HISTORICAL COMMENTS BY GEORGE CHEVALLIER 11-30-13

Rockawalkin School

We have in Salisbury a gem of history in the Rockawalkin School. It sits on the corner of Pemberton Drive and Ellegood Street at the Pemberton Elementary School. It originally sat on the northeast corner of Route 349 (Nanticoke Road) and Rockawalkin Road. The original piece of land for it was bought in 1869 from Ann and Christopher Columbus Fooks and Hugh Ellingsworth. The school was built about three years later for the community of Rockawalkin. It housed children in grades one through seven. When it closed in 1938, there were only five grades.

The inside of the school house is as close to a 19th Century one-room school house as you can get. The teacher’s desk, the pot-bellied stove with its accompanying coal bucket, the small to mid-sized desks with their period ink wells and the books are all reminiscent of a time long ago. There is also a water bucket with a ladle that everyone used to get a drink There are many things on display that would have been used by the children of a long ago era. The crayons, pencil boxes, individual slate boards remind us that things were not always as easy as they are now. The pull down map in the front of the classroom shows the world prior to the First World War.

It really takes you back in time just to be in the school house. A teacher at Pemberton Elementary School, Melba Klepner, takes her class through the building every year and, to my knowledge, that is the extent of visitors annually. Two years ago, the Wicomico Historical Society opened it up on the weekend they held the Winefest at Pemberton Park that had an attendance of about 7,000. The school house is on the way to Pemberton, and we had ample signage out front advertising that the school was open. In ten hours over two days, exactly 12 people stopped by to visit. I recently opened the school house for American Education Week and conducted 30 half-hour classes in four days. The children loved it,

The Rockawalkin School is owned by the Wicomico Historical Society, and the maintenance is furnished by the Board of Education. Extensive upkeep is required to maintain such an historic structure and it has recently had new windows installed, been painted, had ventilation windows installed in the foundation, a floor installed in the back room and an application of boiled linseed oil applied to the cedar shingles on the roof to make them lie flat. It is in superb shape, and anyone can see it by contacting me. I will open it up anytime for anyone.

It hasn’t been used as a school since June, 1938. For awhile it was the store and gas station of Leonard and Annalee Johnson. When they ceased commercial operations, they deeded it to the Wicomico Historical Society and the Board of Education. It was moved to its present location and has been there since 1973.

One thing that had to give way to the present was the two “little houses” out back. Since the school was built long before indoor plumbing was the acceptable norm, the two outhouses were for the convenience of the boys and girls who attended the school.

Most of the children walked to and from school. In this modern age, of the 14,500 students attending schools in Wicomico County, 12,500 of them are bussed in some form or another. The maintenance of the school was the responsibility of the only teacher in the school. She had one of the larger boys come in early in the winter to fire up the coal stove, and other children stayed after school to sweep up and clean the blackboards. The coal stove was also used at lunch to heat up soup or chocolate to go along with whatever else the children brought from home. A full-service cafeteria was many years away.

Would you or your group like to see it? Call me at (410) 749-1021, and I will be more than glad to show it to you.

(Rockawalkin School ca. 1898. The boy 5th from the left, front row is my grandfather, Albert L. Disharoon, as noted on the back.)