§9 Mount Ross School

Mt. Ross School; interior & 2 people (V06-30.GIF)

I remember sitting on the teacher’s lap for my lesson, her reading me stories. I sat on her lap at her desk and would write letters and numbers. I was the only first-grade student.
John Brandt, first grade student in 1936-7.

A visit to the Mount Ross schoolhouse in the 21^st century does not reveal much about the life that reverberated within its walls. The clapboard siding, the compact size (24 by 36 feet), and the Tuscan moldings on the windows and doors endure, as does the somber marble plaque on the front wall that reads:

Henry Bentley  AD 1881.
Knowledge is power
Hannah (Swartwout)
Bentley
Memorial
School
Erected by her son

Although the building has been empty since the 1930s, it held scores of young people and teachers in its one room. Students from Pine Plains and Gallatin were educated here for about seventy years, for Bentley Memorial School was probably not the first school in Mount Ross. The Beers map of 1867 shows a square mark of School No. 6 in the same location [Ed: Currently a 10’x 12’ laid up stone foundation can be seen 150’ northwest of the school house, close to the railroad berm. Could this be evidence of the earlier school?].

Names of students and teachers seem familiar to today’s residents. Turn-of-the-century students came from these families: Van Tassel, Van Benschoten, Bathrick, Hinsdale, and Hutchings. Later years brought scholars from these homes: Mueller, Vater, Rasmussen, Brandt, Burger, Fowler, Galm, Kruse, and Anderson. Teachers in the schoolhouse included Marion Hart, Martha Hedges, Evelyn Holsapple, Alice O’Dell and Elisabeth Kelly. Also, Miss Wernefeld, Mrs. Grant and Jordan Pulver. Doctors giving medical reports about the students in Mount Ross were also known in the community: Ellwood Oliver and Walter Wicks. County lines did not deter residents from merging academic resources. Students from Gallatin in Columbia County and from Mount Ross in Dutchess County attended school here.

The current building was funded by Henry Bentley and presented to school authorities on November 25, 1881. The building cost $3200 and was intended to be used as a school, lyceum, library, and public hall. The Pine Plains Register reports that a few weeks after the presentation, January 12, 1882, the Mount Ross Literary Society met at the school.

The Bentleys were residents of Mount Ross. Henry Bentley, father, was a partner with Valentine Wightman in owning Wool Carding and Fulling and Grist Mills in the hamlet from 1802 until 1810. The Red Hook Journal reported on the son’s gift of the school with these words, “ Mr. Bentley left Mount Ross a poor boy but has been successful in business being a large owner of telephone stock.”

Miss Kelley and her class (V06-32A.GIF)

Back row, left: Ileen & Earl Rockefeller, 3rd Stanley P. Lyle, 4th Arthur Heisser?, 5th Martin Simmons. Front Row,left: Leo Burger?, 2nd Ethel Burger*, 3rd Marguerite? Burger, 4th Isabel? Burger, 5th Cora Simmons and 6th Elisabeth Kelly, Teacher. Not present Edith McNeil, Paul Couse, Miriam & Mary Margaret Hemmingway, Chester Lyle.
* “Good basketball player!” [ID by H.N.]

School Exterior (V06-32B.GIF)

In 1881 Henry Bentley erected in Mt Ross, New York, a one room schoolhouse as a memorial to his mother Hannah (Swartwout) Bentley, for the Mt Ross school district No 6 of the Pine Plains Central School District.

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