The lone farmer headed towards Unison on the Bloomfield to Unison road that morning mopped his sweaty face with his handkerchief. The Farmer’s Almanac of 1916 had been right in its forecast for the Virginia spring to be a hot one. The dust arose from his team's hooves as they plodding along that 2 mile dirt road, still deeply rutted from the winter rains and heavy wagon traffic. The dried mud had already been pounded down by numerous hooves into a silt so light and powdery that it rose high in even the slightest eddies of air. The farmer ignored the dust as he looked with professional interest at the farmlands on either side of the road, already rich in early spring grass and cattle, and crop fields newly plowed with tiny juvinile stalks of young corn peeking up out of the ground in in well groomed rows. The corn liked the heat, and the forecasted hot summer and moderate rain, the harvest this fall was already promising to be good. He then glanced at the steep hill in front of him, the lone hill separating the two thriving rural towns of Bloomfield and Unison, Local lore had it that the hill had been used as a scouting post by both Federal and Confederate forces during the war only 50 years prior, but now the remains of fire rings where soldiers sat in a circle and made their bullets, or stood sentry over the countryside for signs of enemies on the move, lay under a shroud of thick grass that waved gently in the breeze under the relentless summer sun. Narrowing his eyes he spotted a number of figures at the top of the hill, standing on the spot of the old Confederate encampment.
As the team of horses leaned into their leather collars at the base of the hill to draw the heavy wagon up to the crest at a steady walk, the farmer studied the shiny new fangled car parked at the top of the hill, gleaming in the sun, just a few yards away from a small group of business men standing at the crest of the hill on the grass next to the road. The men were looking over the lay of the land, one pointing at something nearby. Their smart business suits gave them away as non-locals, and the farmer quietly nodded his head in time with his horses’ walking footfall. He knew who they were, and why they were here. A new school was about to be built, and this is where it was going to stand. Talk in both towns was for a fancy large building, large enough to accommodate the numbers of local children who were too numerous to be housed any longer in the small one and two room schools of both Unison and Bloomfield. Just this past June he himself had stood with the local Unison crowd in the summer sun as the old Unison school house and land had been auctioned off, falling under the gavel to the new ownership of local merchantile Henry Saffel. It had been a bittersweet moment since just that past year the school’s baseball team had won the county trophy, and that small schoolhouse had been a fixture in the town for decades.
But times were changing, and the plans for a fancy 6 room building, complete with an auditorium, had the local folks abuzz with excitement. The farmer was pleased as well. Both of his children would be able to attend the new school, the walking distance from his farm in Bloomfield being only 2 miles. He smiled to himself, remembering the oft heated discussions when folks gathered at the local stores over the pot bellied stove to hash over the selection of the name of the new school. The eventual chosen name, “Unison-Bloomfield School”, was more of a nod to the lesser distance to Unison of the new site than it was for any favoritism of one town name over the other. He felt sure that his children were going to benefit far more here than at their now crowded two room Bloomfield school.
As the heavy breathing team crested the top of the hill, the farmer recognized the voice and figure of one of the men standing around the new car, talking with the men in the business suits. It was Thomas Iden, the owner of the land. The farmer raised his head, catching the eye of Iden, and both exchanged nods of greeting. The farmer glanced at the other men, then let his eye roam the bit of land on the crest of the hill that the men were discussing. It was just a small slice, the very crest of the hill, only 5 of the 90 acres that. Thomas Iden was a man who valued a solid education for every child, his son having been schooled as a veterinarian and now with a growing family of his own. It hadn’t taken much for the senior Iden to offer the county school board this piece of land for a mere $10 token to build the new school. The farmer nodded again to himself. Iden was smart. He knew his grandchildren, as well as all the local children, would be the ultimate beneficiaries of the new school, and that was why he stood with the suited men today, pointing out the best aspects of the land for the new school, barn, and outbuildings. Workmen had already started the excavation for the building basement and foundation. Plans
were to have the building complete by the end of the year, and ready to open the following school session.
