School #7

Port Republic School #7 was built on this site around 1870 and remained in continuous use until it closed in 1932. It belonged to a period in post-Civil War America when free public education for all was still a new concept. The one-room schoolhouse educated white children in grades 1 through 7 together in a single classroom, usually with only one teacher teaching all subjects, including reading, writing, arithmetic, science, geography, and history. One-room schools were spread throughout the county so that no child would have to walk more than three miles to school. As roads improved in Calvert County, centralized schools began to be built and children were transported by bus to Prince Frederick. In 1976, the Calvert Retired Teachers Association restored the school as a Bicentennial project and continued operating educational programs available to all schools. Student life there in the early 1930s included free lunch supplies, some donated by companies, heat from an iron chunk stove fueled by wood gathered by boys from a nearby shed, no electricity, water carried from a nearby spring, and two outhouses as the only toilet facilities.

Maryland · United States