For a change of the many beautiful hills and valleys of Chenango County we will travel for the next several weeks to the Township of Columbus for a look at what history has been researched relevant to the one-room district schools.

However, it is timely to relate part of the early history of this township as was researched and written by Smith in his History of Madison/Chenango County in published in 1879. Columbus was formed from Brookfield, Madison County February 11,1805 and originally embraced the 17th of the twenty townships composing Chenango County. A portion of the Town of Norwich was annexed in 1807 and the townships name was due to a suggestion of Dr. Tracy Robinson. Columbus is the northeastern most township of the county and the 2000 census gives us the population of 931, encompassing 38.4 square miles and total acreages is 24,576. Smith’s History gives the facts that the township is bounded on the east by the Unadilla River, on the north by Brookfield, west by Sherburne and south by New Berlin.

By the time Smith had written his history, the township had ten common school districts, each one having its own one-room school. The documentation that was forwarded by the Columbus Historian lists eleven school districts, one of which was a joint district. By 1877 the township had ten licensed teacher at one time during twenty-eight weeks or more. There were 320 children attending the schools and teaching these children would be eight male and thirteen female teachers. The districts school libraries contained 714 books with a value of $205.

All of the school houses were frame buildings and including the sites embracing one acre and forty-five rods were valued at $300 and land valued at $1,515. Total assessed value of the Columbus township properties was $654,496. Further financial information given by Smith was $1,971.90 for receipts with disbursements of the same figure. Of this somewhat enormous sum $1,777.65 for teachers salaries, $.15 for school apparatus, $46.56 for school-house, sites, out-houses, fences, repairs, furniture, etc., $130.04 paid out for incidental expenses and at year’s end $17.50 in surplus.