Richart's Grove One-Room School

 

 

	Members of The Center drove to Jordan Township in the extreme eastern end of Lycoming County August 31 to visit Richart's Grove One-Room School.
The event was coordinated by Carolyn Beach.

Jordan Township was named for Alexander Jordan, once the presiding judge in that part of Lycoming County. Jordan Township was carved out of Franklin Township.

Jordan is a township that appears to have been divided up by present-day politicians. Columbia and Sullivan Counties jut into that portion of the township on an angle and surround Jordon Township on the north, east and south.

The first permanent settler in what is now Jordan township was William Lore, who came to what was then wilderness in 1812. He built a home and raised a family. His descendants continue to live in the township.

Before 1900, there was a grist mill in the township, owned by Marshall Stout. There were three steam saw mills, owned by men with names like Bodine, Warn, Stackhouse and Johnson. Four water-power mills were run by men by the name of Robbins, Minnier and Gordner. These are all names we recognize today as residents of the area.

Jordan Township has one village--Unityville, where once there was a Temperance House, two stores and a gristmill. It had a post office, established in 1854. Unityville once had a I.O.O.F. lodge and an I.O.O.F. encampment.

The first schoolhouse in Jordan Township--the Prairie School--was near Lungerville. The school closed in 1921. The first preacher in the township was Press Yorks, a last name often heard in that area. It appears that he also taught school at Richart's Grove. The township at one time had eight or nine school houses including Salem, Derrick, Richie, Biggert's, Lore, Prairie, Peterman and Richart.

The Richart's Grove School, originally set in a grove of chestnut trees, can be traced back to the early 1850s and its teacher Press Yorks. The church and the school operated from the same building until 1893, when the adjacent church was built. The school continued as a school. William Richard (Note the spelling with the letter 'd' instead of today's "Richart." Both spellings have been used, although "Richart" is the only one used today), 19, taught at what is now known as the Richart's Grove School starting in 1859. There were 12 students, some of whom were actually older than the teacher. The school closed in 1962.

The Richart's Grove school, as well as the adjacent church and cemetery, are located next to the farm where Luther, Gerald and Edgar Baker grew up. Today that farm is generally called the Kessler Farm, named for the family that purchased the farm from the Bakers a half century ago.

The history of the school in Jordan Township known as Richart's Grove, was told by Elwood Farr, a man we'll identify as "EF," and Van Hall, a man we'll identify as "VH."

 Elwood--oops, EF--was the first to speak. EF was born near the school, worked on an adjacent farm for Sara and Earnest Baker, attended the Richart's Grove school through the eighth grade and saved enough money by the time he was 16 to buy a '37 Chevy coupe. After he completed high school in Montoursville, he left the area at the age of 18 and went in the service for the next three years. He was "tired of waiting for Uncle Sam to send him greetings," so he enlisted, went into the Navy, then into the SeeBees where he deployed to the Philippines for "pertineer" two years.

 

An attentive audience from The Center sat awkwardly in the school desks reserved for the older kids in the former one-room schoolhouse. VH is on the left, standing; EF is on the right standing, with suspenders. EF noted that the small desks in the room were original to the school and were reserved for kids in the first two grades. EF showed how he would dip girl's pig tails into the ink containers that were in the desks behind where they sat.

EF said that his "Grandpap" had the well for the school inspected, but remembered that when he attended the school, students would go to the house of "Grammy Farr" to get water. There were several reasons that the students went there. EF explained: "Well, Grammy Farr baked nice cookies, she always had them on the table. They all argued over who was going up there to get the water." The original water jug remains a fixture in the school. Grammy Farr performed other services, too. When a student "got to playing and a girl would tear her dress or a boy would rip his pants they would go up to Grammy Farr and she would do the mending on it." Grammy Farr has a permanent place in the school. One picture shows her cleaning the stove pipe. The Talmar Store was another popular student destination during the days when Edgar Baker ran it. When something was needed from the store, VH "had to fight with other kids to go up there."

The teacher had the class do Bible readings and sing patriotic songs, a far cry from the way schools are run today.

There was also a share of mischief making. "Elrey Newhart went up through a hole in the ceiling in the classroom" to "turn the bell over" and he "put his foot down through the ceiling." "I don't know if he done it on purpose or if he did it so he would find out what the kids would say," EF noted.

Teachers took care of the kids, the fires and they were the doctors and the nurses. They taught one class for all eight grades. They stoked the fires the night before they left for the day. The outhouses for the school were in the back. The teacher maintained the outhouses, using liberal amounts of lime. EF noted that "We won't go into details there. We don't need to educate these folks that much!"

Boys were able to get out of school to help pick potatoes. When the field beside the school was used to raise potatoes, the sport of throwing potatoes over on the school house reached fever pitch. EF once bounced a potato through the window. He had to came in and clean up the potatoes. "That took a little of money away from me," EF remembers.

 

EF began to loosen up about details of his eight years at the school. He recalled that he started before he was five, got his first licking at 5, while becoming "pretty good with the eraser." When he eventually began attending the school in Hughesville, he walked from Richart's Grove to Unityville "there where the firehouse is," met the bus and proceeded on to school. EF called it "quite a little hike," then continued, "now kids can't even walk around the corner."

