Dover School

This one-room schoolhouse is located behind Apple Tree Antiques off highway 27 in Lee County. We pass here on the way up to the farm.

Dover started when the Bonnell brothers, wealthy apple growers out of New Jersey, bought 880 acres of land in the northwest Franklin Township area in 1843. Although never officially platted or even surveyed for a town site, Dover nevertheless became an important trading center which boasted a schoolhouse, a couple of blacksmith shops, the general store, two or three other small businesses and a post office.

The one-room school faces south with a double-door entry with a transom window above and a window on either side. Three windows are on each side of the school to the east and west; the blackboard was on the north wall and measured 18’ by 2 ½’ by 2”, there are decorative wrought iron stars on each corner and above the door. The school yard was surrounded with a post and wire fence, had an 8’ by 8’ coal shed in the southeast corner, and two outhouses toward the northeast corner.

Apple Tree antique owners, Kevin and Cindy Frueh, are working to restore the the old limestone school.