Early Education in Magnolia

Education in Camden County began with the first permanent settlement in 1682, when Irish Friends fleeing religious persecution in Dublin settled in the Irish Tenth within Newton Township, where surveyor Thomas Sharp set aside land for a meeting house and school and became the first teacher of the Newton School. From 1682 to 1855, when Greenland Township, later Magnolia, built its first school, about forty-six schools and at least sixty-six teachers served the county. After Camden County was created in 1844 and school districts were assigned, Greenland School, in district 15, was built in 1855 on land donated by Charles L. Willits and used until 1882; Prowell's History of Camden County records it as the first school in the area and names Miss George as its first teacher, though an 1850 map shows a schoolhouse on the southeast side of Evesham Road. This one-room schoolhouse served children from Audubon to Ashland, and Charles Willits became Greenland's first Superintendent of Schools until a county superintendent was named. Local tradition also holds that children were taught in area homes, including the Albertson home on 610 Evesham Avenue, and that the Albertson sisters taught there; many families who could afford it sent their children to Quaker schools in Philadelphia. The Albertson family became closely identified with education in Magnolia, and Charles Albertson, after teaching with his sisters in the old Greenland School and serving there for thirteen years, became Camden County's first Superintendent of Schools in 1890, held that office until retiring in 1930, and helped establish the first Camden County Vocational School in Pennsauken in 1927. After Magnolia was incorporated as a borough and Greenland became part of Lawnside, the Lincoln Avenue School was built in 1894 with two floors and four classrooms on each floor to serve children north of Evesham Road, while children south of the road attended school in Clementon until Center Township built the Adams Avenue School in 1911. Because the two schools stood in different townships and districts divided by Evesham Road, that arrangement lasted until 1915, when Adams Avenue School came under Magnolia Borough; it taught through the fourth grade and later closed after being declared unsafe in the late 1930s or early 1940s, then was reused for other purposes. In 1937 the Lincoln Avenue School burned, and an already approved new eight-room schoolhouse was built with construction costs of $70,000, half provided by W.P.A. aid, and completed in 1938. Continued population growth led to additions in 1956, 1958, and 1967, temporary use of the First Baptist Church for classrooms, and half sessions in 1959 and 1962 until more space was available; after a bond issue first failed repeatedly, further expansion including additional classrooms and a gymnasium finally began in 1995. For high school education, Magnolia students went to Haddon Heights High School until 1960, when Sterling High School opened in Somerdale on Warwick Road to serve Somerdale, Stratford, and Magnolia, later joined by Hi-Nella and Laurel Springs, and the school expanded again after a 1964 bond issue and a major construction and renovation program approved in 2000.

Magnolia, New Jersey · United States