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Delaware County NY Genealogy and History Site

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The FRASER SCHOOL, near Delhi

Submitted 10 February 1998 by John W. Jack

The Fraser school is located about 3 miles from Delhi on Route 10 as you travel toward Walton. It is one room, formerly equipped with an outhouse [boy side had 2 holes] [I believe the same was true for the girls side, but cannot guarantee it!!] The last teacher there was Mrs. Jennie Wanamaker Grey, wife of Arnie Grey who lived in DeLancey. I believe it was the next to last rural one room school in the Delaware Academy [Delhi] school district to close [in June 1945]. Probably the Peakes Brook school was open one year longer - per my best recall - in June 1946. Our school was heated by a large pot bellied wood stove during my first grades, later converted to a coal burning arrangement. Our educational experience was quite similar to the model now being used in a few experimental schools - within a particular subject - say math, you could proceed to work at whatever level you could handle, no limits to a particular preconceived notion as to what was appropriate!! Since all recitations were in the same room, as a little kid, I could hear the bigger kids recite their lessons; also, you learned to concentrate, even when there were distractions in the room. Those of us from the little rural school were very well prepared to compete with children that had the advantages of the centralized school experience. I didn't fully appreciate the truly remarkable experiences of the one room school until many years later when I was enrolled in the Graduate Program of a very prestigous University. Mrs Grey and the one room school had prepared me to compete with people from all over the world! So, do have very positive feelings on the matter!!



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