One-room schoolhouses served the rural communities of New York State for approximately one hundred fifty years, giving way in the early 1900’s to larger central schools. The GHA one-room school house museum started out as the “Franklin District School – No. 12.” It was built in the 1840’s and originally located in the town of Ledyard – at the corner of Route 90 and Rafferty Rd. Around 1870 the town relocated the school to a half acre of land a bit south of the original site.
When the school year ended in 1931, the era of this one-room school came to a close. Subsequent years saw the building fall into a deteriorating structure suitable only as winter shelter for wildlife.
In 1987 the Close family donated the old schoolhouse to the newly established Genoa Historical Association. The following year a group of volunteers moved the building to its current location and restored it. Today the school building serves the community as a local history museum, where volunteers help with genealogy research, offer individual, school and group tours, host history programs, plus organize displays of changes in agriculture, education and rural life. The schoolhouse is a hands-on museum where visitors can sit at the old desks, write on slates, practice penmanship with pen and ink, read the schoolbooks of long ago and visualize life in a one room school.
About Our School Room
- How did they do that? – a story of how the school’s relocation and restoration.
- Historical Sketch
- Self-Guided Tour of the Franklin District School #12.
History of Other Local Schools
- Early Schools in the Southern Cayuga School District – Genoa, Ledyard, Scipio, Venice.
- A Brief History of School Buildings in and Around King Ferry, New York.
- One-Room Schools of the 1840’s (from NYSHA – 2009)
- Checkout our collection of old school photos