Forty-five years ago this week, the one-room Sholes School was moved from a farm in Burlington to the LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve. The school was built in 1872 by the David Sholes family who were among the earliest settlers to Burlington Township. When the Schairer family bought the farm, the school became known as the Schairer School. The school was one of the last one-room schools to close in 1947.
Ralph Campbell, whose mother taught at the school in 1912, bought the farm some time after the school closed. The school had deteriorated to the point that it may have needed to be torn down. Faye Stone led a newly formed organization, Pioneer Sholes School Preservation Society, to find the school's new location, restore it, and open it as a museum. The Society helped broker a deal for Campbell to donate the school to the Forest Preserve District of Kane County and relocate it near the 1843 Durant-Peterson House Museum in the LeRoy Oakes Forest Preserve.
The Pioneer Sholes School Preservation Society raised money—including $5,000 from the Forest Preserve—and restored the school. They operated the school as a museum until Preservation Partners of the Fox Valley took over the school's operations in 2019.
Elementary students on field trips and guests on days the school is open experience how schools taught children in the 19th century from period-dressed docent teachers.
Thank you for reading! If this story interested, inspired, or informed you, please consider subscribing to our monthly e-newsletter so more of these stories come right to you!
SOURCES: Tom Chambers, "Sholes School on the Move," St. Charles Chronicle, May 23, 1979; Tom Chambers, "New Home for Sholes," St. Charles Chronicle, May 30, 1979.