Education

From an article entitled “Apples Church/Jacob’s Thurmont” on the website German Marylanders, Peter Apple, who had become one of the large landholders in the area, on March 19, 1760, gave a deed for one acre of land to Matthias Ambrose, Jacob Matthews, and Jacob Ambrose as trustees for a schoolhouse. It is stated that it was probable that both Reformed and Lutheran services were held in this schoolhouse by visiting ministers of both denominations and that, as was customary in all country congregations of the day, sermons were read by the schoolmaster from time to time.

According to “A Short History of Harbaugh’s Valley” that is posted on the website of the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society a school was established in the area in 1813 when the settlers "gathered together at the magistrate’s office and signed an article of an agreement; each agreeing to give a certain sum towards building a schoolhouse for the education of the children." The site selected for the schoolhouse was the same site selected 10 years later for the first church in the valley, St. Jacobs. After Sabillasville was laid out, a log schoolhouse was built at the western end of the village.

In June of 1821 a school was established in Harbaugh’s Valley. Those who signed a document to pay for the services of a teacher included John Gordon, John Brown, Ignatius Brown, Jacob Flautt, George Flautt, and Daniel Gordon, among others. It reads as follows:

This certifies that Henry Buhrman has been a teacher for 15 months in the schoolhouse of his father’s near Harbaugh’s Valley, 9 months of which he taught in the year of 1817, and 1818, and 6 months in the year of 1820 and 1821, he was very attentive to his business and discharged his school with great dexterity, he has at all times done his duty towards his pupils by instructing them to the best of their abilities, in the several branches of his profession, and we unhesitatingly recommend him to the patronage of all who wish to employ a teacher whose qualifications are adequate to the task of instructing.

On August 7, 1826, another document was signed for Henry Buhrman to continue a school session that was to begin on the ninth day of October 1826. He was “to obligate himself to teach scholars Reading, Writing, and Arithmetick to the best of their ability and also to keep good rules and regular hours in said school.” Henry Buhrman then signed his name. In the following paragraph the subscriber obligated themselves to pay him $2 and for the price of tuition per scholar for three months. They also said they would provide for said teacher “a tolerably good schoolhouse with a good stove and plenty of good firewood, and all such materials which may be deemed necessary in the schoolhouse.” They then signed their names and the numbers of scholars for whom they were providing. It is interesting in this document that all the sons of Hannah Brown and her two sons-in-law signed their names. Some of the others who signed were George, Jacob, and Daniel Hauver, Henry and Jacob Poorman, Archibald McAfee, and George Fox.

In The Goose and the Eagle, compiled by Virginia Kuhn Draper, which is a collection of reminiscences of people who lived on the mountain, Margaret Buhrman Sigler shared the following on May 21, 1995, from information provided by Helen Buhrman: “Later a school was built on the old Foxville Tower Road … The children then went to East Franklin School. At the entrance to the Brown Cemetery stood a school house which was also used for church services. When Mt. Moriah was built in 1829, William B. Brown … gave the ground for the North Franklin School.” It is possible that Henry Buhrman’s one-room school was located at the northeast corner of the intersection of the Foxfield-Deerfield Road and Tower Road.

In the latter half of the 19th century a school was established on the Foxville-Deerfield Road just east of Mt. Moriah Lutheran Church. During the 1950s it provided educational opportunities for the children of the workers at Camp David, the presidential retreat. It was permanently closed in 1962.

SOURCES:

The Flautt Family in America (including those Flautts who changed their name to Floyd), by Rachael Sleasman Schwartz and Harry D. Bowman, Hagerstown, MD, Dixie Press, n.d., pp. 84, 177, 75-S, 95-S.

A Short History of Harbaugh’s Valley, from the website of the Emmitsburg Area Historical Society.

The Goose and the Eagle, by Virginia Kuhn Draper, January 1, 1997.

Apples Church/Jacob’s Thurmont, from the website German Marylanders.