hunting old school sites

[Lucky Jack]

I have located three old school sites in my area and from the research I've done they were all started as country schools in the early 1900's and abandoned in the early 1950's. From looking on google maps I see that there are no buildings remaining, just farm land now. Has anyone tried searching sites like this? And more important are they worth the time?

 

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[Monty]

I have seen some very excellent finds from old school sites here on tnet. I'd sure give 'em a try. Monty

 

[Tom_in_CA]

When you say "country school sites", I assume you're talking about 1-room school house type affairs (and not the size/look of the urban schools we think of today when we think "school") right? Ala.: "Norman Rockwell" paintings type of 1-room school houses, eh? If so, you've got the ending dates about right: Starting in the 1940s (& maybe into the early 1950s) those all went by the way-side, as the era of bussing came into play. Prior to the 1940s, if it was a 10+ mile ride to the nearest town or school, these 1 room schools were often put up, if 20+ or so kids from the surrounding farms meritted it. But nowadays, bussing takes care of all that, and country kids are bussed to school, ending the need for 99% of 1-room school houses.

I can think of a particular back-country road that stretches for about 100 miles here in CA, before it gets to the next town of any size. And studying the history, one discovers there was literally a 1-room school house every 10 miles or so. And the last of them was discontinued in the early 1950s at the latest, being consolidated into larger multi-room modern schools every 40 or 50 miles or so (or "in town", etc..)

My experience with hitting these one-room school house sites is this: Let's say the school operated from the turn-of-the-century, till 1950. Invariably, if you find coins, they always seem to be on the latter end of the date spectrum (ie.: 1940s/50s). Rarely did we find coins from the earlier range of the school's existence. At first, we thought maybe it was just the luck of the draw, or a depth thing, or someone got there before us, etc... But soon we realized that some of them were quite virgin (d/t the easy 4 star signals like suspender buckles, harmonica reeds, bullet shells, buttons, etc...). So where are the OLDER coins we thought?

The answer is this: It wasn't till after WWII that American prosperity was such that little kids (esp. country kids, maybe not as applicable to urban-city kids) took money to school. Prior to the school lunch programs that started in the 1940s/50s, what need was there to take coins to school? Sometimes you hear an elderly person who grew up in the '20s or '30s joke that they never had a nickel to their name, or didn't take money to school, etc... I used to chuckle at that, thinking, like most non-md'rs, they just didn't understand, or were spinning tall tales. But the finds in the field do tend to bear that out. I've even seen this trend at inner-city urban school yards: Having started in the mid 1970s in my town, even before discriminators, so thus having "seen the evolution" and slow working out of school yards in my city, I noticed that for school that were, say, blt. in the early 1920s, the vast bulk of the silver pulled from these schools always seemed to be '40s/50s stuff. And when teens/20's stuff was found, it was usually slicker (showing they were '40s/50s losses). At first, back in the '70s/80s, we kept writing it off to that we needed more depth. But as depth increased, and as an occasional early loss crisp teens wheat or barber were found at these '20s schools, we began to see that depth was not the issue. The earliest strata was definately within our depth range, but that the demographics of the losses from that earlier era, was not the same as it was in the more affluent times of the post WWII era.

One exception to the lack of earlier coins from 1-room school house sites, was if the school house site might have doubled for other purposes: Sometimes they were also used as grange halls, Sunday church services, community meetings, etc... which would bring adults.

By all means check ANY one room school house site. But this was/is just my experience. The best bet for shear numbers and quality of coin finds will be places where adults gathered and commercial ventures took place (coins/money changing hands, travelors coming and going, etc...). Like stage stops, saloons, camp sites where people slept in lean-toos, etc...

 

[johnnycat]

My brother has had nominal sucess on old school grounds. Mostly pennies with an occasional nickel. Lots of marbles though.

 

[Lucky Jack]

Thanks for the responses I really appreciate the knoweledge shared here from years of real world field experience. I'll probably give these sites a quick once over and if I gets some results then great. By the way Tom, I'm in Visalia, CA so if you're ever in the area and need a hunting partner look me up.

 

[digginbullets]

I hunted around an old 1 room school and found 28 mercury dimes, 4 barber dimes - one being a semi key 1901s and the rest were wheat pennies. The pennies were all junk due to the fertilizer from the crops. This was all around 1 place. I love hunting old 1 room schools and look for them all the time.

Mike

 

[crazyjarhead]

No, but as Monty mentioned I have seen some good finds on here

 

[deepskyal]

I'd give it a better chance than just a "Quick once over"

Back in the late 50's early 60's, my grade school years, us kids had pocket change. Might be just a dime...maybe even a quarter if we did a good job helping around the house. I'm sure kids were getting allowances before me. Winter time, we shoveled walks for .25 cents....

Go to school, everyone had recess, wrestle with your friends, play red rover, tag...etc. Lots of kids rolling around on the ground....and try to figure out where a slide or merry-go-round was....We had one of those old metal ones at my school you'd burn the living daylights out of your butt when you sat down on it and we'd take the wax paper (no tinfoil then) our sandwhiches were wrapped in and wax the slide so you'd fly off and bust your butt bone.

Just my opinion here but...such a site, now a field....I'd give it it's due diligence. A quick once over and you may miss some good finds.

Al

 

[Old Fart in TN]

forgotten about using the wax paper to slide quicker, hated beening the first down the slide in the heat of day ,your right it would burn the tar out of you.