WATERFORD — Waterford lies just inside the very northwest corner of Knox County. We’ve visited the forgotten history of its ambitious but short-lived Westminster Academy previously here at History Knox.
This time around, though, we’ve found an old postcard that captures the other school in town.
Waterford (whose mailing address was Levering Post Office because of the presence of another Waterford in Ohio in Washington County) had a public school located on the southeast edge of town, as opposed to the academy, which was a larger building at the southwest edge of the village.
In all likelihood, this public school lasted much longer than the Westminster Academy, and presumably went through a number of schoolhouses in its day.
The one in the picture is a two-story structure that suggests a post Civil War construction. Structurally, the two front doors are at opposite ends of the front wall, while the perpendicular walls on the sides have windows.
This makes it hard to guess where stairs led to the upper level of the building, unless it was in the very center of the structure, with each floor separated into two rooms. Conversely, each floor may have been one large room with the stairs either in the front between the two doors or in the rear of the building.
No matter exactly how it was configured, such a structure would most definitely not pass any fire code today.
Structures with stairs near doors were banned after Ohio’s horrific Lake View Elementary School fire in Collinwood, Ohio, in 1908, when dozens of children and teachers burned to death on the verge of escape when they became trapped by the crush of panicked people fleeing down a stairwell to the rear exit of the building.
It was located too close to the end of the stairs, resulting in a bottleneck that trapped people in a tangle, even as helpers unsuccessfully tried to pull them out the door.
Luckily, no such incident ever put the Waterford public school’s design to the test. One thing that may have prevented it from ever catching on fire was the lightning rod running down the front wall into the ground.
Another thing one probably wouldn’t see today is the school’s exterior covered with a sign for a social club that regularly met there. The Independent Order of Odd Fellows (IOOF) is a social club with roots going back hundreds of year in England.
It appears to have been a club formed by people who worked trades not included by the Masonic orders — indeed, the group’s name may have come from the expression “odd jobs,” which were what these people did for employment, as opposed to the Masons, who were the trade union of skilled laborers.
Today a number of IOOF chapters remain in the state, the closest being the one in Caledonia, near Marion.
When I contacted the Grand Lodge of Ohio IOOF, Grand Secretary Penny Castle was able to look it up and confirm that a lodge, officially known as Owl Creek Lodge, IOOF #686, opened on July 31, 1879.
It operated until 1956, when it was closed. And that’s about all the information they have about the defunct lodge. Exactly how long it met in the school building is unknown, but its presence suggests that perhaps the lodge helped fund the building of the school.
The building is no longer there today.
The back of the card is a simple greeting between friends Edith Marshall (whose address is only given as Rfd #3), and Floyd Norris of Bellville.
It is postmarked 1913, which fits with the timeframe of the lodge as well as the style of the photographic print. Thus it seems safe to date this photograph of Waterford to somewhere between 1879 and 1913, with the latter date being most probable.
