New Exhibit at the Maple Museum in Jefferson

By Bonnie C. Dailey, Town Historian

JEFFERSON — Jefferson has opened a new exhibit in the Maple Museum next to the Village Green. The exhibit is about education and how it evolved in the colonies, New York State, and the Town of Jefferson. It traces how education was limited historically to the wealthy and powerful classes in Europe. Colonists in America valued education for their children, however, and worked to educate their children. Church schools and Indian Charity Schools evolved, Ben Franklin and Noah Webster helped make reading and writing more accessible to Americans, politicians worked to make schools free, and over time education gradually became available and free to the public.

You’ll see where Jefferson’s one-room schoolhouses were placed, within walking distance for their students. You’ll see a model of the Academy and pictures of the Union Free School along with some of its teachers and students, and you’ll see yearbooks, a ‘Blotter’, and memorabilia from Jefferson Central School.

The Maple Museum is open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday July 18-20 and July 25-27, as the Jefferson Historical Society is holding a yard sale there on those days. You can visit the Yard Sale and see the town’s new exhibit at the same time! We hope to see you there.