Ringing the Bell: The Lost One-Room Schools of Franklin Township

Long before the consolidated regional schools serving a broad area of today, there were small schools dotting the landscape. These “One-Room Schoolhouses” were located so children could walk or be taken by horse and carriage to school each day. In Franklin Township in the mid-1800s, there were nine schoolhouses shown on the 1855 township map, circled below in red. Eight of the nine schoolhouses have been identified.

Development of Mandatory State Education Requirements

From the 1830s into the 1890s, Pennsylvania enacted a series of laws creating local school districts, requiring districts to establish local schools, and eventually requiring attendance of children at these schools. As these laws were enforced, the education of children continued to improve.

• 1834: Free Schools Law divided the entire state into school districts with voters in each district voting on whether they wanted local schools. If so, the state would pay for part of the school costs. By 1835, 59% of the state’s districts had voted yes.
• 1872: The last school district in the state voted to establish public schools.
• 1874: State law passed requiring all districts to provide public schools and said no district could abolish free schools.
• 1895: First mandatory attendance requirement in Pennsylvania required children ages 8-13 to attend school for 13 weeks a year.

Development of Township Schools

In the early 1800s, Franklin Township was very thinly settled, but by 1840 the school at Franklin Center was the first to be established. Thereafter, the population of Franklin Township increased rapidly, peaking in 1880 with over 1,000 residents. Eight additional schoolhouses were soon established within the Franklin Township School District to accommodate this increase. These included the Falls, Goodban, Silverthorn, Foy, and Eureka schools, and three additional schools at the township boundaries that were joint schools with adjoining townships. The joint schools included the Billings-Townline School with Washington Twp, the Elk Creek-Mohawk School with Elk Creek, and the Francis School (not shown on the map) with Girard Twp. You will note one schoolhouse is marked with “???,” while we believe we have a name for this school, we are still working to confirm its identity.

Over the years, the locations of some of these schoolhouses changed. For instance, the Eureka School on Crane may have relocated, and the Falls School moved from near Stancliff to a new location on Francis Road just west of Howard Falls.

A statistical sampling of the population of Franklin Township in 1860 shows that about 25% of the residents were school age (grades 1-8) children. Thus, these nine schools needed to accommodate about 250 children, nearly 30 children per school.

An 1897 notice in the Erie Morning Dispatch (shown below) gives a glimpse into social activity at these schools in Franklin Township. Named are nine schools; Franklin Center, Town Line, Falls, Foy, Francis, Mohawk, Eureka, Silverthorn, and Goodban.

In a 1921 article in the Erie Times News, we see additional information on activity within the Franklin Township school district. Of note are Miss Dorothy Howard and Miss Lillian Battles, as well as School Director Levi Howard. Levi, then age 48, was a director in the school district, and his daughter, Dorothy Howard was a teacher. Lillian Battles was a granddaughter of Asa Battles and Sarah Hinds of Girard and first cousin of Martha Hinds Howard, Levi’s wife.

Additionally, an article in the Erie Morning Dispatch of 1924 lists the teachers in eight of the schools in the Franklin Township School District.

Profile of Education Level of Township Residents by 1940

When the 1940 US census was taken, residents were asked the highest grade completed for each family member. It is the only US Decennial Census where this question was explicitly asked.

Analysis of the response to this question for residents of Franklin Township gives valuable insight into the education level of the population, the then current state of education in the school system, and the attendance of children at school.
Excluding foreign-born and residents who had been born in another state allows a focus on specifically Pennsylvania-reared people. There were 550 residents of Franklin Township in 1940 that met these requirements.

These residents were grouped into three categories, as shown below.

Utilizing these groupings of residents enables us to look first at adults who have been through the educational systems then in place for them, both for younger adults aged 19-39 and also for adults aged 40 and older.

Comparing younger adult educational levels to those of older adults in the community show significant differences and some similarities, as shown in the following graph:

Adults 40 and older would have been educated in the years before 1918. The drop-out rate for them before achieving 8th grade was high; 35% of the children did not achieve an 8th grade education. Conversely, adults under 40 had a markedly lower drop-out rate in grade school. Only 15% of the children did not achieve an 8th grade education.

Pennsylvania began to introduce mandatory high school education in 1911 with the Revised School Code. This law established the State Board of Education to ensure education was equalized throughout the state. Slowly, at first, children began to move beyond 8th grade and began attending high schools that had been established in Edinboro, Girard, and other surrounding towns.

By 1940, 11% of the children in Franklin Township were in grades 9-11, and 2% had completed High School.

Consolidation of Local Schools in the 1950s

The consolidation of one-room schoolhouses in Erie County began in the early 20th century and continued through the 1950s. These small, rural schools, which served children from the immediate area, were gradually replaced by larger, centralized schools as part of an effort to improve educational standards and facilities.

Schools in Franklin Township were consolidated into the General McLane School District.

An article in the 1957 Erie Morning Dispatch described planning for an addition to the then Middleboro and McKean joint high school, which would be used as a consolidated elementary school, allowing the closing of six one-room schoolhouses in the McKean area.

This was followed by the construction of a consolidated elementary school in the Edinboro area in 1959, as described in the following article in the same Erie newspaper.

Larger, centralized schools could offer better facilities, more diverse curricula, and access to advanced educational resources unavailable in smaller, rural schools. Some local schoolhouses functioned as community hubs, resulting in some loss of community identity. In addition students had to travel much further for education.

There is mixed evidence on whether consolidation improved student outcomes. Some studies suggest that larger schools can offer better educational opportunities, while others indicate that smaller schools can provide more personalized attention to students.
Nonetheless, the small schoolhouses that once dotted the community are all mostly gone. The very few that survived were repurposed into homes or shops, and stand silent sentinel to days bygone.

For decades, the residents of Franklin Township had fond memories of those one-room schoolhouses in the township. A 1989 article in the Erie Morning Dispatch announced the 43d reunion of students of that bygone era.

A poignant reminder of those days occurred in the late 1990s, when one day Darren Howard, great-grandson of School Director Levi Howard, was walking in the woods across the road from the site of the one-room, Falls School. There in the forest detritus, he noticed a piece of metal, and stopped to investigate. What emerged was a bell, like that used in a schoolhouse. Could this be the bell that was rung each day for the assembled students at Howard Falls School? Likely, but we will never know for certain the origins of that mysterious bell found by chance on the forest floor. Nonetheless, it has become a treasured artifact in our collection at Howard Falls.

D D Howard
February, 2025