Archive: Around Town

Lansing Kindergartners got a chance to see what it would be like to go to a one room schoolhouse this week, when they visited the Field School.  The classes first stopped by the Lansing Community Library for tours that included the children's reading room and exhibit area, and a story read by 'Miss Susie' (Lansing Librarian Susie Gutenberger).  Then they filed across the parking lot to the Field School where Town Historian Louise Bement greeted them at the door by ringing the school bell.

Before the current Lansing Central School District was formed Lansing was divided into 23 school districts, each with its own school house.  The Field School House was built in the 1830s or 1840s on Peruville Road and named after Miss Evelyn Field, who taught there for nine years starting in 1893.  Today the school sits between the Lansing Town Hall and the town historical records building, across the square from the library.


Bement explained that there would have been between 10 and 20 students ranging from grades one through eight studying together at the school.  In 1834 18 students went to the school.  She showed the kids a picture of President Franklin Roosevelt, who was president during much of the time the building was an active schoolhouse, and she showed the coal stove that would have provided heat in the cold months.  She noted that the schools were spaced around the town so that children could walk to school.  The kids also saw lunch pails that children would have brought to school.


In fact a number of old Lansing schoolhouses still exist.  The Field School (district #15) was originally on Peruville Road near the Gray Barn.  The Sage School (district #23) on Luce Road and the North School, later named the Searles School (district #10) on Searles Road, are now private homes.  The largest is the old Ludlowville Union School (district #9), which sits in faded glory on a hill, hidden behind the main street in the Lansing hamlet.


Bement gave copies of the Lansing Historical Association book, 'Youthful Thoughts' to the teachers.  The book is a compilation of compositions from students between 1844 and 1848, examples of school work that was written by students from Lansing, Groton, and Dryden during the time the Field School was in operation.

Some of the kindergartner's great grandparents might have gone to the Field School.  In the 1930s kids attended from the Hildreth, Armstrong, Cochran, Swarthout, Rumsey, Buck, Schofield, Head, McFall, and Nichols families, names that are familiar here today.

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