The Elk Township Historical Society museums will be open to the public on Saturday, August 12 from 1-4 p.m. This is a wonderful opportunity for a family to spend a summer afternoon stepping back in time while visiting Scandia’s restored 1870’s one-room school. Here one can sit in a vintage school desk and study an original chalk lesson on authentic wall boards painted black, the derivation of our contemporary word, “blackboard”.

Visiting children can sit at an original desk and write lessons on a lap slate with chalk to better understand how students learned in school years ago. Later, they can go outside to the playground for “recess.” A tasty lunch may be gotten at the newly reopened historic Scandia Country Store and eaten at the playground pavilion in the lovely pastoral countryside of barns, silos and farm animals. Imagine, being a student in an 1870s one-room school right here in Warren County!

The Scandia School, one of twelve in Elk Township, is one of very few historic one-room schools in existence with over a century of enrollment records, which is truly unique. This rare collection can be an extremely valuable resource for families seeking an ancestor who attended Scandia School as a student or was one of its early teachers. Also available are limited enrollment records from several of the other Elk Township schools, such as Priest Hollow and Friendship. Many visitors have identified a long-lost ancestor among these rare enrollment records. In addition, a photo of such a person can frequently be found among the class pictures on display. During Open Houses, it is not unusual for a visitor to search their family roots from this collection to find a family member out of the past, that they have never seen before.

The Elk Township Museum will also be welcoming visitors, where one can learn about family operated dairy farms, about various methods of preserving food for the family’s use during the long winter months, about making maple syrup, about hand-making shoes out of leather and about digging coal from the Scandia Coal Mine to heat their homes in frigid winters on the mountain. One can sit in a Victorian parlor, even on a 19 C. side-chair upholstered in scratchy, but rugged horsehair fabric.

Nearby is The Shed Museum, which features an historic US Post office, vintage vehicles, a hunting camp and many other antiques of interest.