FREDERICKTOWN — Long ago, in the late 19th century, the Pinkley School — on Pinkley Road between Fredericktown and Batemantown — became the setting where many Knox County children learned reading, writing and arithmetic. But what few know now is that the school building, still mostly intact, now resides inside a barn, living out its second incarnation as a hayloft.
According to an 1879 map, an S. Pinkley owned lots 48 and 50 in section 22 of Middlebury Township, which was founded in 1823. Although historical records aren’t clear, S. Pinkley may have donated — sometime before 1879 — a portion of his land for a school, which became known by the family’s name.
In 1879, according to Hill’s “History of Knox County,” there were six schools in Middlebury Township: Quaker, Caywood, Batemantown, Cook, Pinkley and Waterford, with Walnut Hill School added in 1881.
S. Pinkley may have been Samuel Pinkley, who a Tyrol Noble reported in an old but undated document was paid $3 for water for the school.
In Noble’s report, it’s also stated that “Miss Mingert taught at Pinkley and was paid $250 in the 1897-98 school year to be teacher and janitor.” It also notes that teacher Jennie Lyon was paid $36 on June 1, 1880, for her work, but F.B. Whitford was paid $140 on March 22 of the same year, also for teaching.
In 1907, 17 students — seven boys and 10 girls — were enrolled in the school. The old outhouse still stands, with the traditional star carved on two walls. It’s home to a family of raccoons and many empty walnut shells, and is leaning sideways a little. On one side are carved children’s initials: RL, WC and LC.
The school building, however, is gone from the original site in the field now owned by Usher Levering. But there’s an unusual belfry atop the big, sprawling white barn some yards away.
“That bell used to be on top of the old schoolhouse,” said Levering. “My grandmother, Gertrude Levering Kraft, bought the school and brought it down off the hill.”
The schoolhouse became part of Kraft’s barn. Fill with hay and with some siding removed, it was turned into a cattle feeder. But when her son, Usher’s father, Robert W. Levering — who served in Congress from 1959 to 1961 — took over the farm, he had bigger plans for the building in which he had attended elementary school.
“My dad decided we needed more room, so we jacked it up and built around it,” Usher Levering explained.
When visitors had trouble seeing exactly where the schoolhouse had been incorporated into the barn, Levering led them upstairs to the second-floor hayloft.
There sets the old Pinkley schoolhouse, mostly intact, its traditional three windows on each side empty of the glass, which is stored in the attic, said Levering. Its belfry now projects from the barn’s roof, the front door is gone, the doorway has been enlarged to a barn-style doorway and the floor is covered in hay, but much of the plaster and wainscoting still clings to the inside walls. The hooks where children once hung their coats rust away on the front wall. Early Knox County history is palpable in the air.
“I’m thinking that when they were building this [incorporating the schoolhouse into the barn’s second floor], people probably thought Dad was crazy,” said Levering, who remembers falling into the concrete when the footings were being poured, when he was about 7 years old.
The belfry isn’t accessible from inside the schoolhouse, so Levering took visitors skyward with his new Grove Manlift parked in the horse corral. He remembers climbing on the barn roof once to play with the bell, and falling off the roof. The big gas-powered lift is a better option.
Levering maneuvered the levers to make the lift roll forward on its tires, then raised the platform high into the air on a level with the belfry. Visitors touched the bell by leaning out of the lift, one foot on the metal roof, one hand clutching the lift’s railing, but the yoke is no longer attached to the bell. Levering volunteered to climb out of the lift and onto the roof and ring the bell, joking that schoolchildren might come running.
The old bell, much smaller than a church bell, has a light, high, clear tone, especially as it tolls out across the farmland below. It bears no markings, and Levering doesn’t know if it was cast in Fredericktown or elsewhere. He remembers when the fancy belfry — with its brackets and curved panels painted white — had an elaborately carved wooden spire that rotted away years ago.
From the lift, across the belfry, visitors looked toward Mount Vernon, toward Fredericktown and out across woods and fields turning green with spring. Sheep at a nearby farm bleated for their lambs. Light rain pattered on the barn roof.
Levering’s grandson, Rylan, less than 2 years old, is the 11th generation of the family in Middlebury Township. The first Levering was Daniel, who moved to Knox County in 1813 from Lancaster County, Pa. His son, Noah, also born in Pennsylvania, founded the village of Levering, now known as Waterford, near what is now the Morrow County line.
Usher Levering has a fine copy of the “Levering Family History and Genealogy,” printed in 1897, that details the more ancient family lineage, and a keepsake ribbon from an 1891 Levering family reunion bearing the legend, “Descendants of Wigard and Gerhard Levering of Gemen, Germany, who settled in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 1685.” It also displays the family crest on which three hares jump in unison.
When Gertrude’s husband, also Daniel, died, his sister determined in 1920 that their house would become her family members’ to sell. She filed a petition and had the family, which included several young children still at home, removed and a sheriff’s sale was held.
Also in 1920, Gertrude purchased the farm where Usher now lives. It had come down from previous owners, the Pinkleys, Kinneys, Franks and Schroeders, according to old deeds that are still in the Levering family. In April of 1937, Gertrude purchased the abandoned schoolhouse and the lot it stood on from the Fredericktown Village School District Board of Education, and moved the building to where it would be useful.
Usher Levering lives a few miles from Waterford, in the house that was his grandmother’s, and is immersed in his family’s history every day.
“It’s an intangible thing,” he explained, “like what you’re feeling when you see your first child. There’s some connection there that there’s no words for. I guess you think a lot about your ancestors. It’s always felt like home here. And that’s important.”
The Knox County on High series continues on May 19 with a visit to the steeple of the Brandon Baptist Church.
