Hornby Schoolhouse Rings in 150 years

Contributed

Take a step back in time with a visit to the historic Hornby School in Greenfield Township. The 150-year-old structure will be celebrating its anniversary with an event on Sept. 20 at the schoolhouse located at 10000 Station Road.

*Note: the article published in our October 2025 issue was edited for length. The following is the unedited version.

After 150 years, history is still in session at the Hornby one-room schoolhouse. Step inside and the past lingers: the creak of wooden floors, the haze of chalk dust, and rows of slates on desks, all warmed by the pot-bellied stove that once kept shivering students alert through winter lessons.

Hornby is more than a preserved building – it's a rare glimpse of local 1875 life and a living chronicle of how education took root in Erie County. The white-painted, cedar-shingled structure in Greenfield Township, with its wooden siding and belfry-topped roofline, is one of the few survivors of a schoolhouse style once common across Pennsylvania.

A narrow hallway still leads visitors into the main classroom, just as it did for generations of children who stashed their coats, boots, and lunch pails there before taking their seats. One of those children, Carol Thompson, walked through Hornby's doors in 1956, its final year in operation. Today, she returns as a volunteer, her blue-and-white lunch pack still resting in the hall. Made by her mother from a plastic tablecloth, it carries the mark of a tiny intruder: the hole a mouse chewed into her thermos pouch after she forgot it overnight.

Now, the hall is filled with other artifacts from the school's history, documenting its 81 years in operation.

A day in the one-room classroom

Imagining, with the help of the artifacts at Hornby, what a day in the life of a student attending classes there was like, envision: students from first through eighth grade sat in the same room in seats screwed to the floor that were arranged by size. Slates sat on the desk and looked toward the front of the room, at the teacher's desk.

Each day, the teacher would come and prepare the room, building a fire in the colder months. In earlier days, they would make each student's pen, whittling nibs to the individual preference of students, then bring in a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day's session. Outside, the bell would ring to alert students that it was time to come to school. At 9 a.m., students would take their seats, and the teacher rang a handbell to signal the start of morning exercises. Students would raise the flag, say the Pledge of Allegiance, read verses from the Bible, recite the Lord's Prayer, and sing a patriotic song. Then, lessons would begin.

The handbell was rung once again to call the youngest children to the recitation bench for reading class. Every 10 to 15 minutes, the bell would ring, and the next group would file up by grade. By 10:30 a.m., the first 15-minute recess would begin. Arithmetic lessons followed in the same format as reading. Lunch and recess were noon to 1 p.m. as children would filter outside to play Red Rover, jacks, makeshift baseball, or go sledding on a nearby hill.

Then it was back to work. First graders read while older children practiced grammar and writing. Afterward, they practiced penmanship together before the final 15-minute recess was called. At 2:45 p.m., grades one through three were dismissed. Older students studied geography, physiology, and civics before their dismissal at 4 p.m. Although students helped with cleaning up, much of the maintenance was left to the teacher. In the very early days, school teachers weren't permitted to be married because it wasn't thought feasible to raise a family and be a teacher at the same time. A rule book from 1872 states that a male teacher could take one evening a week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they attend church regularly.

In total, the teacher was responsible for cleaning the building, maintaining a fire, preparing lessons, correcting papers, teaching a variety of grade levels, supervising the playground, acting as the school nurse, and settling discipline issues, all while being mindful of the school board. Through the hard work of the teachers, the schoolhouses became a space where communities fostered hope in creating a brighter future for their children. It provided essential social interaction outside of the home and resources that were otherwise scarce – a lifeblood of rural American education.

Pennsylvania's lesson plan

During the founding of the Quaker Colony in the 1680s, William Penn emphasized that wisdom must be intentionally and carefully curated through the education of youth. His dream was for everyone to have an education, but that privilege was typically reserved for upper-class families who could afford "pay school," as other children were homeschooled until the 1800s.

In the early 1800s, legislators attempted to ensure education for everyone, passing a law in 1809 that provided a free school system. By then, some schooling in Erie County was already underway.

The first schoolhouse in the present-day City of Erie was built in 1806 and located on the southwest corner of Seventh and Holland streets – it's where the Jones School building, which was built in 1899, still stands. Made of hewn logs, it was about 18 by 20 feet in size, and Erie citizens paid $30 to have it built privately. Named the Presque Isle Academy, it was surrounded by woods with a path to the village of Erie, located near German Street, below Fourth Street. In 1812, there were 30 girls and 40 boys enrolled, but not much else is known about the school. This early log schoolhouse was just the beginning. Over the next decades, Pennsylvania's lawmakers and local residents pushed to make education both free and more widespread.