The dust eddies under the horses’ hooves gently rose and fell as the team crested the hill and continued their slow journey towards Unison, down the hill and around the bend, the trees alongside the road soon obscuring the view of the hill, the men, and their car. It was less than a mile into Unison, and the horses ears pricked forward. The farmer was still lost in thought, mulling over the fact that the school building would start going up soon to accommodate this fall's classes before his mind soon drifted to the other issues of the day. The new laws of Prohibition were going to make it difficult for the town drunks, and even the normal population, to enjoy a tot here and there, and that maybe setting aside a bit of corn squeezings and rye this fall might not be a bad idea. Just for the medicinal purposes, of course. That's what he'd tell his wife. She had been bending his ear for the past few months with news of the growing Suffrage movement of women who were going to great lengths to demand the right to vote, while his German next door neighbor had been bending the other ear on the growing unrest brewing far away in Europe. He sighed. Good thing he only had two ears. Both topics were enough fodder for the local wags to exercise their jaws. Thankfully most of the folks hereabouts were more concerned with local issues – would the farming be good this season, would goods and supplies be plentiful or short, and would the wagon's iron tires need to be replaced soon. He'd have to make a visit to the wheelwright’s new forge in Bloomfield.
The team and wagon rounded the final bend as the road straightened directly into Unison, and the farmer flicked his reins to encourage his horses into a steady trot, disturbing the dusty road into a frenzy of sooty knee high clouds. Time to get to the store and make his delivery and purchases. The chores at home wouldn’t wait, nor would the sun, and he’d have to be getting back to Bloomfield soon.
Prologue
The shift from the prior century’s small one room schoolhouses staffed by schoolmasters of sometimes questionable credentials following their own idea of a curriculum, to a bigger multi-community school hosting elementary and high school grades in separate classrooms staffed by professional teachers following a state mandated course of study was the result of headlong efforts by the Cooperative Education Association, organized in 1904 to advocate for progressive public education reform in Virginia.
Up until 1900 schools had not produced a good consistent track record towards quality education, and despite the gloom-and-doom predictions from the pulpit against a professionally staffed secular education program, the progressive movement promoting new educational programs rapidly gained public approval. In response to the growing public push towards quality education, Virginia General Assembly enacted several pieces of Progressive legislation, including a 1906 bill that provided $50,000 in state funds on a matching basis to any county that wanted to establish a high school.
As a direct result of this bill, the number of high schools in the state increased from 75 in 1906 to 360 in 1910.
Loudoun County had taken swift advantage of the 1906 education bill, and by 1916 had built 12 high schools for white students, including the Unison-Bloomfield high school. All of the high schools would also host lower grade elementary classes as well, this taking full advantage of the new buildings.
Often a patron for the new school would “donate”, sometimes for a scant few dollars, real estate upon which the new school would be built for the surrounding community. Just such an occurrance happened for the Unison-Bloomfield school. In August of 1915, 4 acres of land owned by Thomas Iden was purchased by the school administration of Mercer District for the site of a new Elementary and High School. The location at the top of a rise, about midway between the two large towns of Unison and Bloomfield and directly on the main road traversing the 2 mile distance between both towns, was sold at a token $10 by Iden. (source: Loudoun County deeds, Records Room, Loudoun County Courthouse, Leesburg, VA – deed book 8Y, pg 137-140)
In the 1916 Mercer District Account Book (pg. 426, LCSD Records Office, Round Hill, VA) the school district paid just $250 for the acquisition of real estate, yet paid $15,000 for new buildings – which quite probably was mostly that of the Unison-Bloomfield School. In later insurance records the school was recorded to have a recovery cost of $10,000.
Along with the influx of new Loudoun County schools, a supervisory office was organized in 1917 with the hire of Oscar L. Emerick as District Superintendent. Emerick's office remained in his Purcellville home for the next 17 years, and for the first 15 of those years he has no staff until he hired his sister, Ruth, as clerk. Emerick's main job is to visit each school once a year. At schools for whites he sits in the back of the room and silently observes. At schools for blacks he asks the teacher to lead the class in spirituals.
