These students in the 1962-63 school year of West Liberty School, a one-room school, made up its final class. The school in Slippery Rock, which held grades one through eight, and in its later years grades one through six, closed in 1963. Submitted photo

When pioneers settled Franklin Township in 1796, they believed it was important to establish a system of education.

“The early settlers of the township were not unmindful of their duties in regard to educating the children,” Chester Hale Sipe wrote in the 1927 publication, “History of Butler County.”

“Seven years after the first settlement was made, John Thompson fitted up a log cabin and conducted a subscription school for a time,” Sipe wrote about the first school in Franklin Township.

Thompson, known as “Connoquenessing John,” would become the township’s first teacher, described as a “good instructor” by the 1883 publication “1796-1883 History of Butler County Pennsylvania.”

A few years later, in 1811, Franklin Township constructed a second one-room school, a log building that would employ teachers and would see a yearly increase in student enrollment, according to Sipe’s research.

The school would be run by Charles Sullivan, who in turn was succeeded by Samuel Cook.

With the establishment of the Office of County Superintendent of Schools in 1856, the public schools were firmly established and Franklin Township would join the Slippery Rock school district.

The Butler County Superintendent of Schools reported in 1861 that only 10 out of 210 schoolhouses in the county were log buildings.

By 1963, the last one-room schools closed their doors, including Slippery Rock’s West Liberty.

At the turn of the 20th century, female teachers started to outnumber male teachers. Statistics from Shirley Evans Cubbison’s 1987 “Andy over the Schoolhouse” showed there were 154 male and 100 female teachers in Butler County in 1861, but just two decades later, the number of male and female teachers was almost even.

By 1892, there were 137 male teachers and 211 female teachers.

Schools were not initially separated by grades. In 1864 the Butler County superintendent reported that “Two schools have been graded … These seem to be doing well, and doubtless give full proof of the superiority of the graded schools.”

The length of a school year has increased drastically through the decades.

The statewide average of a school term in 1825 was just three and a half months. By 1861, the average term in a rural school would be five months.

It would not be until 20 years later, in 1881, that most schools would move to half a year.

By 1963, the last one-room schools closed their doors in Butler County, including Slippery Rock’s West Liberty. Submitted photo

McDowell

While schools may have looked differently during the early parts of the 20th century, children then had many of the same experiences that schoolchildren have today.

For instance, more than a century ago, in 1918, schools were faced with a pandemic.

“Since school began early in September our patriotism has been tested in a way we least expected,” wrote county Superintendent Frank A. McClung in a letter to the teachers of Butler County. “The epidemic of influenza has necessitated the closing of many of the schools for a time just after the years’ work was well begun and some of us feel that we shall have to being all over again.”

McClung encouraged teachers to make sure the temperatures in the rooms were not too high.

“Try to keep the windows open,” McClung wrote. “Close rooms often bring on sickness.”

McClung also offered free thermometers for classrooms.

Bernice Long, who taught at the Franklin Township’s Mile Run School, starting in 1926, recalled her experience with teaching in an interview with Cubbison.

“I never had discipline problems in teaching,” Long said in her 1985 interview. “My kids were more like pals. We had fellowship. We ate lunch outside when the weather was nice. We traded sandwiches and sometimes would just lie down for a while and look at the shape of the clouds.

“Those school days were great.”