The "grove" part of the name came from chestnut trees which grew in the area. Lon Baker recalls an interesting story about those chestnut trees and a barn that stands on the former Ernest and Sara Baker farm adjacent to the church and school. That barn was built in 1923 by Lon's grandfather, Ernest Baker. The main support timbers are chestnut harvested from the grove by the school.  All of the chestnut trees throughout the US were dying of a chestnut blight at the time, but the beams in the barn environment continue to stand straight and tall.

Members of The Center who recently visited Richart's Grove School

 

Someone in the audience of members of The Center asked what time the Richart's Grove school started in the morning. EF replied, "Nine o'clock, nine o'clock." "No it was eight o'clock," VH shot back. VH explained that he had to start early and walk through the woods. "Long ways around," he explained, "if there was snow and I would have to slide down the road."

Times were different then. "We didn't have the telephone and we didn't have the electric, "VH said. "Now Bakers down here were the first to have electric. They had a generator in there."

 

EF told about how he earned money. "In the fall, I picked 'limer' beans. I furnished chickens to the Crestmont Hotel, Eagles Mere. Luther (Baker) furnished a lot of the beef. I worked there six days a week, got a quarter a day and my dinner and my supper. Pretty good for a young fellow."

 

VH:  "They used to have festivals here. We got a quarter to go to the festivals. We thought we were rich." Of course, candy was only a penny then.

 

EF: "I got my first lickin' here--I think it was the first day of school. I got off on the wrong foot. In those days you wore garters to hold your stockings up. I took my garters off and I was shooting them at the girls. One didn't appreciate that. I had to go back and sit on a recitation bench beside the teacher in the back of the room. I still didn't stop acting up and I upset the recitation desk on the teacher's heels. That made her mad! Then I got my butt licked pretty good."

EF: "When the teacher did that to me, she would say she was going to 'tune me up.' My father got the razor strap after me." He continued, "The teachers got their milk from my dad. If I got a licking at school, I got one after I got home." The teacher's husband had a knife and when the kids started acting up, "he got this piece of wood out and start carvin' on it. We knew what he was carving. It ended up being a paddle. Then he drilled two or three holes in it. Everyone would shut right up."

VH: The teacher lived in Unityville. She drove an old Model A pickup."   VH: "Didja ever put limburger cheese on her manifold?"   EF: "Didn't have any limburger cheese. We only had cottage cheese."

The school at its maximum housed "probably 35 or 40 kids at a time" according to Elwood Farr (EF). One of his memories is of Roy Green, who loved to chew tobacco in school (remember students only went to that school through eighth grade), and spit the juice when the teacher wasn't looking through a hole in the wall adjacent to his desk. The teacher "finally got him" and created a "sad day for Roy." There were eight grades in the school for the first three years Van Hall (VH) attended. "After that they split the schools up. First through third grades went to Unityville "to the Salem School," fourth, fifth and sixth went to the Richart's Grove school and seventh and eighth went to Gordners. I spend six years here."

The school didn't have a piano, although there is one in the building now. "We didn't have room for one," EF remembers. "Whenever Christmas came, we would go down to the church to celebrate."  

 

EF remembers "cleaning out the cemetery" when he was 14. There were a number of stumps from chestnut trees in the area. Some head stones in the cemetery were "just regular field stones. We lined them all up." EF said that stones in the cemetery go back to 1854. The school and church eventually bought a hand mower and EF mowed it all on Saturday for a dollar. EF also mowed the "Baker's lawn in between picking beans, peas and "limer" beans.

 

At recess, the students went outside and played "Anti Over," a game in which a ball was thrown over the top of the school to kids on the other side. Over the years a "few windows were knocked out." A ball diamond was on the lower side of the school and a  basketball hoop hung on an old tree. Playing without getting hurt was difficult because of all the chestnut stumps around the building. "Rainy days got a little hectic," EF recalls. For special events, students made homemade ice cream using ice they got from an ice house "down towards Millville" from Unityville.

 

Contents of the schoolhouse, after it was no longer used for teaching purposes, were sold at auction and the building used to store grain. In 1990, a group decided to bring the old school back to life. VH asked the owner of the building if he would donate it back to the community. The owner said he "was waiting for someone to ask him to do that," and then said that when the school was restored, he would also donate the original bell to the school. They were lucky enough to get the original blackboard back, including the center blackboard which was made of wood and painted black. EF's brother donated the money to construct the pavilion which today is used by the school, the cemetery and the church.  

 

A number of desks in the school have initials carved in them. EF always carried a pocketknife and does to this day. The pocketknife was used to sharpen the one pencil a year given to the students. "We did a little carving on our desk," he recalled. The carving continued "until you got caught, then your knife went. You would have a time getting it back." There was a hole in the stone foundation and the teacher would throw pocket knives that had abused desks under the building where students could not get to them.  EF anxiously asked VH, "Did you find any of mine under there when you fixed up the building?"  

The walls of the school have the original pictures from when the school was in operation.

One of EF's favorites is a picture of soldiers from World War I forming the Liberty Bell. The Regulator clock hanging on the wall is original. The seats for younger students are original, but the seats for older students were purchased at auction.