The Curious Origin of the Swamp and Fagleysville Independent Schools

From 1875 until they closed in 1948, the New Hanover villages of Swamp and Fagleysville each administered their own tiny school districts. These independent schools were a rarity in the state and it is a wonder that New Hanover had two, side by side. Many local residents recall attending these two schools.

The Swamp District extended, more or less, about a half mile on both sides of the Swamp Pike from the Douglass Township line to Reifsnyder Road and Fagleysville District from there to the Limerick Township line.

How these two independent schools came to be is somewhat of a mystery. Briefly, the State Constitution of 1790 ordered the government to establish schools throughout the state so that the poor would be “taught gratis;” however, this never came to pass in any effective way. Parochial schools and local “pay schools,” such as they were, provided the only basic education until the Free School Statute of 1834 projected a school system for the entire population. This law required each civil district (townships and boroughs) to operate schools free of charge under the supervision of a county superintendent of schools. One half the cost was to be borne by the state, the other half raised by local real estate tax.

After decades of opposition by the Pennsylvania Germans, who felt their culture threatened by the “English only” language requirement of the free schools, New Hanover and surrounding townships agreed to cooperate and so were created the ubiquitous one-room schools. These schools were usually built about two miles apart so that students had to walk, at most, about a mile. New Hanover had eleven oneroom schools administered by an elected school board of the township residents.

Because many of the upstate mountainous areas presented formidable obstacles to travel across wide and thinly populated regions, sub-districts (the area served by a particular one-room school) of a township school system were allowed, by an act of 1855, to break away and become independent and provide their own administration. They became in every sense their own tiny, independent school district. Residents of a sub-district wishing to break-away from the township district had to make application to their county court of common pleas for approval. However, problems arose.

The following explanation of intent added to the free school act in 1857 indicates that the independent school district provision may have been used for undesirable purposes: “…the true intent and meaning of the provisions of the supplement to the general school law…was and is to provide, in a guarded manner, for exceptions to the general rule, and to protect and promote the educational welfare of occasional localities that, from natural or other adequate obstacles, could not be properly provided for under the organization of township districts; and further it was not the intention to cutup townships into single school districts, nor to carve out the wealthier from the poorer portions of a township, to the prejudice of the rights and interests of the latter….” Which brings us then to New Hanover’s schools.

There were very few such independent school districts formed within the state, and it is odd that New Hanover had two, neither of which could apparently be justified under the parameters of the law. In fact, their creation in 1875 seems to have been specifically prohibited under the terms of the law: there were no geographical feature preventing prohibiting easy travel throughout the township, and both the Swamp and Fagleysville sub-districts, lying along the Swamp Pike corridor, encompassed the more well-to-do section of the township.

By what reason or justification could the court have permitted these two sub-districts to become independent? We have the New Hanover School District minute book from these years which have been donated to the historical society by Mr. J. Roger Moyer Jr.

However, the minute book is strangely silent. Next week, part 2.

“There were very few such independent school districts formed within the state, and it is odd that New Hanover had two.”