One-Room Schoolhouses of New Hampshire: Primers, Penmanship & Potbelly Stoves

The quaint one-room schoolhouses dotting New Hampshire formed the backbone of the early Granite State education system. Education-minded communities began building these bare-bones schools in the late seventeenth century. In a modest log or clapboard structure, a single teacher faced the challenge of instructing students of all grades through farming seasons and the daily rigors of rural life. Often, these determined educators were limited to instructing students from whichever books pupils brought from home. Despite this, education was highly valued, and students trekked through the weather of all seasons and endured corporal discipline to become literate and learned. Author Bruce Heald explores the evolution of New Hampshire’s one-room schoolhouses and shares the firsthand accounts and memories of former pupils.