Sunday, July 28 @ 8:00 am – 5:00 pm EDT
The Peter Parley Schoolhouse, also known as the West Lane District Schoolhouse, has been a part of Ridgefield since about 1756, a place where children from the southwestern part of town learned to read and write and do math.
Recently listed on the State Register of Historic Places and also cited by the Country School Association of America, the schoolhouse, rebuilt and expanded over the centuries but remaining a one-room place of learning, is now a small museum of early Ridgefield education. One of more than a dozen neighborhood schools in Ridgefield (“district schools”), the school is now furnished as it was in 1915, the year that it closed.
It will be open to visitors on Sunday afternoon, July 28, from 1 to 4 p.m. There will be refreshments and we’ll highlight West Lane alumna Abigail Goodrich Whittelsey, one of the first women to write and publish women’s magazines; she was the sister of Samuel G. Goodrich (Peter Parley). Schoolhouse volunteers Jack and Sally Sanders will be on hand to answer questions.
The schoolhouse is in the triangle of land bounded by West Lane, Silver Spring Road, South Salem Road and Peter Parley Lane.
