Brushing Up on the Read Schoolhouse in Coventry

Photograph by Wolf Matthewson

In the early 1830s, a group of farmers in Coventry founded a one-room schoolhouse along what’s now Flat River Road. One of several that dotted the landscape in the 1800s, the school took its name from Williams Read, who provided the land from his adjacent farm. “They started primarily in the mill villages, because the mills were where the people were. Then they decided to build them where the farms were,” says Norma Smith, chairwoman of the Coventry Historic Preservation Commission. A few years earlier, the General Assembly had passed the landmark School Act of 1828, establishing the first statewide fund for public education. Students in grades one through six walked to the schoolhouse, where a wood-burning stove kept the building toasty through the winter months. In the summer, a ladle and bucket were used to fetch drinks from the well. “The kids in the warmer weather would run down to the river and jump in,” Smith says. The school closed in 1951 with the opening of the nearby Washington-Tiogue Elementary School. Today, it educates students and visitors about nineteenth century schools and stands as a landmark to another time. “We don’t have the Breakers, but what we have, we should tell people we have,” Smith says.