But Emerick was a passionate proponent for the progressive education movement, and on April 1st 1919 he wrote a 9 page letter to the County School Board, urging them to adopt a platform of higher pay to the professional teachers, certification for all teachers and substitutes, inspection and repair of schools on an annual basis, fixing of a uniform school year across the county, better methods of record keeping for elementary school students and for the teacher base, and adoption of “business-like methods” , and proper delegation of supervisory tasks, to ensure consistency in all aspects of education in the county schools. (Archived correspondence records, LCSD Records Office, Round Hill, VA)
The New Unison-Bloomfield High School and Elementary School
Building of the school commenced in Spring of 1916. By the winter of that same year the structure was complete. The following spring saw the interior finished out well in time for the start of the September classes. (see attached photo)
Beyond the ebb and flow of students and teachers, the basic workings of the school did not vary for the next two decades. Heat, water, and lighting were the main concerns, and without them the classes could not continue. The old one room schoolhouses had employed wood and coal fed pot bellied stoves that the teachers would stoke during the day to provide the necessary heat in the cold winter months, but the new modern buildings were designed with clean and safe radiators, fueled by steam heat generated by a huge coal furnace in the school’s basement.
Heating: The coal furnace
The task of keeping the coal furnace supplied and fired, as well as keeping the toilets and privies clean, and the gas lights functional, now fell on the shoulders of the school custodian. The school board gave responsibility of this position to the school PTA who oversaw the hiring, firing, and salaries of the hired custodian. Newpaper writer Eugene Scheel relates a story of one such custodian, Upton “Upty” Pierce. During the 1920’s into the early 1930’s…. ““Upty” Pierce was the janitor, paid $15/month by the PTA. He walked the 7 miles to and from his Airmont home each day. At one PTA meeting the parents decided to fire Upty, who was sitting in the last row of the audience. “If they fire me, I’ll quit!” he announced. After the laughter died down, they rehired him.”
Lighting: Acedalyne gas, and the gas "house", window design and classroom design
Sanitation: Water, toilets, Personal hygine: shoes required, washing, etc.
The sanitory concerns for the children and their teachers were of deep concern to the school board. Diseases such as polio, diththeria, typhoid, and ____. In the old one room school houses, outhouses served all the students and teachers for toilet facilities, and drinking water was bucketed from a well, often with a common cup for drinking. In keeping with the progress towards modern sanitation and disease control, the Unison-Bloomfield school was built equipped with indoor lavatories, and drinking fountains. From the initial opening of the school until 1933 when the High School was transferred to Round Hill, only the upper classes and the teachers used the indoor lavatories. The elementary classes used the outhouse outside, which in the cold of winter, was sufficient enough discouragement against the youngsters loitering away from the warm classroom.
In order to fully integrate health and sanitary habits in the children, the school system organized a Health Day parade each year. Schools would compete with their school “float” and the day would be festive
The school custodian was an intregal part of the staff, and ensured that the building was maintained to the exacting standards of the School district, and
all the equipment was in working order. Towards the end of the 1930s, Upton Pierce left, and the custodial work was farmed out to some of the surrounding residents who had children in the school Some daily jobs were even relegated to the children, as Rosser Iden recalled as a student in the late 1930s. “When the classrooms would get a little cold, our teacher , Miss Beavers, would send my brother Billy, who was 2 ½ years older than me, and Cliff down to the basement to throw more coal in the furnace. She knew we knew how to work the furnace because our mother came early to school every morning to start the furnace. This was after my father had died, and we had moved to Bloomfield. Now, we knew a trick with the furnace”, Iden said with a twinkle in his eye, “that would pop the relief valve so that a fire drill would be called. Whenever we wanted to get out of school work, we’d just put enough coal in the furnace to make the fire hot enough to pop the valve and force a fire drill.” The little trick wasn’t practiced too often, Iden admitted, because the teachers knew the boys were pulling the prank just to get out of school work. But stoking the furnace was a messy job, and without a custodian it would have been up to the teachers to stoke the furnace. As the coal that was delivered in bulk each fall was substandard – mostly dust with large chunks of coal interspersed in the pile - the small pranks the boys sometimes pulled were largely tolerated in the necessity of their daily conscription as unpaid stokers in the dirty job.
