Port Oneida School

Open House during Port Oneida Fair

NPS Photo

Quick Facts

Amenities

1 listed

Picnic Table

The Port Oneida School began in the 1860s but this building was built closer to the 1890s. There was no indoor plumbing at the school; they used the outhouse or privy, with its trademark crescent moon cutout on the door. A hand pump in the schoolyard still provides water. Students planted the row of sugar maples along the southern edge of the school yard to celebrate Arbor Day many years ago. They were tapped by the Kelderhouses to make maple syrup.

Several generations of Port Oneidans attended the school. To prevent any "problems," boys sat on one side of the room and girls on the other, and there were separate coat rooms for boys and girls. A framed image of George Washington hung on the wall as inspiration.

During recess, everyone played together. According to one former student, "We all went out, we played together...everybody played the game. It didn't matter whether you were playing ball or playing keep-away, or run-sheep-run, or anything like that. Everybody played together."

And snow days? Not back then. "When we'd have a blizzard, my dad would hook up the horses to the sled, and bring out the big blankets, and we'd get underneath the blankets, and here he's sitting up there driving the horses, and we kids are underneath the blankets keeping warm, and he'd take us to school."

Not just a schoolhouse, the school was also a central gathering place of the community after the store near the dock closed around 1900. After the school consolidated with the Glen Arbor School in the early 1940s, the building was used as the meeting place for the Port Oneida Community.