Delaware County NY Genealogy and History Site

Please send any identification of persons in photos and/or dates to: either Pat Watts or Joyce Riedinger

I was looking at the above photos and this is definately the schoolhouse on the corner of Dickman Rd and Rte 10 in Meridale. My parents bought it in 1993. I'm not certain but I think it was called Shackport School or District Number 16. The house looks very much the same other than some new windows and siding. --Ralph Sommer

I found this page and it is appreciated. However for this researcher it presents a real question as to where the schools were located and challenges present thought that all was in order.

This may take longer than I had expected, however you show pictures labeled Shackport school, and as I am too young to remember these folks, there could be several that I would recognize if they were aged. The school absolutely (99%) looks like the Shackport school as I have been by it many many times, and if remembered it was painted in recent years to look like your picture. I had even picked raspberries on a field not far from there, my grandmother and two generations lived up on the Wilson road and so on. Now the program says district 17 which is almost as far away from the Shackport school as one can be in the Town of Meredith. Reading the names causes one to wonder if the districts were not renumbered at some point in time. No. 17 is over near West Meredith and the school listing on the site says Peakes brook which makes sense but knowing a number of the old names, they belong to the Shackport school. Shackport got that name as years ago, the small number of houses in that area were small, unkept and substandard. Personally I have never liked the name, even the poor that I knew there were respectable and good citizens. And another add on here, Peakes Brook, if you find a native will call it "peach" brook.......

Some of the pupils listed on the program are not known to me, and since people have moved on, the names have disappeared. However I was surprised to see Carrie and Sadie Darling on there, they lived at one time on a farm where Houghtaling Hollow meets Route 28, the Oneonta road. Carrie married Guy M. Kilbury a teacher at District 11 and in fact my father's fifth grade teacher. He must have met her while teaching there and I knew them 50 years later, a pair that defined the words special, caring and loving.

So in retrospect, we do not have full information of what is needed to determine all points of the questions, however most of the students lived in the area of District 16, the school is still there to this day. The map of Meredith I have is dated 1869 and I doubt there is any later ones which could help, the census was done by different district numbers, doubtful that the census would help although it could.

Highly interesting, my grandmother was friends with Ruez and Edna Georgia, she being the teacher. Teachers would live in the area, but would many times commute in, believe she and Ruez lived at Meredith.