Cooley School

208 Salmon Brook Street

Cooley Schoolhouse was located on East Street.

This Building:

The Cooley Schoolhouse was built c. 1878 on the northeast corner of East Street and Cooley Road in North Granby to replace an earlier school built in 1840. The date 1878 was found carved in the walls of the woodshed. It is the only remaining one-room schoolhouse in Granby which has not been renovated into a home or shop.

A Bit More:

Cooley School was typical in that the front door opened into an entry where the children left their lunch pails on a shelf and hung their coats and hats on hooks. Here too was the water bucket and tin dipper for drinks shared by all. In the earlier days the children had to use the outhouse which was located out back but across the state line in MA.

Rural Schools were ungraded and the children just worked their way through a series of six readers. Teachers did not have to attend college. In 1896 the teacher’s salary for Cooley was $261 for the year, plus $18 for fuel and incidentals. That year there were 17 students in the fall term.

In 1947/8 the one-room schools in Granby were closed. And in 1972 Merrill Clark gave the school to the Salmon Brook Historical Society. It was moved to the property at 208 Salmon Brook Street in 1980.

Children In A One-Room Schoolhouse.

Water Bucket Shared By All Children At School.

Cooley School Desk

Even More:

One teacher, Sibyl Twining, was hired in 1901. She boarded with a local family and went home to Westfield most weekends via horse and buggy. Harold Hayes would drive to the school on Friday afternoon and relinquish the reins to Miss Twining. She drove to Westfield and Annie Hayes (Crouse) a daughter of the family she boarded with and who was a student at the Westfield high school, would drive back to Granby.

A 1912 newspaper article describes a field trip the 27 children took to Hartford under the direction of their teacher, Mrs. Mira G Clark. Harvy Godard provided his automobile truck with improvised seats and straw on the floor. They were “packed in like sardines.” They left at 10:30, went to the depot where they enjoyed a basket lunch and then visited the state capital and library “where they were taken in charge of by State Librarian George Godard and were shown all that was worth seeing.” “It rained steadily all the way back and a rather bedraggled party of children reached North Granby before dark, happy in spite of the rain.”