Serendipity and Schoolhouses

Serendipity.  That’s what Dottie said as we got back into her car after a chat with a local man after we stopped to snap a picture of his house.  The front door was open and he invited us in and showed us around.  We connected because we’re ‘old house’ people, or more accurately, ‘old building’ people.  Old buildings are a way to connect with the past, with people who came before us, a way to honor the hard lives they led, and a way to be a part of what will be history someday.

            After I interviewed Dottie Young, who grew up right in Clarksville, for some of the history on last week’s schoolhouse cover story, she invited me to go along on a tour of old remaining schoolhouses in the area. She told me fascinating stories of people and places as we passed mile after mile of cornfields. “That house was constructed without nails,” she said as we passed a large white farmhouse, and “my mother was born in a house that used to stand here on this corner.” 

Dottie told me of tiny, nearly forgotten cemeteries tucked in the acres.  She has ancestors buried at many of them, dating back to when this area was settled.  She took me to an early surviving log cabin—and I was amazed.  It still has a wood shingle roof!

I’d never been on most of these roads, but I’d been to one of the old schoolhouses we visited.  I actually wrote about it here back when I first discovered it by accident. Just a shell now, in ruins but still standing, it touched me so deeply then and still does.  Dottie thinks it was called ‘Willow Pond’.

Down the road from that schoolhouse is where we met Josh Reynolds.  His is an amazing story of how he and his wife Laura purchased their schoolhouse and have renovated it into a beautiful, cozy home with soaring fourteen foot ceilings and wood floors. What’s now the front door wasn’t the original entrance, but there was a big hole in the wall from where a tractor had been driven right through the wall—on purpose—a common practice back then.  The limestone plaque is inscribed with the name Charles Zeis, Dottie’s great-grandfather.

I feel so much gratitude for those who work to preserve our stories and our buildings and our past. 

Saving the Schoolhouse

Love this place, love this woman, love that I got to do this story: Garden Thyme

Schoolhouses and Cemeteries

On a beautiful, crisp October day, we visited some old cemeteries. Old cemeteries are everywhere, often we don't even know where they are. We live just down the street from one that now sits between a school and a grocery store. We were here for years before we even knew it existed. There are 2 south of us, both on busy roads, that I drove by a million times before I noticed them. One we visited is a secluded, fenced and treed spot that backs up to Verizon. There are only a handful of graves, only taking up a small part of the cemetery, the latest dating from the 40's. There was a grave for a stillborn and a 2 month old, both alone. That was so poignant and sad. I wondered these people's stories. It's so hard to imagine that this spot, once distant to town and in the country, now is in such close proximity to loud rock concerts, something these people could never have dreamed. Now on concert nights the stillness is broken and the sound reverberates through the ground.

As we traveled to another cemetery (we were geo-caching) we passed this old schoolhouse (pictured). Again, the questions. When was it built? What is the story? What was the teacher's name and what was she like? What did the children go on to do? I wish I could go back in time and get glimpses, it's so hard to imagine it at all. And again, it's so desolate and sad. Why has it (and so many like it) been allowed to fall into ruin? I have always loved old schoolhouses. There used to be one in near ruins near my house growing up, and I dreamed of fixing it up into a house. It was torn down. I was sad then too. Why do so few people seem to care to preserve our past?