1853 - First used with a group of students. 

1910 - School closes and is left untouched. 

1977 - Schoolhouse donated and moved intact to the Washington County      
           Fairgrounds 

1984 - Received Washington Co Historic Preservation Award 

2010 - Recognized as a Landmark Schoolhouse and listed on the Country School    
Association of America National Schoolhouse Registry. 

 

The white clapboard one-room schoolhouse stood a top a hill in Perkins Hollow in Salem, New York for over a century. Built during the 1850’s it was where the Beaty family and neighbors were educated until it closed in 1910. By 1977 it was well weathered on the outside and over grown with brush when the Beaty family donated the school building and contents along with the combination woodshed-outhouse building to the Washington County Fairgrounds for the newly formed museum. 

 

Amazingly, the four shuttered windows, two on each side of the building, still held their original glass. The wide wood board and plaster walls were still intact as were the nine wooden desks made by a carpenter. Placed in three rows of three desks each, the desks are double so that they accommodate eighteen pupils. The seat for the back desks is one long board across the width of the room. The recitation bench on the wall at right angles to the desks is a long seat where the pupils sat to recite their lessons. The blackboard, a board painted black, still hangs on the front wall. 

 

The furnishings of the room were the teacher’s desk and chair, another chair for company and charts as teaching aids. There was a low bench, which could be used as an extra seat or pulled up by the stove on cold mornings. A water pail and a long handled dipper stood at one end of the recitation bench. 

 

Care was taken to preserve the schoolhouse and outbuilding in their original condition while offering visitors an opportunity a step back in time. Each year multiple generations visit the schoolhouse and interact with stories of when they went to school.