all who read will have a better insight of attending the one-room schools that were so frequently erected around Chenango County.
Thus we close yet another article relevant to early education and will return, once again, to the hills of Columbus for the history of “Schools of the Past.”