Tag Archive | photographs
April 9, 2014  

Lewis & Edgar Reed’s One-Room Schoolhouse

Darneston School

Circa 1898 class photo taken at Lewis and Edgar Reed’s one-room schoolhouse (Darnestown School). There were six grades in the school with one teacher. Minnie McAtee, teacher (right rear).

One of the most amazing photographs in my grandfather’s collection is of the one-room schoolhouse where he and his brother, Edgar, went to school.  The photo was labeled “Darnestown School”.  I cannot say with any certainty where this school was located, but my mother (Lewis Reed’s daughter) thought it was located on Thomas Kelley’s Farm on Route 28 in Darnestown.

In most rural (country) and small town schools, all of the students met in a single room. There, a single teacher taught academic basics to several grade levels of elementary-age boys and girls. The classroom of a one-room schoolhouse probably looked much like your own. The teacher’s desk may have been on a raised platform at the front of the room, however, and there would have been a wood-burning stove since there was no other source of heat. The bathroom would have been outside in an outhouse. It seems a far cry from the modern school world of today, but it was the reality of the rural education system.

Darnestown One room School

Darnestown School. Note the outhouse on left. Photo by Lewis Reed

Source: Germantown MD Wikipedia

 

March 13, 2014  

New Blog Feature: Rockville’s Past Through the Lens of Lewis Reed

Lewis Reed Printing Pictures

Lewis Reed (founder of Reed Brothers Dodge) was a well-known photographer in Montgomery County. Many of his photographs are now part of the Montgomery County (Maryland) Historical Society photo archives. He even developed his own photographs.

Looking back at photography from the past is a fascinating experience for me. Since I started this blog, I have had the opportunity to look through my grandfather’s extensive collection of photographs from historical locations in Maryland, Washington, DC and Virginia. Some of the photos are more than 100 years old! Lewis Reed was a well-known photographer in the county and many of his early photographs are now part of the Montgomery County Historical Society photo archives. The Jane C. Sween Library was recently given a collection of 280 glass plate negatives, showing Montgomery County in the early 20th century.

Every now and then the light bulb goes off and a new idea is born. It occurred to me that with the vast number of photographs in his albums, that this blog would be a great place to highlight some of them. With that in mind, I will be spotlighting photographs from his albums occasionally that may not pertain to Reed Brothers Dodge.

I have no formal history training, just a general interest in local history where I grew up. I will not try to be an historian; I will post a photo and supply a few sentences of context. All of them will in some way will offer a visual history of a part of Rockville’s past. I look forward to sharing them with you.

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