Lessons from the past
By Jennifer Archibald

One-room schoolhouse Wallace Dolan played the part of the schoolmaster last weekend at the Christmas open house at Canal Park. He is pictured in the one-room log school that the Canal Association recently moved to Delphi from White County. Comet photo by Jennifer Archibald

Visitors to the Old-Fashioned Christmas open house at Canal Park last weekend had the chance to visit the newly acquired oneroom schoolhouse.

Guests entered the school and sat on log benches as “schoolmaster” Wallace Dolan told about schools in the canal era of the mid 1800s.

“The school was the center of life on the frontier,” Dolan said. He explained that in a new settlement, the school was often built before a church. He said the school served as a church on Sunday, as a voting place, and for other gatherings.

“These kind of schools were called ‘subscription schools’ or ‘blab schools,’” Dolan said. Subscription meant that parents would pay for their children’s schooling with commodities such as ham, corn, and beans. He said “blab” referred to the fact that the students did their readings aloud and all at the same time.

“Early readers were McGuffey and Murray.”

“They used quill pens, dipped in blackberry juice or whatever they had,” Dolan said.

When they were thirsty, they all drank from the same dipper.

Dolan said the school year was short because students had to help with harvest and planting.

“School let out around April 10,” he said.

Dolan commented that his grandmother taught in a oneroom school after graduating from eighth grade.

“Many great men had their start in a school like this,” he said.