ADRIAN TWP. — Adrian Township’s one-room Maynard School was built in 1875 — 150 years ago — and educated generations of children on Hamilton Highway. Its era as a school ended six decades ago. It was first converted into a house, and finally torn down about 35 years ago. Yet its memory endures in photographs, a group of its final students, and three pieces of concrete.

On April 21, Gleaner Life Insurance Society recovered and donated the three pieces once located above the door of the school. Their inscriptions read “Adrian Township School Dist. No. 8” with an “1875” keystone. Former Maynard School students Melvin Snyder and Mary Alice Thompson donated the pieces to the Lenawee Historical Society.

A century ago, Lenawee County had well over 100 one-room buildings providing primary education for thousands of students. The schools and generations of area families are closely connected. Melvin Snyder noted the school’s lot was sold by John Winnie to Adrian Township District No. 8 in 1870 for $80. John Winnie also owned the adjacent farm. His son, Edwin Winnie, sold the farm to Melvin Snyder’s grandfather, Edward Snyder, in 1913. Melvin’s grandmother, Minnie Snyder, was the director of the school in the 1920s.

When Minnie Snyder was School No. 8’s director in 1925, the school had 37 students. Grades originally were from kindergarten through eighth grade. Mel’s father, Arthur Snyder, also attended the Maynard school from about 1918-1925, and Mel’s mother taught there from 1936-1939. They sold their farm in 1980 to Gleaner Life Insurance Society, which also purchased the adjacent property with the former school building, converted by then into a house.

The school’s teachers often were recent high school graduates. Ida Woodruff, the teacher shown in a 1919 outdoor photo, was 18. Mel Snyder’s mother, Fern (Jones) Snyder, had just graduated from Clinton High School when she began teaching in 1936. During her four years as the school’s teacher, she lived at the Snyder farm and there she met Art Snyder. They were married in 1941. Fern Snyder later taught at Onsted Elementary School. Mel Snyder’s list of earlier teachers includes Florence Rexford (1896), Mary C. Mapes (1918-19), Ida Woodruff (1919-20), Mildred Armstrong (1920-21), Igerna Croll (1921-22), Mildred Armstrong (1922-23) and Leota Vollmer (1923-26). After Fern (Jones) Snyder left, classes were taught by Mrs. Doris Skinner (1940-41), who lived on Budlong Street in Adrian. Another teacher during the school’s final decade of operation was Madeline Boff. Mel Snyder reported the school’s last two teachers were Bonnie Enders (1952-54) and Carrie Cunningham (1954-58).

Many teachers a century ago were recent high school graduates who received brief but specialized training at what were called “normal schools” (from the French phrase “ecole normale,” meaning “model school”). Lenawee County’s Normal School began in 1907 in Blissfield, moved to Clayton in 1949, and moved to Adrian in 1954, with the final class graduating May 25, 1955. 

“They didn’t go to a college for four years. They were young,” Mary Alice Thompson said. 

Mel Snyder’s mother, Fern, was one of them. “My mom graduated in 1936 from [Clinton’s] school and then she began teaching that same year,” he said.

Although Maynard School teachers usually were young and taught large classes, their pupils excelled. Many students became well-known local leaders. The Brittain family sent generations of children to School No. 8. Allan Brittain served as CEO and later chairman of the board of the Bank of Lenawee, and helped lead the Lenawee County Education Foundation. His father, Therol, and his grandfather, Clarence, had attended Maynard School. Some of the other familiar local family names included Pfister, Marquis, Marvin, Iffland, Yeutter and Crist. Robert “Ike” Westfall, a son of Adrian Steel founder Bob Westfall, attended Maynard School.

“I remember when we didn’t have a telephone,” Brittain said of growing up in that era. He added that he now better appreciates the importance of history and how it shapes us. “I don’t give enough credit to what I learned in that building.”

Mary Alice Younglove (wearing a white bow in the 1919 photo) later graduated from Adrian College in 1935. She became a Michigan teacher near Frankfort, married, and ended up owning a Frankfort clothing store for 61 years until her death in 2003 at age 91.

Many of the Maynard School’s graduates, including Therol Brittain and Medford Pfister, later served on its school board. Therol Brittain also served as Adrian Township treasurer. 

“My dad passed away as treasurer of Adrian Township. He served,” Allan Brittain said. “He had an eighth-grade education, which doesn’t mean anything to me except as a record. But my dad — and my grandfather, for that matter — were very mechanically inclined. My dad could make anything and do welding and farm work. I learned a lot from them.”

Mary Alice Thompson pointed to one unique advantage the one-room education system offered students. “In a one-room, country school you have this one room with all the desks in it,” she explained. “When it’s third grade math, you’d go up front and sit in those chairs. Everybody else can’t help but hear. So, you could progress at your ability and how badly you wanted to advance just by listening to the others because you were exposed to each grade level and each topic.”

Brittain remembered enrollment grew too large for the building so, when he entered eighth grade in 1949, he was sent to Adrian Public Schools. Sixth grade became Maynard School’s oldest grade.

Even in the 1950s, the school was much different than today’s classrooms. “There was a door that went into the classroom, but in the middle was a shelf with a bucket,” Thompson recalled. “We had to go out and pump a bucket full of water and bring it in. You had a common dipper and everyone drank from it. Nobody died, nobody got anything serious from it.”

“Heat for the building was an indoor furnace right in the room. You put coal and wood in it and that’s what heated the building,” Brittain said. He also remembered the area behind the school had separate outhouses, one for boys toward one side of the property, and another for girls on the opposite side.

The school had a few pieces of playground equipment outside where students could enjoy recess and lunchtime. Students often played softball on the north side of the property. 

“Our mothers would come at least once in the spring and they’d have a ball team against the kids’ team,” Thompson said. “I remember Mel’s mother and my mother in their dresses, up to bat. It was just a hoot.”

Michigan consolidated thousands of small, rural school districts after World War II. Buses, paved roads and centralized districts made it unnecessary to operate schools every few miles. Lenawee County had 183 school districts in 1947, but that was consolidated to 127 in 1954, and was squeezed into 32 by 1956. By 1967, only 12 public school districts existed. The Maynard School was annexed to Adrian Public Schools on June 8, 1954, as Adrian #13. Bathrooms and a lunchroom were added. After the school was closed, it was used as the Croswell School for children with special needs from 1954 to 1961. It was leased for storage for one year in 1965 by the Lenawee Historical Society, which held at least two public tours there. The Adrian school district sold the building to a local resident in April 1969 for $6,100.

It was being used for private housing in 1980 when Gleaner Life purchased both the Maynard property and the surrounding Snyder farm. For about a decade the old building was used by renters. Finally, after one of the tenants “trashed” the house, Gleaner president and CEO Frank Dick had the building taken down sometime around 1989 or 1990. 

“He said he had it torn down because people were breaking into it and he was afraid somebody was going to get hurt,” Mel Snyder recalled. 

Allan Brittain recalled teasing Frank Dick about that. “I’d say, ‘Frank, you tore my school down!’ He’d always get a kick out of that and say, ‘Yeah, well, it was getting run down and people misusing it.’” 

A few of the building’s bricks were saved. The three curved pieces of concrete beneath the entrance side’s roof ridge were located and recovered in April by Gleaner Life employees Kevin Stange and Todd Frederick.

On June 8, 2024, former students held their first school reunion at a potluck dinner hosted by Thompson. Another reunion may take place in 2026, Thompson reported.

— Story and photos provided by Gleaner Life Insurance Society