Sunday, June 30 @ 1:00 pm – 4:00 pm EDT
The Peter Parley/West Lane District Schoolhouse will be open to visitors on Sunday, June 30, from 1 to 4 p.m. Summer was the season for the younger students in the district to start learning their ABC’s and numbers, while their farming families were spending long days tending the crops and livestock that were their livelihood for the coming year.
Children as young as four would start their education in the summer, and were thus kept busy while their parents tended the farm. Older students, particularly boys, would not be at the school until after the harvest.
The schoolhouse, operated by the Ridgefield Historical Society, is a small museum of early education in Ridgefield. Many of its furnishings were installed by the Ridgefield Garden Club, which first restored the school. This district school closed in 1915 when the new East Ridge school, a modern brick building opened in the center of town.
Admission to the open house is free and caretakers Jack and Sally Sanders will be on hand to answer questions. Jack Sanders is the author of School Days, Schools and Schooling in Old Ridgefield, a book about all of Ridgefield’s schools.
For more information about the Peter Parley Schoolhouse, please visit https://ridgefieldhistoricalsociety.org/.
Aunt Delight Benedict, as illustrated in Samuel G. Goodrich’s Recollections of A Lifetime, who taught young pupils at the West Lane District School.
