I can’t believe summer is almost over for our kids. Within the next week, our children will go back to school and although, it is always an adjustment for them, it is an adjustment for us parents, too. Soon they will be bringing homework home, projects will be due and tests will need to be studied for. And with any luck, our kids will do the best they can do and get good grades. I know with the right encouragement, they will succeed.

In Weirton today there are three elementary schools: St. Joseph the Worker, St. Paul’s and Weirton Elementary. But back in the day there were many more local neighborhood schools. Included were St. Joseph and St. Paul’s, but there also was Sacred Heart of Mary School, which is still standing. There was Cove School, closed in 1991; Weirton Grade School, closed in 1963; Weirton Heights Elementary, Broadview Elementary and Liberty School, all closed in 2014, and all demolished. Edgewood School, Marland Heights Elementary, Loretta B. Millsop and Dunbar School on Weir Avenue are all still standing.

The school I am most familiar with is Liberty School, because that is where I went to elementary school. If I could concentrate, I can still see the place as it was 30 years ago when I was a student there. Many fond memories were made within those walls. I can still see the green tiles of the floors and the distinctive 1940s look of everything. I remember specifically that my grandparents went with me once to an open house, maybe the first or second week of school, when I was in third or fourth grade. It was exciting to me to show them around my classroom and especially the library where I loved to spend time.

Looking back at the history of education in our community, it is important to remember that going to school was not always a right or a guarantee. Before West Virginia became a state, there was no free statewide school system in Virginia. Counties in the commonwealth could vote to establish a free school system through an act passed in 1846, but few did. Brooke, (in which Hancock was still a part), Jefferson and Kanawha counties voted in that year to adopt a free school system, and despite heated debate, Brooke voted against the act while the other two counties adopted the resolution.

So where did residents of Hancock County go to school before the adoption of the free school system? Well, there was a system of subscription schools where parents of a bright pupil would pay to send their child to a private institution. If you couldn’t afford it, you were just out of luck. Holliday’s Cove had one subscription school called the Cove Academy, which was established April 6, 1839. Steubenville was the hub for more advanced education in the region, especially with the Steubenville Female Seminary, a premier subscription school established in 1829. Up until the first graduating class left Weir High in 1917, area students who wanted more schooling past the eighth grade, went to Steubenville for high school in those days.

In 1855, Hancock County residents had another chance to vote for a free school system in the county, but the necessary votes were not realized. By 1860, only three counties had a free school system in what would be West Virginia.

In 1863, when West Virginia became a state, our constitution established a free public school system for all counties, and Hancock followed the state mandate. New Cumberland resident John H. Atkinson, an early teacher at the Cove Academy, drafted the first free school bill in West Virginia and sat on the very first senate committee on education in the state. As an aside, in Virginia, free public education wasn’t a requirement until 1870.

As soon as the state passed a free education system, schools were established in Hancock County. Among the earliest were a school at Lick Run, a facility called Jefferson school, Liberty and Mount Horeb School. One of the first Liberty School buildings, if not the first, was located where Steel Valley Lanes is now located. Later on, when Cove Road was improved, Liberty moved across the street and was still standing into the 1970s.

Mount Horeb School was located on North 20th on the Truax Farm. Lewis Truax in his book about growing up in Weirton describes the old building pretty well. The building was located on his father’s farm and was a red brick one room structure with a pot belly stove to heat the building in the colder months. According to Truax, the building was built sometime around 1855-1857, before the Free School act, so possibly it started out life as a Christian subscription school built by the farm’s previous owners, Robert, and his son, John Campbell. In any case, it was operating as a public free school after that act went into effect.

I am sure Mount Horeb School educated many folks in the years before Truax was a student there, but he was one of the last classes to actually be educated in the building. One event he writes about in his book is the fire that took place at the school during the winter of 1915. His brother, Walter, was tasked with the important job of lighting the fire in the stove before the students arrived to heat the building. While the stove was burning, Walter left to return to his farm duties; little did he know that a fire had broken out from the stove pipe. Quickly the fire was put out but not before there was much water damage and destruction to the roof around the chimney. Lewis remarked how happy the students were for an extra two weeks of vacation due to the mishap.

As it turned out, 1915 would be the last year of the old school house. Because of many more people moving to Weirton Heights, a bigger building was needed. So the school board purchased a two-acre lot on Pennsylvania Avenue near the corner of North 20th Street for a new school house. When school started in the fall, the building was not quite complete, so pupils needed to stay at the old school for about six weeks before the new one was ready.

When it opened, the students were tasked with bringing desks, books and all other necessary items of learning from the old place. The new school was quite an improvement over the old, but Lewis lamented that the windows faced the fields that were still being farmed in 1916 and not the increasingly busy Pennsylvania Avenue, where he hoped to see a truck or two pass by. The building boasted a slightly better heating system from the old school, and featured a cloak room, one for the girls and another for the boys. The restrooms — outhouses — had single seats as opposed to the old school which had double seats.

This new school would not last the 60 or so years that the previous school did because by 1925, this one room school was inadequate to handle Weirton Height’s booming population. On South 12th Street a new school was built with the most modern facilities. Weirton Heights School featured steam heat, a locker for every student, flushing toilets in the building and, the best part of all, a classroom for every grade from one through eight. This building faithfully served our community until 2014, when it closed after 89 years of service.

Today, nothing physical remains of Broadview, Cove, Weirton Grade School, Liberty, Weirton Heights, Jefferson, Lick Run or Mount Horeb schools.

The old Mount Horeb existed into the 1960s as a private residence, more than 100 years after it was built, but it was demolished about 1965. What does remain, however, is the lessons that were taught at those schools. It was there that the foundations of our community were built and it was out of those institutions that today’s schools were born from.

So as our youngsters go back to school, I hope they cherish the memories they make in those places where learning is their focus and forming connections that last a lifetime is their duty. My memories at Liberty School have lasted a lifetime, and I hope they remain with me long into the future.

(Zuros is the Hancock County administrator)