Redstone School

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Redstone School
Redstone School.jpg
The building in 2007
Redstone School
General information
Location Sudbury, Massachusetts, U.S.
Coordinates 42°21′31″N71°28′16″W / 42.358650°N 71.471215°W / 42.358650; -71.471215
Completed1798(227 years ago) (1798)
Technical details
Floor count1

The Redstone School is a one-room school located in Sudbury, Massachusetts. [1] Built in 1798, it is believed to be the school to which Mary Sawyer took her lamb in the nursery rhyme "Mary Had a Little Lamb". [2] [3]

At the time of Sawyer's attendance at the school, it was located in Sterling, Massachusetts. Since before the American Civil War, the building had served as a barn for a local Baptist Church parsonage. In early 1926, [4] the property was purchased by Henry Ford [5] and relocated around 20 miles (32 km) to the east, to a churchyard, on the property of Longfellow's Wayside Inn, where it stands today. [2] Ford operated the school for the benefit of children of his employees at the Wayside Inn. [6]

On January 17, 1927 the building reopened as a school, [4] operating for a further twenty-four years, with an average of around sixteen students of grades one through four. [6] It closed permanently in 1951. [2] [6]

The school has windows on the right-hand side and at the rear; its blackboard occupies the interior of the left-hand wall.

References

  1. "U.S. Massachusetts - Sudbury, Redstone School". www.digitalcommonwealth.org. Retrieved November 22, 2022.
  2. 1 2 3 Teaching in a one-room schoolhouse, August 3, 2019, retrieved November 22, 2022
  3. Crane, Ellery Bicknell (1907). Historic Homes and Institutions and Genealogical and Personal Memoirs of Worcester County, Massachusetts: With a History of Worcester Society of Antiquity, Volume 1. Lewis Publishing Company. p. 377.
  4. 1 2 "School Made Famous by Mary and her Lamb Reopened Today". New Britain Herald. New Britain, Connecticut. January 7, 1927. p. 11. Retrieved May 27, 2025.
  5. Bryan, F.R. (2002). Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford. Wayne State University Press. p. 381. ISBN   978-0-8143-3684-7 . Retrieved August 17, 2019.
  6. 1 2 3 Bryan, Ford R. (2002). Friends, Families & Forays: Scenes from the Life and Times of Henry Ford. Wayne State University Press. p. 381.