Now that Santa Claus has delivered all his presents and returned to the North Pole for a well-earned rest and Ma in her nightgown and Pa in his night cap have settled down for a long winter’s nap it is time to return to the one-room school history of the Town of Afton.

Now it is timely to do all the reading that that the majority of us never seem to find time for. Again returning to Afton we take a look at another two of the district schools for which we have very limited historical information. All historians dream of complete documentation regarding history, but that is just a dream as very seldom is complete information available.

DISTRICT #19 - EAST AFTON

If you are not familiar with “where in the world is East Afton” this school was located on the East Afton Road between Bennettsville and North Sanford (Broome County). There was a Methodist church within the district, just south of the schoolhouse which is now a private home. You will note from the enclosed photo the similarity of the traditional one-room school house style of architecture. The Broad or East Afton Cemetery is up in a field nearby.

This school was brought into the Bainbridge school system after Bainbridge High School was centralized in the early 1930’s.

Thus we complete this brief documentation of a school which served the Afton District for a number of years. Again we reiterate that the cost of the school, how long it was in existence as an educational institution, who built the school, all of these facts remain unknown. As has been the case numerous times in the research of this educational history, when the school buildings were no longer used, the school records were often left for the next owner. At times these records were kept, only to be scattered, or in the horrifying case, if the building was torn down, the records were often burned. During this previous historical period of our educational history, it was not considered important to keep these records.