Last week’s column on the Chartiers Valley School District jointure got me wondering about the numerous schools that existed in the Bridgeville area in the early years. The principle of free public education for children in Pennsylvania was not mandated in Pennsylvania until the State Legislature passed the “The Free School Act of 1834”. Prior to that, wealthy families hired tutors while the rest of the population relied on informal one-room schools staffed by itinerant teachers supported by the families whose children they taught. There is a report of such an operation, the Higbee School, close to the current location of Upper St. Clair High School, “before 1800”. A similar school is said to have existed “around 1790” near Sturgeon, where Robinson’s Run Cemetery is located today. Concurrent with these activities, “academies” were being chartered by the Pennsylvania General Assembly for the purpose of preparing young men for careers in the Clergy, in Medicine, and in Law. In 1787 Hugh Henry Brackenridge established the Pittsburgh Academy; the University of Pittsburgh is its descendant. Reverend John McMillan established Canonsburg Academy in 1792; Thaddeus Dod, Washington Academy in 1796. They eventually merged to become Washington and Jefferson College.
As far as the Bridgeville area is concerned, there may well have been a one-room school here at that time; we have no concrete evidence regarding that subject.
Information in the three versions of “Bridging the Years” is minimal and occasionally contradictory. In volume I (1951) Joan Lutz reported that “The first known school in Bridgeville was on McLaughlin Run, above Bell Town, and was a one-story log building. It was destroyed by the flood of 1874.” By Volume III (2001) we had learned that “The first schoolhouse was built in a field on Presley Road at the top of the hill where the road turns right. It was destroyed by fire.” We now believe that it was built early in the 1800s and preceded the one on McLaughlin Run Road. Thanks to Jimmy Patton’s correspondence with his Uncle John Poellott in the 1930s, we know the names of several dozen children who attended the McLaughlin Run school in 1855. It operated until 1858, then was replaced by the Fryer School, located at the east end of Baldwin Street. Miss Retta Jones began her long teaching career there in 1881; she was followed by Mrs. Mary Reed two years later. The Fryer School operated until 1886. That year Henry Poellot sold a property at the corner of Hickman and Locust Streets to the Upper St. Clair School District for $250. A frame building built on that site served as a school, with Harry Couch and Sadie Rogers as the teachers. Later owned by Macedonia Maioli, that building still exists.
In 1894 the Hickman Street School was replaced by a four-room frame building at 431 Washington Ave, the site currently occupied by the Northwest Bank. In 1904 that building was acquired by W. S. Reed, dismantled, and moved to Station Street where it became the Reed Apartment. A twelve room, two story brownstone building replaced it. The earliest photograph we have of a graduating class from that school is dated 1908. The class consisted of Mary Melvin, Grace Lesnett, Mary Jones, Leith Jones, and Edna Fryer, plus Principal Allen W. Kelley. In 1910 an additional story with four additional rooms was added to the building. Prior to this addition, the school district offered classes from first grade through tenth grade; in 1911 an eleventh grade was added, followed by a twelfth grade in 1918. A photograph of the faculty in 1913 includes Mary Jones, Mrs. Hewitt, Joseph Ferree, Romaine Russell, Cecelia Sullivan, Ida Porter, Hannah Hockenberry, Lucy Joel, Ms. Cronemeyer, Retta Jones, Elizabeth Dinsmore, and Principal T. S. McAnlis.
How were these schools financed, and who paid the teachers? We know that schools in Pennsylvania were essentially unregulated before 1834. The “Common Schools Act” was passed by the Pennsylvania State Legislature to “establish a general system of education by common schools”. It assigned this responsibility to each county and gave them authority to levy taxes to fund the schools. We know that the Pittsburgh Board of Education was established to implement this process in the City of Pittsburgh at that time; we presume that Upper St. Clair established a school board at about the same time.
A search of the Upper St. Clair website is silent on the history of its School Board. The only information prior to the twentieth century is the report regarding the Higbee School. I suspect there was an informal school in the Clifton area in the early 1800s, at the same time one existed in what is now Bridgeville. By the late 1800s there definitely was an Upper St. Clair School Board, responsible for taxing township residents and funding the schools. We know it existed in 1886 when it purchased the Hickman Street property. Unfortunately, we know very little about the activities of that School Board. We did find newspaper clippings advertising “Teacher Examinations” that referenced Upper St. Clair in 1864 and 1878. The most relevant clipping we found, in the August 28, 1889, Pittsburg Dispatch, quotes a USC School Board member who chose to remain anonymous while complaining that “the Board is the essence of economy”. According to him the district had three schools, one “in the midst of a swamp”, one “on top of a bleak hilltop”, and one (Essen School) “a disgrace to the Township”. We suspect the Essen School was the predecessor to Cook School, which was built in 1910.
In 1901 Bridgeville seceded from Upper St. Clair Township and established its own Borough and School District. The Bridgeville Area Historical Society has considerable information on the schools that they operated prior to the Chartiers Valley jointure. Additional research into the subject of local schools prior to the twentieth century is certainly warranted.