Hillside School, Dist. #100 (aka, The Park Office) -- Part 2

Colorized photo of the former Hillside School,
now a home, in 1947 (courtesy, Allmond family)

In the last post we looked at the founding of the Hillside School, District #100, in 1891, as well as a few of the challenges it faced in its first few years. We learned that it was always a small district, but by the early 1930's it fell below the state's minimum mandated threshold for attendance and was closed at the end of the 1932-33 school year. While there would be no more classes held in the brick schoolhouse on Thompson Station Road and Chambers Rock Road, its story was not over. (I want to thank the Allmond family for their gracious and wonderful help in putting much of the story together.)

In November 1933, the Hillside School was put up for sale, along with the #29 Hockessin School, the #30 North Star School, the #90 Fairview School, and the #91 Yorklyn School. At the auction, the Hockessin and Yorklyn schools were withdrawn (to be sold later), the North Star school was purchased by the Mitchells of Woodside Farm (who had originally donated the land), and the Fairview school was purchased by Harold T. Little. Finally, the Hillside school was purchased by Elmer J. Leach, Warden of the New Castle County Workhouse, for $550.

Leach sold the schoolhouse and lot the next September to Charles H. Anderson, at a nice $250 profit (over $6000 today). It seems likely that the Leaches never lived there, but instead converted it from a school to a home. Anderson owned it until 1940, when he sold it to Joseph M. Brannan (price undisclosed). Brannan probably didn't live there, as I found multiple sales by and from him of lots in the Newark area (interestingly, this included his purchase of the District #42 school on Red Mill Road near Ogletown). He owned a store near Milford Crossroads, and would later buy a store in Stanton from Dutch Boulden. (I'm told the Milford Crossroads store building is still there, but moved a few hundred yards away.) It's quite possible that Brannan bought the Hillside School out of nostalgia -- it turns out he had been a student there, and that's him (2nd row, 2nd from the left) in the c.1894 photo of students in front of the school seen below.

Hillside School, Dist. #100 (aka, The Park Office) -- Part 1

The Hillside School (Park Office) today

After all these years, we may finally be covering the last of the pre-1900 schoolhouses in Mill Creek
Hundred! And unless I'm missing one (please feel free to speak up if I am), it's the last of the one-room schoolhouses built in MCH. From its inception it was always an almost ridiculously small district (but one the residents wanted) that almost immediately lost some of its tax base, and only operated for about 40 years. However, the building did survive and is even back in public use and owned by the state!

The school I'm referring to was known as the Hillside School, and designated as School District #100. The little brick school building sits on the east side of Thompson Station Road across from the eastern end of Chambers Rock Road, in the far western edge of MCH. The brick schoolhouse, since plastered over and with a few additions, now serves as the park office for White Clay Creek State Park (WCCSP). Its beginnings, however, go back more than 130 years.

Even today, if you go driving around on Thompson Station, Chambers Rock, Pleasant Hill, or Hopkins Roads, it can feel very (and in my opinion, wonderfully) empty. Even though you're only a few miles from bustling Newark and Kirkwood Highway, it seems remote. In the late 1800's it felt even more so to the relatively small number of local residents. This is one reason why, by the late 1880's, they were beginning to campaign for a new school for their children. At this point they were still part of District #31, attending the Union School all the way over on Corner Ketch Road. It was almost a mile and a half as the crow flies, but more like two or two and a half if the child walked along the road.