Rockville High School, in Vernon, was founded in 1870. The Old High School building of 1892 was built in Rockville, adjacent to the East School building of 1870. The current High School building, on Loveland Hill Road, was built in 1959. The old High School is now the Vernon Board of Education building.
At 834 Worthington Ridge in Berlin is a building erected around 1831 as the second Berlin, or Worthington, Academy Building. The first floor was used as the school, while the second served first as space for the Presbyterian Church, and later as a courthouse. With declining enrollments, the school closed in 1873 and the building served various purposes until in 1900 it was sold to the Brandegee family. In 1949, it was donated in honor of the family to the Berlin Free Library Association and still serves as a library today.
Constructed in 1893, on Main Street in Wethersfield, the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center was originally a public school and later served as a court and a library. In 1985, the building was renovated with support from Mrs. William Keeney, becoming a cultural center named in honor of her son, Robert Allan Keeney, who was lost at age 21, when the U.S.S. Indianapolis was sunk in the final days of World War II. The Center houses the Wethersfield Historical Society.
The Old Academy, on Main Street in Wethersfield, was built in 1801-1804 in the Federal style by the town’s First School Society. In 1824, the Rev. Joseph Emerson moved his female seminary, which had previously operated in Massachusetts in Byfield and Saugus, to the Old Academy, where it remained until his death in 1833. The building was also used as Wethersfield’s Town Hall and Library and now houses offices and the Research Collections of the Wethersfield Historical Society.
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Tapping Reeve, a lawyer, and his wife, Sally Burr Reeve, settled in Litchfield in 1773. The next year, Reeve began teaching law to his wife’s brother, Aaron Burr, who was living with the couple. Starting with this single student, Reeve developed a curriculum which would be taught to almost 1,000 students over the following decades, as he expanded from his home to a one-room school house he had built next-door, in 1784. Because this was a time before the creation of formal law schools at the major Universities, this Litchfield Law School is regarded as being the oldest law school in the country. The school’s students included such notables as John C. Calhoun and Oliver Wolcott, Jr. In 1798, Reeve was joined by James Gould and the two operated the school together until 1820. Gould would continue to run it until 1833. The law school building was later moved from the site, but was eventually returned and restored in 1976. Today both the house and school are open as a museum run by the Litchfield Historical Society. (more…)
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