Agricultural Museum honors donors for school building restoration

The Delaware Agricultural Museum and Village recently recognized the generosity of longtime educator and volunteer Arthur Gene Carlisle with a large bronze plaque honoring his second $25,000 sponsorship of a historic building in the museum's popular rural Delaware village.

Located on a quiet two-acre lot on Silver Lake, the museum village offers a snapshot of life in a rural Delaware community from about 1890 to the 1960s. Village buildings include a school, farmhouse, church, grist mill, general store, railroad station, blacksmith/wheelwright shop, barn, and several period outbuildings. Over the past four years, financial support from the Crystal Trust and the State of Delaware has enabled the gradual restoration of all of the village's buildings to their original period appearance.

The large-scale restoration project not only allowed the Agricultural Museum to preserve these special symbols of Delaware's history, but also created a learning environment for adults and children. Each building and the story behind them illustrates the history of agriculture and life in Delaware's rural communities. Together, they illustrate the many ways in which rural life has evolved over time.

Carlisle specified that his generous donation be used to maintain the museum's one-room schoolhouse (ca. 1850), which originally stood on Mill Lane in Middletown. Carlisle has been a teacher for 30 years and places a special emphasis on school. He began teaching at a small school in his hometown of Greenwood, where the same students stayed in his class for five years, advancing from eighth to twelfth grade. He taught seven subjects, including mathematics, science, literature, and geography. Carlisle served as a counselor for each student, as there were no counselors at the small school.

Mill Lane School is a typical example of the one-room schools that existed throughout the state in the mid- to late 19th century. At any one time, up to 22 students, ages 5 to 18, received face-to-face instruction from a single teacher in a room no larger than 20 feet by 20 feet. Students were separated by gender, with boys on one side of the room and girls on the other. They were then divided into rows based on ability, with younger students sitting at the front and older ones further back. Girls often received a better education than boys because older boys typically only attended school during the winter months. They were needed on the family farms in the spring and fall to help.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, teachers in rural America were predominantly female. They could earn their teaching certificates as early as 16 at normal schools, the forerunners of teacher training colleges. This meant that the teacher was sometimes not much older, or even younger, than some of the students in his or her class. In cases where teachers were not from the local community, farm families often took turns to house them in their homes. Although they were poorly paid, many young women became teachers in the 19th century because teaching gave them independence and allowed them to work outside the home for the first time. For most, however, this newfound independence was short-lived. Once they married, which most did, women were no longer allowed to teach in school.

In the late 1920s, life in Delaware's rural communities began to change. Advances in transportation, made possible by the automobile and improved road systems, allowed for a more mobile population. The closing of most single-class schools in favor of larger comprehensive schools was one of many changes that occurred during this period in the state's history.

For more information, visit agriculturalmuseum.org.