Fishkill's 1830 Little Red Schoolhouse stood for 129 years
Anthony P. Musso
For the Poughkeepsie Journal
Built in 1830 on the southeast corner of today’s Route 9D and Red Schoolhouse Road in the Town of Fishkill, a one-room schoolhouse that once stood, accommodated students from grades 1 through 8. It operated at that location for 129 years before its students were consolidated with the Beacon Central School District.
During its existence, the building was designated Common School District 4 and it provided elementary education to children in both Fishkill and Wappinger. When town residents voted to close the school in favor of merging it with the larger Beacon district in 1959, there were 15 students attending.
DOG SHOW: LaGrangeville woman to judge at Westminster
DATELINE: Writer for 'Dark Shadows' once lived here
During the early 1900s, a small room was added onto the main structure. When it closed, newspaper accounts touted it as being the last one-room schoolhouse in Dutchess County.
“A number of the students who attended the schoolhouse were the children of the tenant farmers working on the Verplanck property,” said Tim Stanley, president of the Stony Kill Foundation. “There is also evidence that the children from the Verplanck manor house across the road also went to school there.”
The Verplanck family inherited a large parcel of land that was part of an 85,000-acre tract acquired by their ancestor Gulian Verplanck and his partner Francis Rombout in 1683 from the Wappinger Indians. The schoolhouse sat on a portion of their property, then known as Stony Kill Farm.
Surviving documents related to the school and dated 1910 indicate that the sole teacher hired to teach all eight grade levels was compensated $284.50 annually.
In addition to providing education, teachers employed at the schoolhouse were also responsible for heating the structure with a pot-bellied stove, opening and closing its shutters daily; retrieving and carrying buckets of water for drinking and use in restrooms; shoveling snow; and, in warmer weather, cutting the lawn.
Elizabeth Livingston Travis had the distinction of teaching at the schoolhouse for 47 years.
“Mrs. Travis and her husband had a farm along Red Schoolhouse Road,” said lifetime Glenham resident Alex Burka. “Frank Livingston was her uncle and he owned most of the land on that road.”
Fishkill’s Common School District 4 had a lone trustee – Herbert Muller – who oversaw its operation. That position became obsolete once the school merged with Beacon and Muller was the last of six people that held the position since the school’s inception.
Because the schoolhouse was located on Verplanck property, it was originally called the Stony Kill School; today the property is part of the Stony Kill Environmental Education Center. That status complicated the Beacon School District’s efforts to find another use for the structure when its days as a school ended.
While an 1867 Beers area map clearly identifies the schoolhouse on that parcel of land, an extensive search made at the Dutchess County Courthouse, led by the Beacon School District’s attorney, failed to locate a deed for the property. On paper, the Beacon School District owned the property, but in the absence of a formal deed it remained impossible to enact its legal transfer.
In all likelihood, the Verplanck family allowed the schoolhouse to be constructed on their property but still retained ownership of the land.
“That was fairly common in those days,” Stanley said. “The school could exist on property for as long as it operated, but once it closed the property reverted back to the Verplanck family.”
Left abandoned and vacant, the building became the victim of decay and vandalism during the 1960s and in 1971 the state Department of Environmental Conservation ordered it to be demolished. Six years later, students at the Glenham Elementary School became intrigued with the history of the old schoolhouse after Mrs. Travis visited them one morning to talk about the earlier form of education.
They carved a huge wooden sign and erected it on the site of the old schoolhouse to commemorate its existence. It remains there today.
“Dateline” appears Wednesdays. To suggest a topic, email Anthony Musso at railcommute@aol.com