Return to Milestones Vol. 5, No. 1
The Buchanan School Picnic and Reunion of former pupils and teachers was held at Raccoon State Park in Hanover Township, Beaver County, Pennsylvania.
Arrangements for this reunion were planned by Mr. Charles Ross and Mrs. Robert Fenstemaker of R. D. #1, Georgetown. Some 80 people attended the affair and enjoyed the fellowship and family style picnic.
The old bell from the Buchanan School building was brought to the picnic site for the occasion by its owner, Mr. Joseph Halstead, who had it newly painted in silver with black letters "Buchanan School," printed on it. Mrs. John Hayward, only former pupil and teacher present, rang the bell for dinner. A large American flag was displayed above the fireplace of the shelter where the group met.
Following a picnic dinner, Mrs. Hayward, of Beaver Falls, presided and introduced Mr. George Torrence, of R. D. #1, East Liverpool, who had prepared a history of the Buchanan School from its early days--the school, that along with eleven other township schools of the Hanover District, blazed the trail from the old log school with its rude log plank seats to the present modern South Side School completed last year and located near the intersection of Routes 30 and 151.
According to Mr. Torrence, who had attended the school in his youth, beginning in 1894, the first building was a log structure located in a thick woods about one mile from the present Buchanan building site on the Aaron Boyd tract. He said he had on one occasion visited the site with his father when some of the old rotten logs were still there. This first log school was replaced with a frame building and called the Smith School. It was located a short distance from the present Wallace Cain home. Mr. William Torrence, father of the historian, taught in the Smith School in the early 1860's for two terms of four months each at $15 a month. He recalled that 60 pupils came to the log school for instruction, and because of the large number wanting instruction, the smaller ones were discouraged from enrollment.
In the 1870's, the site of the Smith School was moved from the hill on which it sat to the valley below, near a mill dam on the Aaron Moore place--on Little Traverse Creek. This is the present location of the Buchanan School #11, which was one of 12 schools in Hanover Township at that time. The building, which was sold at auction last November, is located near the western limits of Raccoon State Park. It is completely surrounded by wooded area of the park. It is 1-1/2 miles east of Kendall, off Route 168, and reached by a black-top road.
Mr. Torrence interspersed his historical account with amusing anecdotes and frequent reference to ancestors of many present who were in attendance at the three schools he described. The first teacher at the Buchanan School, as it is now known, was Mr. John M. Buchanan, later an able lawyer of Beaver County. A partial list of early teachers included Samuel Swearingen, Samuel Wilkinson, and Maggie Robertson.
The salary of teachers at the turn of the century, and for a time thereafter, was $30 and $35 a month.