The Medford Historical Society Presents
The Cross Keys One-Room School House
Medford Cross Keys Schoolhouse Open House
July, August & September
2nd Sunday
1-3pm
Private tours are available upon request.
“Westward Ho: Back to School We Go!”
The 2022 CSAA Conference on one-room schoolhouses will be held this year at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden, Colorado from June 17-22.
Preservationists, professors and teachers, museum curators, genealogists, librarians, re-enactors, historical society members, schoolhouse owners, and other enthusiasts gather for "all things schoolhouse." Scholarly presentations and workshops on schoolhouse history and preservation cover an unlimited range of topics geared to ensuring the future of our educational heritage.
The Country School Association of America (CSAA) is a national non-profit organization dedicated to preserving memories and scholarship of country schools, which once formed the backbone of American public education.
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Today, the school looks much like it did when it was in use in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. The building is a simple A-frame structure with a small front addition that once served as a vestibule and a wood and coal bin. There are three windows on each of the three sides of the building and one window and a door in the front. Each window is protected by a single, working shutter. The school has a New Jersey sandstone foundation that supports the building which is twenty-six feet long and twenty-two feet wide. Inside, the walls are plaster and the floor is made of three and one-half inch tongue-in-grove pine boards. The floor joists and rafters are made of oak, and the building is covered with clapboard cedar shingles which are painted white.
The building is furnished as it would have appeared in 1857. There is a teacher’s desk, a pot-bellied stove, a chalk board, a large ceramic crock for drinking water, a clock, a flag, historical pictures, assorted memorabilia of the time period, and double wooden student desks with lids that lift to reveal a place for school supplies such as slates, chalk, and books.
The Cross Keys School is opened for a variety of activities from tours for both children and adults, living history programs and open houses. During these events you will find both docents and schoolmarms, dressed in period garb, anxiously sharing with you what education was like in a bygone era.
Locationed in Medford, New Jersey, in Burlington County. Marker is at the intersection of Mill Street and Enclave Court, on the right when traveling north on Mill Street. (9° 53.415′ N, 74° 49.596′ W)