Lou’s View

By Lou Bernard

My son and his little friends are in school as I write this. I find that’s easiest. Every morning, I get my son out of bed in just under twelve attempts, and we go pick up his friends from next door and walk them to the bus stop. Then I go home and write a column. I don’t have to have absolute silence to write, but it does help to be free of requests for juice, gumballs, a moment to watch something they discovered they can do, etc.

Historically, education in Lock Haven goes back further than Lock Haven itself. Dunnstown is the oldest community in the county, founded about 1794. The earliest settlers in present-day Lock Haven were largely congregated down on the east end of town, not too far from Great Island. So when the first local school was built about 1800, it was in that general area, not far from where the Castanea Fire Hall now stands.

It was a log school, one-room, of course. The teacher taught reading and writing, math, and spelling. (No history class. History hadn’t happened yet.) And the classes only ran for two-month sessions, held twice a year.

For the time, this was adequate. But by 1812, the school was abandoned, as more settlers had shifted the center of population further from the location. The locals mostly did without a school for a while, until a new one was built on the hill near Highland Street along Bellefonte Avenue in 1818.

This was still fifteen years before Lock Haven was actually founded. Lock Haven began in 1833, and then in 1834, Pennsylvania established a state system of free education, holding schools to certain standards. Lock Haven became an official school district with six directors.

Funding for schools came about in 1839, when Clinton County was created. Art the time, one-third of the county taxes were used for schools, which was difficult to figure out, as most of the people in charge had grown up during the six-year span when there was no school. But they also needed a courthouse, and they built one on land that Jerry Church donated, between Church and Bald Eagle Streets.

By the 1860s, the county had pretty much outgrown that courthouse, and they moved into the new courthouse they’d built on Water Street. The old courthouse was then revamped and used as a school itself. It was torn down in 1893, and the new school was built then—Present-day Robb Elementary, named after John A. Robb, a superintendent of schools in the district. (He’s currently buried in Dunnstown, if you’re interested.)

Robb School started out in eight rooms, which was adequate at the time. But for some reason, people just do not quit having children, and it became too small. A bigger addition was added to the building in 1959.
So our local school has a history dating back to the earliest days of the county. But there’s one little-known detail that’s been there all along.

You know that bell that sits outside the entrance to Robb Elementary? I walk past it every time my son forgets his lunch and I have to deliver it. That’s the old courthouse bell, from when the courthouse stood on that location.

They demolished the courthouse itself, but kept the bell on that property. It was created by John Wilbanks of Philadelphia, who had a hand in the Liberty Bell, and to the best of my knowledge, it’s been on that property somewhere since 1840.

My son and his little friends have no clue about any of this, of course. To them, it’s just their school. And judging by the chatter I hear at the bus stop every single morning, they’re having a pretty good time there.