Editing Elkland, Pennsylvania (section)

===Schools===
The early schools in Elkland, as in other places throughout the county, were supported by subscription, and until the building of the first school house in 1827, were taught in any house that could be secured for the purpose. The year when the first school was opened has not been ascertained, but it was probably as early as 1814 or 1816. Among the first teachers were Henry Womer, Miss Mary Ryon and Harriet B. Wright. Miss Wright, who afterwards became the wife of Ira Bulkley, taught a term of thirteen weeks beginning June 14, 1824, in an old log dwelling house "located where C. L. Pattison now resides." She had eighteen pupils—eight boys and ten girls. They were John, Amariah and Hannah (wife of George L. Byon) Hammond; Esther Wright (second wife of Ira Bulkley); Elizabeth Cook (wife of Orsemus Rathbone); Willis and Nancy (wife of Brockhurst L. Baker) Hammond; George L. and Harris T. Ryon; Benson, Elizabeth and Charles Tubbs; Maria Coates (wife of Lorenzo Cook); Edward, Charlotte and Hester Buck; Phebe Mascho, who died young, and her brother Charles; and a girl named Rifle, who lived in the family of John Ryon Sr. Miss Wright's pay for teaching was "calculated at one dollar per week, or one bushel of good merchantable wheat." In 1892 her sister Esther, one of her pupils, who became the second wife of Ira Bulkley, dictated for publication an article which appeared in the Elkland Journal, in which she said:

Elkland at that time, did not show signs of becoming a village. It had no [[tavern]], nor store, nor shop of any kind—not even a distillery. There was no church in the Cowanesque valley, and the itinerant [[Methodist]] ministers who passed this way once in six weeks, held preaching services in some barn in the summer season. John Ryon Sr. was postmaster and kept the office at his dwelling house, at which the mail arrived by carrier on horseback, once a week (Tuesdays). "John Ryon, Esq.," as my father wrote his name among the patrons of my sister's school, was at that time a member of the state senate, deservedly popular, a most generous and obliging gentleman.

In 1827 the first school building was erected. It is still standing just west of the [[Presbyterian]] church and is occupied as a dwelling by James Brocksley. It was built by Rodney Shaw, afterwards a well known citizen of [[Mansfield, PA]]. At the raising there was used one and one-half gallons of whiskey, bought of H. Freeborn, of Shaver's Point—now Lawrenceville—for fifty cents. This school house was also used as a church until 1835. It was built by subscription. One of the early teachers here after the adoption of the public school system was James Tubbs, who taught in the winter of 1839–40. in the article already quoted from, he says: "I had no blackboard. My only classes were in spelling and reading. Grammar was not a branch of study in my school. In arithmetic I had no class. Each student began and ciphered as far as he or she could in the science of numbers with my assistance. In teaching geography the same method was pursued. Considerable attention was given to penmanship."

The second school house was built in 1855, and was a two-story frame, with rooms for two departments. In 1876 Joel Parkhurst proposed to give the district a new brick school house, costing $4,000, provided the people would raise a fund of $1,500, to be placed at interest and the interest used to keep the house in order and purchase apparatus. The offer was accepted and the building erected. It ranks as third among the school houses of the county. Prof. M. F. Cass has been principal of this school since 1891, and has proven himself an able, efficient and popular educator.