In Chenango County as we are in the fait season it is timely to turn our attention to the south (not Florida) but to the southern central section of the county and look at the extensive history of the Town of Greene’s one-room schools. The Township of Greene has the distinction of having a total of twenty-five districts, both single and joint which will be the subject in the forthcoming weeks. The extensive research credit for this vast amount of information has to be given to Mildred English Folsom from her “Town of Greene – Rural School Districts.” Mrs. Folsom’s research was extensive to say the least and in the course of these articles, as the districts changed numbers it will be necessary to be repetitive in some cases. For all readers as the saying goes – “stay tuned.”
With the incorporation of the Board of Regents in 1784, was the earliest beginning of the now vast educational system we have here in New York State. By 1789 (and this has been written in previous articles) the State Legislature had set aside two lots of public land for each town for Gospel and School purposes. When this bill became law and annual amount of $50,000 was appropriated for support of the schools, with money being apportioned among the counties accordion to their representation in the Legislature. With this monetary appropriation each county then divided its portion according to the number of taxable inhabitants. Each town then appropriated their portion among the school districts according to the number of day’s attendance by pupils resident in the district. “The Mounties raised half as much as they received from the State. At the end of three years, 1352 districts had been organized with a total registration of 59,600 pupils.” This constituted the start of our Common School system.
Moving forward to the year of 1805 the Legislature approved the appropriation of the proceeds of the sale of 500,000 acres of State land for school purposes. Yet another building block in the foundation of our Common School fund.
The first settlers to come to the area of Greene was in 1792 which was incidentally just three hundred years after Columbus “sailed the ocean blue” and set foot on what is now this great nation. Proceeding to the year of 1798 (6 years after) the first town meeting was held in Greene. At that time after proper procedure was followed (we assume) three School Commissioners were chosen: James Wiley – Nathaniel Kellog – and Jacob Pease. At that date the township had two log schoolhouses, the first opening in 1794 hear Chenango Forks (at Willard’s settlement) by Thomas Cartright, an Englishman, the second at East Greene in the northern part of the town in 1796 by Enoch Grey, who taught ten winters in succession near his father’s home which was approximately one-half mile of the hamlet of what we know today as Brisben, New York.
The photo with this article shows the former Greene school which was in use till the new modern facilities were constructed beginning in 1954 and successive years of 1964 and 1969. One could only wonder what Stephen Ketchum would think if he could see the facilities of education today, a far cry from when he first came to this area. Stephen Ketchum was the first settler to this area arriving from about 150 miles north of Chenango County with his wife and five children. At that early date there was no road this side of Oxford and this necessitated him to build a raft and come down the Chenango River on it. “His sons drove their cows along the trail and they met in Greene where Birdsall Brook empties to the river. At the Athletic Field look up and notice the big stone barn at the upper end beyond the swimming pool, that is the spot where Ketchum built their first house of logs.” This preceding is quoted directly from Mrs. Folsom’s book p. 67. With more families settling in the area the next step to civilization was the construction of a church and school. For 14 years school was held in a log cabin located where the Parish House is now. In 1812 a new two-story red schoolhouse was built across the street from where the Catholic Church is now. Twenty-two years later it moved to South Chenango Street near the Methodist Church. It took 20 teams of oxen to move the building.
After it was painted white it was called the White school. Thirty years later, that one became too small and a large one was built on Monell Street. Then in 1902 came the red brick high school, and later, and addition which is still standing, and now the new South Canal Street school which is the largest and best of the entire six that have been built in the Village Greene during the past 160 years.
With this we conclude the beginning of the school system in the township of Greene and will, as written above, be visiting the districts over the forthcoming weeks.
In closing, it is repeated again, if anyone has historical information or photos of the early schoolhouses of Chenango County, do not destroy it, forward it to your local historian or library or the County Historian, once this information is destroyed it is gone forever.