First Burton Schoolhouse

The first Burton Schoolhouse stood a few yards north of this site in a field owned by Royal Porter Putnam and appears in the 1892 Tulare County atlas. In the early days, school buildings served as community meeting places and were commonly used as churches on Sundays. Here the area's first Baptist Church was formed in Burton's Schoolhouse on September 6, 1869. Mrs. Delia F. Caldwell Headrick, who started school here in 1887, confirmed this location just north of a road that would become Olive Avenue and recalled how the structure looked. In 1893 the school was moved to a new location on one acre at the southeast corner of present Westwood Street and Morton Avenue, also owned by the R. Porter Putnam Estate. It is not known whether the Putnam family was involved in the school's beginning in the late 1860s, but they were involved in its relocation in 1893. The origin of the name Burton is not known, though in the 1860s there was a traveling minister from Visalia named Noah Burton.

Porterville, California · United States