Ref: The Hearthstone Town and Country Pennsburg, Montgomery County, Pa Thursday - April 3, 2003 WARNER'S SCHOOL HOUSE The Littlest Red School House Upper Hanover Township 1856-1948 PART 3 OF 5 Editor's note: This is the third installment of a five-part story on the history of Warner's School House written by a great-great-grandson of the farmer whom the school house was named. Each week for two more weeks we will publish a portion of the school's history in this section of the paper. Boys' and Girls' Outhouses - About 75 feet from the front door were two outhouses, the boys' close to the road, the girls' a distance from the road. When the finished addition opened in September 1901, Daisy GEHMAN was the first teacher to ring the bell in the new bell tower. The school house had no electricity, and would not have electric lights until its last three years. In 1901, Pennsburg offered one year of high school. In 1902, East Greenville did the same. In 1908, Red Hill started two years of high school. On April 4, 1910, Thomas and Emma TRUMBAUER sold the old WARNER farm to Charles M. BURGER, who then died November 16, 1910. BURGER's widow, Laura, would resell the farm to Ambrose F. SPOHN on March 20, 1912. In 1911, Upper Hanover farmer Harvey C. JONES was elected to a seat on the Upper Hanover School Board. As a board member, he would represent Warner's School House and the Church (Bullfrog) School House. Until 1944, JONES would store classroom supplies at his home and distribute them to the two schools. In 1913-14 and 1914-15, Mabel MILLER was the Warner's teacher, though H.M. BUCK had to fill in for her the last eight days of the 1913-14 school year because Mabel MILLER had the mumps. MIllers Move To Farm - In March 1917, Charles Louis MILLER and his wife, Lydia Antonia (SCHMIDT) MILLER, took a train from Fond du Lac, Wisconsin, to East Greenville. With them, they brought about 10 cows, a Holstein dairy bull, and a black and white collie named Pete. In an open boxcar, Charles MILLER endured the cold trip with the cows. Lydia MILLER rode a passenger car with her younger sister, Verena. At the East Greenville railroad station, Charles MILLER hired a boy to help, and the two drove the cows to the old WARNER farm near the Warner's School House. On March 12, 1917, MILLER bought the farm from Ambrose SPOHN for $5,900. The MILLERs raised corn, wheat, oats, barley and hay on their dairy farm of about 75 acres. The crops fed the cows. The cows' milk paid the bills. Two horses pulled plows; they also hauled milk to the East Greenville Creamery. A treadmill machine, powered by a horse and sometimes by the bull, ran the Millers' thresher and seed-cleaning mill. Soon, a 1916 tractor was added to the farm equipment. Originally from Philadelphia, Charles MILLER was a machinist and farmer. Born in Hubbleton, Wisconsin, Lydia MILLER was a teacher in her home state. On November 24, 1917, the Upper Hanover School Board ordered the purchase of American flags for all district schools. On Monday morning, November 18, 1918, Warner's teacher Marie OTT stopped her class and asked her pupils to listen hard. In the distance, the area's church bells were ringing in celebration. "They must have signed the Armistice," she said. The Germans had signed the Armistice ending World War I. In 1919, East Greenville built a four-year high school, called "Old Main." Lydia Miller, Teacher - In 1920-21 and 1921-22, Lydia (SCHMIDT) MILLER was teacher at Warner's School House. Teacher's pay in the district now was $70 to $95 a month. Mrs. MILLER brought her two baby girls, Grace and Ruth, to school with her. Mrs. MILLER discovered that a few of her first-graders could hardly speak English. At home their first language was Pennsylvania German. She could speak High German almost as well as English, but she still had trouble understanding the Pennsylvania dialect. With daily lessons and practice with their classmates, the students gradually adopted English and English grammar. In 1922, Mrs. MILLER retired temporarily from teaching to care for an expanding family. Eventually, she would have four daughters and two sons. In 1924, Pennsburg opened a four-year high school. Warner's sixth-grader Verna SCHOFER missed the whole 1924-25 school year. One after another, she, her six sisters and two brothers came down with chicken pox, measles and mumps. The county health officer constantly had a "Quarantined" sign on their house on Mill Hill Road. No one in the house was permitted to go to school if anyone in the house had a contagious disease. Chimney Goes Up In 1925 - In 1925, a chimney was added at Warner's, at the rear of the building. The chimney was close to the center of the rear wall, but offset to the right of the roof peak. The coal stove was moved from the center of the room. The big pot-bellied stove, shielded in a large tin cylinder, was positioned in the left front corner, not far from the chimney outside. To the left of the stove, on the floor near the wall, a coal bucket was stored. The teacher's desk sat front and center on the teacher's platform, a step up the main classroom floor. The desk had two big drawers on the teacher's right, a shallow drawer over the teacher's legs. The stove also was on the teacher's platform, as was an organ, to the far right. Slate blackboards extended across the front wall and behind the stove. It is not clear whether the blackboard covered a window at the left front of the class; the window might have been added many years later. Each of the longer side walls had two windows. A clock kept time up front, above the blackboard at the center of the wall. The clock had a key box attached to its bottom. To the far right of the clock was an American flag, tacked to the front wall. A cupboard was in the room's left rear corner. Oranges For Christmas - Dan K. DOTTERER, who taught at Warner's in the 1890s, returned in 1925. A disciplinarian, he was the guy who restored order after other teachers had been intimidated by a few unruly pupils. So at Christmastime, when the old man opened the classroom cupboard doors, his students were surprised to see an avalanche of oranges pouring to the floor. They were his Christmas gifts to the pupils, and the children were delighted. Picture - Teacher Mabel SCHWENK's Model T Ford is parked at the Warner's School House along the Warner's School Road. This was in the mid-1930s. Picture - Faith MILLER and her brother, Chuck MILLER, children of the Warner's School House's last teacher, Lydia MILLER, already had graduated from the school when this picture was taken in 1941.