Edwin Washington Project

Stovepipe Academy

Opening and Closing

About 1870. Closed 1914.

Note: Due to the use of cedar shingles and the style of mortising, as well as the fact that the name includes the word Academy, it is assessment of the EWS that the school was likely constructed prior to 1870 as a private school.

Physical and Map Location

23251 Meetinghouse Lane

Petitions

None are known.

Transportation

Walking was a common method of school transportation even before the creation of Loudoun County Public Schools (LCPS).  It’s believed that students who lived within 3 miles of a school could walk from their home to school.  The figure at https://edwinwashingtonproject.org/s/ewp/item/31263 shows the location of the school with a circle representing the area from which students could have walked, back and forth from their home to the school.  Travel by horse was also used and could have extended the travel distance.

History

Known as School #10 in the Mercer School District.

Eugene Scheel wrote an interesting history of the school in Volume Three of his Loudoun Discovered series. "The Hunt Valley and Middleburg." In his opinion, the structure dates from the early 1870's, perhaps as early as 1872. The construction was paid for from funds raised from horse meets and steeple chase held on the "present elementary school grounds." The name stove pipe came from the presence of many pipes that emerged through the attic from the interior. The word academy was a common term aimed at giving respectability. Also used for colleges and pre-public school institutions.

For 1895/1896 Academic year 12 boys and 26 girls were enrolled, 2 girls of which came from a different District. Those were Lelia and May Carruthers of the Broad Run District.

The school house was visited once by the Superintendent, but had no visits by District Trustees.

Building was most recently purchased in 2022 by Jeanine Manley for restoration.

After 1914, Robert Lee Bodmer (27 May 1881- 27 Feb 1946) operated a Maxwell auto agency in the building.

In 1915, the school was replaced by the eight room Aldie High School and elementary school.

Because this Aldie school closed in 1914, records are weak. We do in fact have many LCPS records going all the way back to before 1870,  but finding anything specific to this structure before 1917, when Emerick arrived on the scene, is the problem. Plenty for Aldie files after 1917, but that's a different school building. For example, we know of the five-room Aldie HS built in 1914 and the five-room Aldie Elementary built in 1928.  The Annual Report of the Superintendent for 1913/14 said that the budget for a new building in Aldie was $7,000. The same report for 1914/15 indicated a projected cost of $10,000.

2023. Building is under reconstruction.

Instructors

16 Sept 1895 - 28 April 1896 Katie A. Russell Source: Public School Register held in the Balch Library. After Emerick started in 1917, most teacher files tell us where an instructor worked; but not so much before 1917 unless in an actual Register. We only have access to the Balch library copy for 1896.

After looking at 1914 teacher assignments for Mercer, which is the& school district in which the schoolhouse existed. I found several teachers who are identified with the village of Aldie; but that doesn't mean they taught there. They could simply have lived in Aldie. In fact, various people teaching in other districts were also associated with Aldie. For comparison, we also examined records of Superintendent Shumate, which show names of Black and White teachers from 1882 to 1890; but Katie A. Russell did not appear.

• Miss Hazel Gulick. Instructed for 8 months at $40 a month.
• Miss Elisabeth Furr. instructed for 8 months at $40 a month
• Mr. F.V. Pultz. 8 months at $80 a month. Had a college-level certificate.
• Miss Nettie Goode. Had a professional certificate for Elementary school since 8/13/1914.
• For 1912 and 1913, nobody associated with Aldie.

In 1913 someone called Captain Zenega of Aldie was President of the Local Teacher Association. Nothing else was said.

Because of interest in the Gulick family, we did the following additional research. This comes EWP: 3.1 Various District Accounts and Census Returns 1882-1921). These are all for the Mercer District. Some references were before 1914, so might have been at the Aldie Stovepipe Academy, but we can't certify that.

Gladys Gulick:

• 1918/19, Gladys Gulick (born 20 Dec 1898, died 18 Oct 1934, Buried Union Cemetery) was teaching at Oatlands grades 1-7 for $50 a month. She had one year of experience. Came with 3 years of High school, as well as summer school, which usually refers to teaching school. Annual salary that year appears to have been $349.60.  In 1920, according to the US census, worked as a clerk for an insurance company.

Hazel Gulick.

• 1914/15. Instructed for 8 months at $40 a month.
• 1916/17. Salary $280. Probably for entire academic year.
• 1917/18. Salary $280.40. Probably for entire academic year.
• 1968. Died. 28 July. Occupation still school teacher. Husband was Clarence W. Mills

William F. Gulick: (born 1841)

• 1885 (paid $30  Nov 28),
• 1887 (paid $17.55 Oct 29), ($30 Dec 23).
• 1888 (paid $28.50 Nov3), ($30 Dec 20), ($25.16 Dec 31)
• 1900 According to Census, occupation farmer.

Insurance and Physical Description

• See photos from March 2023 in the vertical files of the Edwin Washington Society at Douglass HS building, Leesburg.
• The original structure seems to have consisted of a N/S rectangular building divided into two rooms, to which were added on the east side a cloak room and additional classroom.
• The northern room used a stove of some type sitting in the middle of the room. There is no current evidence that any other room was heated, nor is there evidence of wiring, plumbing or outhouses from the years of operation, which ended in 1914.
• There is no evidence of asbestos in the roof or any other insulation, except for some added in the post 1914 era.
• Water appears to have been drawn from a cistern on the east side of the northern most room. The source of the water has not been identified, but perhaps was drain pipes to catch rain water from the roof.
• The earliest part of the structure consisted of a N/S building with a short east-facing Ell, divided into two classrooms with a small room at the inner corner of the Ell presumed to have been a cloak room. A mirror image of the same footprint has been identified in a historic photo of the Lone Jack School believed to have been located in Rockbridge County near Glasgow, VA, also dating to the 1870s and suggesting the possibility of a Virginia Reconstruction-era standardized schoolhouse plan. This possibility is being researched.
• A third classroom was added on the east side. Architectural evidence suggests this was an early addition. Research is pending to date it more closely.
• The northern room used a stove of some type sitting in the middle of the room, as evidenced by the remains of a platform located there and charred timbers directly overhead where the stove's vertical pipe would have projected through the shake roof. It is unclear how the south classroom and east classroom addition would have been heated. The remains of a masonry chimney in the east addition's southeast corner are thought to date to the residential use of the building after 1914 and are pending research to date more closely.
• Research is pending to analyze evidence in the north classroom foundation suggestive of an earlier structure there.

Students For the 1895/1896 Academic Year,

The following students attended.

Boys:

• Edward, Willie and Ira Carter
• Claude, Harry, Otto and Irving Furr
• Charlie Matthews
• Lawrence Pearson
• Sherman Redman
• Johnson Russell
• Wallis Simpson

Girls

• Lelia and May Carruthers
• Lizzie (hard to read)
• Florence, Lelie, Mary and Virgie Furr
• Allie and Ella Fry
• Myrtle and Pauline Gulick
• Bessie Hause
• Permelia and Edna Ish
• Maggie, Belle, Eva and Mary James Matthews
• Rachel and Mabel Palmer
• Jennie Pearson
• Elle and Ethel Redman
• Emily Simpson
• Sadie Smith
• Jamie Whitlock