Pleasant Valley School

The story of the Pleasant Valley School in Hopewell Township, Mercer County, New Jersey reveals how the people of the Valley experienced education and community identity in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. As industrialization and urbanization gradually replaced the predominantly agricultural and rural lifestyle of the nation, the people of Pleasant Valley experienced the same threats to their lifestyle that were felt by countless other rural communities in the United States. The stories of individual teachers, students, and community members who lived through these changes show us the human side of history. The community was divided by debate over changes to the education given to children in the rural schoolhouse while becoming united by attending the many community activities held there. The Pleasant Valley community reached its peak identity during the 1920s and early 1930s when education and community activities merged into a series of agricultural fairs held at the schoolhouse and brought notoriety and a sense of pride to the people of the Valley. After decades of debate, the school was closed and sold in the mid-1930s and the people of Pleasant Valley were confronted with the reality that they were losing their community center and not just their local school. This story also highlights the role of one family in the history of the school and how the schoolhouse and lot were used after the school closed in 1936. The George Wooden family arrived in Pleasant Valley in 1913 and over the next 90 years participated actively in the life of the school and community. Members of the family attended the school, taught in the school, transported students to the school, participated in and helped to organize community events at the school, and then purchased the school when it closed and converted it into a poultry farm. Finally, the Wooden family made it possible in 2003 for the schoolhouse to continue to educate people by ensuring that it became a part of Howell Living History Farm in the Pleasant Valley Rural Historic District, operated by the Mercer County Park Commission.

Larry Kidder is a retired high school history teacher who has vivid memories of going to a two room country school on the outskirts of Bloomington, Indiana for first and second grade. After teaching in public schools in Hudson, Ohio and Ewing Township, New Jersey, Larry taught at The Hun School of Princeton for thirty-two years. During those years he taught at all levels from seventh grade through seniors in high school. Larry served in the U.S. Navy for four years and this experience led to his involvement with a national veterans group, Tin Can Sailors, made up of men who served on destroyers. As a volunteer for this group in the mid-1980s he was the lead researcher and writer for the exhibits included in the Admiral Arleigh Burke National Destroyermen’s Museum aboard the USS Joseph P. Kennedy, Jr. (DD850) at Battleship Cove in Fall River, Massachusetts. For almost twenty-five years he has been a volunteer historian, webmaster, interpreter, and historic farmer for the Howell Living History Farm, part of the Mercer County Park system, in Hopewell, New Jersey. This living history farm now uses the former Pleasant Valley schoolhouse to teach its visitors about life in Pleasant Valley in the period 1890-1910. He has written a number of stories about life in Pleasant Valley for the Friends of Howell Living History Farm and has given numerous talks about life in the Valley.