As Pennsylvania pushed for broader access to education, small towns followed suit.

The interior of the historic Hornby School is arranged in such a way as to give visitors a glimpse at what life was like in an educational facility 150 years ago. Slate boards, wood burning stoves, and handmade ink pens represent a bygone era. Contributed photo.

Building schools and training teachers

In 1834, the Free School Act established a system of education across the commonwealth schools, mandating free public education and prompting the establishment of numerous small, rural schools. Many of them were one-room schoolhouses. In Washington Township, the first schools were held in the cabins of pioneers until the schoolhouses were erected in 1820, when Edinboro's population was fewer than 200 people.

In 1849, Pennsylvania passed an act to train teachers across the state, and the Edinboro Normal School was one of 12 state schools opened to teach educators. Florence Lewis followed the pipeline from a one-room schoolhouse to the Edinboro Normal School.

Growing up on the Crawford County and Erie County line, Lewis lived on a farm, and the walk to school in Edinboro was sometimes treacherous in snowy or muddy conditions. Lewis and two other farm girls attending high school in Edinboro actually had to take two  rooms with a family closer to Edinboro so that they wouldn't have to travel too far on a daily basis. They did their own cooking and provided their own firewood, using one room for sleeping and one for cooking and as a living space. They continued this arrangement until the three of them went on to Normal School.

Normal School training for teachers involved two years of work after graduation to be completely certified. After graduation, Lewis married the brother of her two roommates, the Shrader sisters, and became Florence Shrader. Shrader's teaching career included time at Dundon, Waldo, Torry, Gleeten, and Avonia schools. Although she focused on intermediate grades during her training, she taught first through eighth grades, sometimes with 30 students in a class. She played "Come Abide with Me" on the piano when the occasion arose, brought soup for children on cold days, felt proud of her accomplishments, and, above all, is quoted saying: [I] was "glad I lived when I did."

Her story illustrates not only the rigor of teacher training but also the devotion required to serve one-room schools scattered across the county.

​Preserved, lost, and repurposed

Beyond Edinboro, the landscape of Erie County was filled with schoolhouses – some have been preserved, some lost, and others adapted to new uses. In nearby McKean, Sterrettania School began operations in 1828 on West Road. Schoolhouses were often named after the landowner. In 1840, a church was built next door, a prime example of how churches and schoolhouses were often located next to each other in rural settlements, emphasizing the importance of religion and education to the county's early residents.

The church is now the Sterrettania Alliance Church, and the school remains next door as a private residence.

Further north, in Millcreek Township, the Laird Schoolhouse was one of the oldest schoolhouses in the county until it was demolished on Earth Day this year. Some citizens wanted to preserve the schoolhouse and integrate it into the Gateway Plan that Millcreek Township is forming as a history of the farm area that existed at the head of Presque Isle, but a study found that it did not merit historic preservation.

Some residents, like Mary Ellen Magoc, disagreed with the decision and continued to fight for the preservation of history in the township. She said that despite many residents giving eloquent appeals to township supervisors, their pleas ultimately fell on deaf ears.

Further east in the county, the Corry Area School District has preserved some of its schoolhouses. Corry became a city in 1866, and shortly thereafter, Hatch School was built in 1870 for $30,000, named after Corry's first teacher, John Hatch. From 1863 to 1873, the district expanded to include Union School, Wayne School, Fairview School, and Washington School.

Many of the schools have been demolished, but others remain. Harding School, built in 1923, is now used for a variety of educational programs at the Corry Area High School and Middle School campus. Columbus Elementary School is now part of the Corry Area Intermediate School. Corry Area Primary School now stands where Hatch School once was.

On the other side of the county in Albion, the Valley School was saved from dilapidation. Its original location was on Cherry Hill Road, but it has since been relocated to the Northwestern School District campus. It's a living history museum, and, like Hornby, showcases history to residents and schoolchildren.

In the Fairview area, many people relish the old-timey aesthetic of The Schoolhouse, a former one-room schoolhouse on Dutch Road and Route 5. It was sold by the school district in 1952 when a statewide consolidation began and is now an event venue where locals go for weddings or visit for drinks.

