The travel route of the one-room school districts, will for the next several weeks take us through the hills and valleys of the McDonough Township. At this time a special thanks to Donna J. Robb for allowing this writer to copy the extensive historical information that had been collected by the late Elinor Troicke and predecessors, the documentation of Jennie Preston in 1976, the file of the Chenango County Historian’s office and Guersney Memorial Library History room. Without these resources this series would not have been possible.
However, before we relate the information regarding the above district, writer will include a short philosophy written by John Ruskin regarding education: “Education does not mean teaching people what they do not know. It means teaching them to behave as they do not behave. It is not teaching the youth the shape of letters and the tricks of numbers, and then leaving them to turn their arithmetic into roguery, and their literature to lust. It means, on the contrary, training them into the perfect exercise and kingly continence of their bodies and souls. It is a painful, continual and difficult work to be done by kindness, by watching, by warning, by precept, and by praise, but above —- by example.”
Both the 1863 and 1875 maps of the McDonough Township show that District #1 - which this writer named the Hoben/Corbin district due to its location in the township. In Mrs. Preston’s documentation, she did not name this district. If this in error, I will stand corrected.
Due to the remote location of this district, it was probably one of the last schools to close and consolidate to the school in the Village of Oxford. This consolidation process of the one-room district schools was a great source of contradiction between the trustees of these districts and the families whose children attended these schools. In the enclosed map (partial) of the township (1875) you will ascertain the remote area, even though it was fairly close to the Preston town line.
Discontinuing this district was difficult especially regarding transporting the children, however when the timing was appropriate this was done around the year of 1940 or perhaps shortly before or after.
With Mrs. Preston’s writings she documented that the schoolhouse site (1976) has a new home presently on it. At that time the Murphy family was still building, but none of the old schoolhouse was used. But, all was not lost, after being completely torn down, part of the schoolhouse building was used as an addition to a house located on the McCall Road, just on the outer edge of Oxford on Route 220.
She went on to write that “one of the last teachers was Myrtus Duel. She lived in a house now owned by Mr. Frank Wood, which is a very short walk a few yards away.”
This area of the McDonough Town is still rather remote, but as is the case in society today, people love “their neck of the woods.” She went on to write “next to the site of the schoolhouse is an old cemetery still kept up (1976) by the Wood’s family and there are names of people who went to school in that district and, no doubt, have relatives living still in the area.”
In closing this rather brief history of District #1, if anyone has any further historical information relevant, please contact the historian Donna J. Robb at either djrobb@frontier.net - phone 647-659 after 5 p.m. or this writer at pfscott@frontier.com. All information will be duly credited to the source.