Lanesville Outbuildings
Homes in the 19th century typically had several outbuildings. Barns stabled horses and other animals, tenant houses lodged farm hands, wells supplied water, and, of course, the "necessary," or outhouse, was a must. One of the most significant outbuildings on this property is the Bridges Schoolhouse, built in the 1870s. Family history and documents mention other typical outbuildings at Lanesville. These include a blacksmith shop, a dairy for food preserves, and a smokehouse; none of these structures remain today.
Benjamin Bridges II, graduated from Dartmouth College 1848 and returned to his parent's homestead. Following the Civil War, he built the one-room schoolhouse and taught local children reading, writing, and arithmetic. The teacher lived in the two small rooms on the second floor. Children enjoyed attending school as it gave them a break from daily chores like cleaning stalls and working in the gardens and fields. Bridges operated the schoolhouse from 1870 through 1875 when the Loudoun County Public Schools began operations. At the time that Bridges was teaching, McGuffey's Reader was the main teaching tool. "McGuffey's educational course begins, in the Primer, by presenting the letters of the alphabet to be memorized, in sequence. Children are then taught, step by step, to use the building blocks of their language to form and pronounce words. Each lesson begins with a study of words used in the reading exercise - the words presented with markings to show correct pronunciation and syllabification."
Marker is on Old Vestals Gap Road, on the right when traveling west.
Courtesy hmdb.org
