Comparing the ages of local schools is a difficult task because the creation of early schools was an informal and often undocumented process. Schools were often one-room buildings established by ministers on church grounds.
The first school in the West Carrollton area was established in 1802 in Alexandersville, which is roughly where Woody’s Market on Dixie Drive stood. Dayton had a school district established by 1831. Miami Township is likely next given its proximity to the Great Miami River and the fact that settlements normally began near bodies of water. Area settlements began at Riverside and moved inland. The oldest settlements would have had the earliest schools. Van Buren Township School District was established June 24, 1841, when the township separated from Dayton.
The first school Mabel attended was located on West Schantz Avenue, later the site of the NCR Sugar Camp in Oakwood. She walked to school from her childhood home on Harmon Avenue, where she lived next door to Katharine and Orville Wright. She later attended second through fourth grades in the cleaned haymow of a barn on Dixon Avenue. Mabel finished elementary at the Harmon Avenue School, the first red brick schoolhouse. She graduated 8th grade in 1916 with a ceremony in John Patterson’s backyard.
Mabel then attended Fairmont High School, which was named for the neighborhood where it stood and which later became Dorothy Lane Elementary School. It was during her senior year of high school when she met her teacher and future husband, Dwight L. Barnes. She graduated Fairmont in 1920 and by August 10, 1921, she was married to Barnes, who was now the principal and also her grandfather’s first cousin, Dwight L. Barnes.
Mabel also found her future career in teaching. It was a two month substitute teaching job that convinced her. “I fell in love with it,” she said. “That’s why I became a teacher. In fact, I married my teacher. He was my teacher, then he was the principal.”
Mabel landed her first full time teaching position on McEwen Road in Centerville in 1920 after her high school graduation from Fairmont. Her second job was in a two room school on Springboro Pike in what is now Moraine. When asked about this job, she said: “I was both janitor and nurse. I had to make the fire in a pot-bellied stove and saw to it that the outhouses were clean,” she said. “People today don’t know what it meant to be a teacher then.”
While teaching, Mabel had an encounter with a bat that quickly became an area legend. She had unbuttoned the collar of her dress while she was preparing for class because she was warm. She was standing in a cupboard pulling out supplies to use in class and the bell rang. She quickly buttoned the collar, and that was when she heard something squeak. She told the children to get the principal because she had a mouse in her dress.
When Principal Holt arrived, he took her into a restroom and told her to undo a few buttons so he could retrieve the mouse. She undid two buttons, and he reached in and pulled out a bat.
Not one to miss an opportunity, Principal Holt took the bat around as a learning opportunity for the science classes. When another teacher asked him where he found the bat, he simply replied, “in Mabel’s bosom.” Mabel simply took two aspirins and continued her class.
Mabel spent the rest of her career teaching in Van Buren Township/Kettering City Schools until she retired in 1963. Dwight served as Superintendent of Schools for 33 years until his retirement in 1959. The Barnes’ celebrated 57 years together before he died in 1977 (56 years married, 57 years together total). Mabel died in 1998 and she and Dwight are buried together in David’s Cemetery in Kettering.
The Barnes Building at 3750 Far Hills Ave served as a high school, junior high, and is now where the Board of Education offices, Kettering Adult School, and other programs are located.
Dayton Unknown 