July 2023: The Monroe One Room Schoolhouse

One of the premier historical locations in Hardyston Township, that still exists, is the Monroe One Room Schoolhouse. This quaint stone structure is located on the southwest corner of the Township along today’s Route 94. Back in the day, Hardyston Township was much larger and the area had a number of small schools in each of the hamlets. Monroe was one such area, as was nearby North Church school. 

The Monroe School was located a few hundred yards from the border of Sparta Township. Today it is very near the road of Route 94, in a way indicating how things have changed from yesteryear’s slow procession of the infrequent horse and buggy or milk wagon from, say, 150 years ago. 

The building has stone walls and a wooden roof. It was in operation as a school as far back as the year 1820. There were many teachers who provided the education of youth, mixed together in one room, who aged from a young 5 to those in their later teens. One teacher was Kate Coyle who lived on a farm nearby and for whom the park next to the school was named. Here’s s a poem by the last teacher at the school, Ms. Mary A. Van Camp, before education of the youth was moved to a larger and more modern consolidated school:

Let us take up our spindles today
And unwind the years that have gone
For much can be learned from the past.

The schoolhouse is on the National Register. For many years Georgeanna Lewis was the teacher on weekends. Now it is open once or twice a year for tours, flag raising, and with local docents and old desks with ink wells and black boards and, if you are bad—a dunce cap and stool in the corner!