Volunteers, grant funding transform old schoolhouse in Freedom

On Feb 22, 2022

A building where local children were educated in the 19th century is seeing new life after an Ohio Cultural Facilities Grant and donations of materials and labor helped transform the Freedom landmark.

“Drakesburg Schoolhouse #2,” which first appeared on Portage County tax maps in 1874, will serve as a museum and meeting space, members of the Portage County Historical Society said. Over the years, the building served as a church, a sheep shed and most recently, was occupied by squatters.

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The building is located on Route 303, just east of the Route 88/Nichols Road intersection.

Drakesburg Schoolhouse was built in the early 1870s at the Route 303 location. Claudia Garrett, former Freedom Township Historical Society president and Bev Puleo, current president.

Historians and Freedom Township trustees obtained several donations and grants for the renovation. They include a $50,000 Ohio Cultural Facilities Grant from the Ohio Facilities Construction Commission.

Bev Puleo, president of the Freedom Township Historical society, said volunteers contributed building materials, old school-style desks, a chalk board and even a pot-bellied stove.

“The volunteers just made this place a showpiece,” she said.

Claudia Garrett, former president of the historical society, applied for the grant. She and Puleo now oversee the project.

Volunteer Pete Thornton stands in the basement of the old one-room schoolhouse in Freedom Township, will has been restored.

So far, the building has new siding, drywall, a new roof and windows, and the floor has been restored. Volunteers have now turned their attention to the basement, which will house the historian’s office.

This spring, an exterior structure will be built, which will include a building for storage and outdoor events.

In the late 1800s, thanks to an 1853 law that required local boards of education to establish schools, the Drakesburg Schoolhouse was built. It was one of eight district schools in the township.

Volunteer Pete Thornton holds a newer piece of wood up against the original. Thornton is renovating the basement of the Drakesburg schoolhouse, which was built in the early 1870s.

About a dozen students of all ages attended school there at a time. Garrett noted that the floorboards are original to the school house and at one time, volunteers could see the spaces where the desks once stood.

“It’s a solid, solid building,” Garrett said.

In 1916, a new school building on Route 700 centralized all schools in the township. The school was then used as a barn, sheep shed and township garage until 1940, when Alice James sold the building and an acre of land to Drakesburg Assembly of God. The church occupied the building until 1996, when the congregation moved to Garrettsville. The church was then called Praise Assembly of God and now is called Life Church.

Over the years, the church made some changes to the building. In 1941, a team of horses turned the structure to face the main road, and the building was lifted onto a new foundation that included a basement and additions at each end — a vestibule at the front and a platform in the back. A parsonage, which is no longer standing, was constructed in 1946.

The building was sold to private owners in 2007, and the Portage County Land Bank purchased it a decade later with grant funding. Inmates from the Portage County jail cleaned out 40 yards of trash inside the building. and an abandoned garage and parsonage was demolished using grant funds.

The land bank transferred the property to township trustees in 2018, and the township is now leasing the building to the historical society for $1 per year. Sen. John Ecklund and State Rep. Diane Grendell helped the historical society get grant funding for the renovation project.

Garrett said the building was heavily damaged by squatters, who removed plumbing and left beer cans and drug paraphernalia in their wake.

“It’s a wonder this place wasn’t burned down,” she said.

Historians found several stories from people who remembered the schoolhouse. A township resident, Amos Hawley, once purchased a big dog to pull his granddaughter, “Tiny,” and her brother to school on a sled. The dog would spend the day with the students, then pull Tiny and her brother back home.

Garrett, who once attended the church that met in the former schoolhouse, said she knew the woman who helped start the church. Garrett regretted that the woman never lived to see the renovation.

“She would be so pleased that we saved a piece of Freedom history,” she said.

Reporter Diane Smith can be reached at [email protected].