Attendees of a new program being created by Newtown Historical Society will have an opportunity to meet and talk to alumni of local one-room schoolhouses next month.

“Voices From the One-Room Schoolhouse: A Community Storytelling Event” is being planned for Saturday, September 26, at 1 pm. The 90-minute program will be presented at Middle Gate Elementary School, 7 Cold Spring Road.

The event is free, although donations will be accepted and will benefit the historical society.

While the historical society continues to own and maintain the historic one-room schoolhouse located on the front lawn of the Cold Spring Road elementary school, “Voices From the One-Room Schoolhouse” will be presented inside the full-size Middle Gate building due to the number of those speaking, the inclusion of a slideshow, and, organizers hope, the size of the audience.

Newtown Historical Society Marketing & Volunteer Engagement Recruiter Barbara Wilson said she is “really hoping for a multi-generational audience. I hope kids will have questions.”

Town Historian Ben Cruson will open the program with information concerning the reopening of some of the town’s one-room schoolhouses. Several of Newtown’s one-room locations reopened in the 1940s due to overcrowding.

Attendees that afternoon will have the opportunity to meet at least four people who spent part of their academic career attending class at one of the town’s historic locations: Margaret “Peg” (nee Sherman) Forbell and Gloria Ricco, who both attended Flat Swamp School; Mabel (Burr) Phillips, who attended Huntingtown School; and Evelyn “Evie” (Weber) Watts, who attended Land’s End School.

Flat Swamp School was within Dodgingtown along today’s Flat Swamp Road. The building gained a unique piece of pop culture history when James and Helen Brunot — the developer of Scrabble and his wife — rented the then-former schoolhouse in 1948 and used the location as a workshop to create and assemble the earliest sets of the board game that continues to be enjoyed today.

Huntington’s one-room schoolhouse was on the west side of Huntingtown Road almost directly across from the location of Congregation Adath Israel’s original synagogue at 111 Huntingtown Road. The school closed in the early 1920s and the building was converted into a residence, according to Images of America: Newtown by the late Dan Cruson.

The Land’s End School building still sits on a triangular piece of land at the intersection of Hawleyville Road/State Route 25 and Obtuse at Currituck Roads. The original schoolhouse was constructed in 1745 and is believed to have been destroyed by fire, according to Newtown Bee archives.

The existing structure was built around 1840, and was used as a school until 1945. Land’s End was considered the longest operating district school in Newtown.

By 1940, the Land’s End School was one of only two districts remaining active in Newtown. The building was placed on the State Register of Historic Places by the Connecticut Historical Commission in 2002.

Evie Watts grew up on Osborne Hill Road in Sandy Hook. She would walk the half-mile from her home to Kearns Farm on Bennetts Bridge Road, where a bus would pick her up for a ride to The Hawley School. From there she and other Land’s End students would ride a shuttle to their school.

“The whole process from home to school would take a solid hour and a half, if not two hours, each way,” Watts said August 13.

Wilson was inspired to begin preparing a program about local one-room schoolhouses during a screening last year of Exit 9, The Way of Life in Hawleyville. Donna Ball’s documentary — initially prepared for the centennial of Hawleyville Volunteer Fire Company — was then shared with the public at Edmond Town Hall in September 2025.

“We were at the screening when Evie mentioned to someone that she had attended Land’s End School,” Wilson recently shared with The Newtown Bee. Watts and Wilson reconnected a few months later and began talking about the idea that has blossomed into the multi-media presentation coming in a few weeks.

The program next month will feature the alumni participating in a panel discussion moderated by Wilson. There will also be a short "Then and Now" slideshow showcasing many of Newtown's one-room schoolhouses. Wilson has been researching and finding archival images for the Then portion of the slideshow, and creating the Now images while traveling around town with Watts.

“We spent two or three afternoons driving around, visiting the one-room schoolhouses,” Watts said. The women met the current owners of the former Palestine schoolhouse, among others, and have had a great time hearing stories and collecting information.

“It took a lot longer than we expected because we’d run into people and start talking,” Watts said. Both women laughed at the memories.

“We’ve had so much fun doing this,” Wilson added.

The women have reached out to others who still live in the area who attended the one-room schoolhouses. Some have declined, while others cannot participate due to health challenges, Watts said. There is room for additional panelists, Watts and Wilson both said. Additionally, Watts and Wilson would love to hear from schoolhouse building owners willing to share stories and/or photos for the program. Wilson can be reached at bkwilsonhistory@yahoo.com.

Reservations are not needed for “Voices From the One-Room Schoolhouse: A Community Storytelling Event.” For more information, visit newtownhistory.org.

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Managing Editor Shannon Hicks can be reached at shannon@thebee.com.