​Homework in historic preservation

Many one-room schoolhouses were shuttered in the 1950s as consolidation efforts aimed to create larger and more modern schools, which were seen as a way to improve educational standards and facilities for rural students in the post-World War II era. For Hornby School, the reorganization of districts marked the beginning of the Wattsburg School District and the end of the one-room schoolhouse. Instead of building a joint school district, a central school welcomed students from 10 area schoolhouses.

After closing in 1956, the building sat vacant under the care of Josephine Walter, next-door neighbor and one of the last educators at the school. In 1973, for the 100th anniversary of the school's groundbreaking, Walter donated the building and a half-acre for restoration and the creation of an educational museum. She later donated another half acre.

Since then, Hornby School Restoration Society has utilized grant funding and donations to replace the foundation, repair the roof, fill the interior with historic relics, and open its doors to the public. The school has been restored to its 1875 state, complete with the water pump and outhouse on the outskirts of the property. It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2008 and continues to offer tours, host school groups, and hold workshops on basket making and writing in Spencerian script. The school also retains all its records, which offer a base for genealogy and local history research that cannot be found online.

Marge Clark, president of the Hornby School Restoration Society, explained that being on the historic register inspires the group to seek out repair work using period appropriate materials, and have work completed as it would've been in 1875.

When it came time to replace the windows, they felt they couldn't hire a company to install all-new windows and treatments. In the end, the society awarded the work to an Amish construction company that removed the original window panes, extracted the rotten parts of the frame, replaced them with new wood, caulked all the windows around them, and installed storm windows.

"Now that we're on the national registry, that's what we have to do because we're maintaining it the way it should be," she explained.

Like the storm windows, there are certain aspects of the schoolhouse that can enter the modern century because they are not noticeable. For example, Erie County Vocational Technical School sent a masonry crew to replace the foundation with cinderblocks because cinderblocks are sturdier and the foundation is largely hidden. Out front, where someone could see the foundation, the cinderblocks are covered with stones native to Greenfield Township that students of a local first-grade class collected from their yards.

In 2013, Ronald McDonald Charities funded an outdoor pavilion for teaching, complete with lights and a closet for the society to store educational resources. Clark also became well-versed in getting the best bang for her buck. About a decade ago, a former Hornby student donated its largest sum yet: $3,000. Clark applied to the Erie County Gaming Revenue Authority, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission, and the Erie Community Foundation for matching funds. By the year's end in 2016, she had raised about $25,000 for the school's biggest renovation yet. It took them a couple of years to complete the work, but they graded the land and fixed the chimney structure, among other repairs, to ensure the structure is in tip-top shape for its visitors.

Still in session

Currently, Hornby hosts school groups and is open to the public on Sundays in the summer. The society and the volunteers who maintain the school are mostly former educators or individuals whose family members attended the school. "A bunch of us old teachers take care of this," Clark said. "Nobody gets paid a cent." To the volunteers, there's nothing quite like the time capsule that the schoolhouse provides. The joy of seeing children hear the school bell ring, playing games in the schoolyard, and writing on old slates is unmatched.

"We were playing 'Button Button, Who's Got the Button?' and oh my gosh, they had not a clue, and it wasn't even a button we used, it was just a rock," recalled volunteer and "gamemaster" Jean Striney. "The whole thing of trying to maintain a poker face, we had a blast. They got very rowdy." It's those memories that she said make the work so rewarding. Similarly, volunteers take great pleasure in connecting people with their past as the yearbooks lining the bookshelves offer a glimpse into the lives of loved ones centuries ago, along with donated desks and artifacts from the school.

As the need for new volunteers grows, Hornby searches for creative routes like engaging college students majoring in education and activating an interest in locals. "My biggest need now is volunteers to help maintain what we have," Clark remarked.

After a day of writing on a slate, ringing the bell, and learning script, the society is hopeful that people will want to become more deeply involved in an important living piece of history that other areas of the county have lost sight of.

To celebrate the 150 years Hornby has survived and thrived, the society will host a celebration from 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. on Sept. 21 at the school, 10000 Station Road. It will include live music, artifacts, tours, games for children, and special activities – learn about what a Victorian-era lunch looked like, what an 1880s-style spelling bee consisted of, and test your knowledge at fifth-grade math. There will also be a multitude of fundraising opportunities, including one that gives people a chance to commemorate the educators who have made an impact in their lives.

Can't make the celebration? Visit the museum Sundays, 1 to 5 p.m., April through October. For details, visit hornbyschool.org.

Chloe Forbes is a local journalist. Reach her at chloeforbes14@gmail.com