In 1854, Samuel and Rebecca McClellan Collins deeded 1.28 acres to Beavercreek Township, Greene County, for a schoolhouse. The first two schoolhouses were built of stone and heated by fireplaces. Children from the Collins neighborhood in first through eighth grade attended classes in the present red brick building until 1944, when decreased enrollment led Xenia Township to close the school. In 1982, Virgil and Helen Bryson Brantley, a great-granddaughter of Samuel and Rebecca Collins and her husband, bought the property and began restoring the vandalized and deteriorated schoolhouse. They rebuilt the pony and coal shed and the privies on their foundations and enlisted two teachers to research and organize a curriculum of rural education. On August 30, 1986, the school was formally re-dedicated for education, and that fall students from area schools were invited to spend a day experiencing readin’, ritin’ and ’rithmetic as it would have taken place in the late 1800s. Each year, nearly 2,400 children and adults take part in this opportunity, learning citizenship and history, reciting from McGuffey Readers, practicing on slates, and playing old-fashioned games in the schoolyard as part of a day of living history.