The Centre County Historical Society (CCHS) will hold a free public open house at the restored Boogersburg School, 1021 Fox Hill Road, on Sunday, Sept. 13.
Visitors can stop in any time from 1 to 4 p.m. to learn about the school’s history, join in recess games, try their hands at “mental math” and ring the school bell. They might even meet alumni of Boogersburg or hear stories from others who attended a one-room school as a student.
Attendees may “walk to school” on the trail to the schoolhouse from the adjacent field where recess games will take place, weather permitting.
Over the years, thousands of elementary school children from Centre County and beyond have participated in the school’s classroom experience, under the tutelage of CCHS docents—”schoolmarms” in period dress. Visiting children are summoned into the classroom by the ringing of the school bell, still crowning the rooftop cupola. Students relive history as they step into the school day of their youthful counterparts from the late 1800s and compare it to their own modern experiences.
“The Boogersburg School is one of the last surviving examples of the 180 one-room schools that once existed in Centre County,” said CCHS President Roger Williams. “One-room schoolhouses were the physical expression of the ‘common school’ movement, which began in the 1830s and lasted up to the 1950s. Guided by the belief that the American democratic experiment needed a literate, educated populace to function properly, the common school movement provided America’s youth with free elementary education in grades one through eight. Pennsylvania’s Common School Law of 1834 left it up to local township school boards to accept the free schools and collect the taxes to finance their operation.”
Intended for Patton Township children, the Boogersburg School was built in 1877 on land deeded by Moses Thompson, former Centre Furnace ironmaster and the county’s largest and wealthiest landowner. Thompson had several such schools built to educate the children of tenant farmers living on the far reaches of Centre Furnace Village, which had its own one-room school.
Serving three generations of children over 75 years, the Boogersburg School eventually became part of the State College Area School District until its official closing in January 1953.
Parking for the open house is available on the adjacent lawn near the school and along Pleasant Hill Road.
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