A Day in the Life of a Unison/Bloomfield Student
TRANSPORTATION – Getting to School and back home:
By default, just as school is held today, the classes were scheduled during the lull of the farming season beginning in late September and lasting until early June. The local Unison and Bloomfield children, ranging in age from 5 to 19, began their school day by coming to school via “Shank’s Mare” (ie: walking on foot), being transported in a horse-drawn bus, or riding/driving the family horse. According to archived school records (extent from 1920 through 1945), each student’s distance from home to the school was recorded each year, quite probably to determine if transportation was needed or not for better attendance. Based on these annual records Thomas Young and Catherine Hall hold the honor of traveling the longest distance (8 miles) to the school in the 1920’s school sessions beginning when they were 15 and 13 years old, respectively.
However, most of the students lived within 5 miles of the school. Esther Redmond, now of Sterling VA, who was born near Unison in 1938, remembers that her mother used to ride a horse the 1 mile distance to school. Those that did ride or drive were accommodated by a stable that had been built at the back of the school to use for daily boarding. The usual stall fee was $1 a month and included hay and water. For those families who didn’t want to pay the fee, or needed the horse at home during the day, the horse would be released at the school’s door by the child/children and left to its own devises to get home. The incentive for the animal not to wander, and to make haste returning home, was facilitated by the smart farmer who would only feed the horse upon its return, and not prior to leaving.
The daily presence of so many horses on the school grounds had its own unique benefits in providing lots of “ammunition” for the farm boys when personal disagreements arose. According to the memoires of Marvin Wharton, who was born in Unison in 1938, his older brother Bobby attended the school “…back in the 30’s. I was told he got into trouble one time because he had picked up some dry horse biscuits [ie: manure] and threw them at some kids. It was very common then for children to ride horses to the school, so ammunition was plentiful around the school. …”
The horse and the horse drawn bus remained fixtures of the transportation mode until automotive transportation was introduced in Loudoun in 1925. By the mid 1930’s a public bus system was employed to pick up all the school’s students, regardless of distance.
The typical school day began with a prayer recalls Lessor Iden of Aldie, VA in a recent interview. Iden was born in the house directly across from the school in 1931, his grandfather, Thomas Iden, having sold the school site to the Mercer District School board in 1916. Inez Cassell Brown, who graduated in the High School class of 1932, also remembers the daily prayer. In her interview with Eugene Schell for an article in the Washington Post, she recalled…” [she] rode three miles to school on horseback, and when she arrived at her homeroom at 9 a.m., students recited teacher-led prayers …and sometimes listened to Bible readings. Those readings, prayers and singing were regularly part of the weekly assembly, at which faculty members spoke. …”
In the 1920-21 high school session students numbered 10 boys and 16 girls under the tutorship of 4 different teachers, while the elementary students numbered 26 boys and 24 girls under 2 teachers. The upper classes enjoyed separate desks, indoor toilets, and individual attention to their studies, unlike the lower classes who sat at interconnected tables, made use of the outside privies, and were coached and helped by their classmates who were a grade or two above. The numbers of students, on average 80 to 100, never varied far from these totals through the next two decades that the building was in use.
Study aids in the form of books and instructional manuals included the
The Children
The 1917-1918 school session was the opening session for the new Unison-Bloomfield Elementary and High School. 4 teachers and 106 students were recorded in attendance: three teachers for the 86 students in grades 1-7, and 1 teacher for the 20 students enrolled in grades 8-11 for a school term lasting 180 days. The following year (1918-1919) the high school classes would have 3 teachers rather than one, and the grades would be split accordingly. (LCSB archived records)
The annual horse show fund raiser
Recess
Shop & Home Ec
