Museum’s first School Days opens a schoolhouse with a 1969 chalkboard

Published 2:21 pm Friday, September 4, 2026

The Washington County Museum will hold its first School Days from 2 to 4 p.m. Sept. 20 at its restored one-room schoolhouse at [LOCATION]. The event is for children in preschool through fifth grade.

“It is a chance for them to see something that they probably have not seen before, an old school, one-room schoolhouse that has a chalkboard, that has … a fire stove there where they had to heat the building,” said Jane Heinrich, a museum board member.

Outside, there will be a three-legged race, cornhole, beanbag games, sidewalk chalk, hopscotch and ladder golf. Inside, children will make quilt designs, play bingo with gemstones they can take home, and write on slates and on part of the classroom chalkboard. Treats will be served.

They will not be writing on all of it. A poem has been on one section of the board since 1969, the year the school closed. Donna Henton, an author and local historian, said Buke Newman wrote the poem and her mother wrote it on the board. It survived the years the building stood vacant and the 2023 move to its present site.

“It hasn’t been erased or … scribbled over,” Henton said.

The board was covered with plexiglass after the move.

The schoolhouse was built in 1877 about 3 1/2 miles west of where it stands now. It closed when the district consolidated with Blair and sat empty for years before the museum acquired, moved and restored it. The work was done with volunteer labor and private funds, with no state or local money.

“Everything in this room is of the original wood and so forth that was at the school,” Henton said. “All we did on these walls was paint them. We didn’t do anything else.”

The building is not only on display. A homeschool group of 20 children ages 6 to 13 meets there every Tuesday, and the schoolhouse has been used for meetings, birthday parties and other small gatherings. It holds 30 to 40 people. There is no charge, though donations are accepted.

Heinrich said that is part of what older visitors may want to see.

“I also think it would be wonderful for them to see that it is starting to be used again, that this school that is so old … is now being used by some young people, the homeschoolers that are coming,” she said.

The room holds a piano students bought in 1921, restored by Tom Kaegler of Herman; a cabinet of pull-down maps; and a clock from the ranch school, which Henton said is a school clock because it shows the days of the month. The books were in the building when it was moved.

Washington County once had about 58 to 60 school districts, Henton said.

“They were sprinkled everywhere, because back then, getting to school was a big deal,” she said. “And so they’d like to have them so that any one child didn’t have to go more than 2 miles to get to school.”

The largest class at this school was in 1903, when 62 students attended. Former students were invited to an open house in March 2024, and Henton said the place was full.

Her own family has long ties to the building. Her mother, her uncles and both her grandfathers went to school there.

“And there were picnics there all the time,” Henton said. “And when relatives would come from farther away, we’d always just go visit the school. We just did.”

Heinrich began teaching at a country school in Washington, Nebraska, where she had kindergarten and first grade. It closed not long after.

“It’s supposed to be a fun day for kids to come and see what an old schoolhouse was like and play some games,” she said of the Sept. 20 event.

The museum will also host two potters during the pottery tour in early October and Christmas events at the Fromm house. A fall event around Halloween has not been finalized.