§10 District Schools

On April 9, 1795, the New York State Legislature passed an act “for the encouragement of schools This law, which was amended in 1796 and again in 1797, provided, among other stipulations, that the amount of funds as- signed to Dutchess County for the purpose of education be apportioned to the school districts, pro rated according to attendance. Isaac Huntting, in researching district schools for his history of Pine Plains, states that his earliest information on the subject was found in town papers of 1797. Now we can only sadly wonder what might have befallen those invaluable records.

North East was divided into seventeen school districts, with most of the area which became Bethel being in District 11. In the first apportionment of funds, North East received 154 pounds, one shilling. An additional amount of 77 pounds, 6 pence, was raised by local taxation.

Bethel Schoolhouse, District 3, 1902.

The District 11 school house was a two-room building located near the Quaker Meeting House. Very old records provide lists of children who attended school there and in many cases their fathers’ names as well, a useful source of information about early settlers in what would eventually become the Town of Pine Plains. Another early school house in the area stood on what is now Strever Farm Road, not far from the site of the Moravian Mission.

Changes in school districts followed the establishment of the Town of Pine Plains in 1823, resulting in the setting up of nine districts in the town. A school house was built near the Morris Graham stone house in the Buttermilk Pond (Halcyon Lake) District 2, which served the children of that area until the coming of Briarcliff Farms brought an influx of new families. The building was demolished in the early 1920’s, and the scholars were taken to the Pine Plains Union Free School by horse-drawn conveyance, our first experience with school busing.

The school building in old District 11, now District 3, was destined for a longer life. Located on the site of the house on County Rte. 83 now owned by John MacBeth, it provided for the education of Bethel children until the early 1930’s, when the formation of the Pine Plains Central School marked the demise of the “one-room” schools of our town.

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