Dale Enterprise School
A talk presented to the Harrisonburg Unitarian-Universalist Church
on the Occasion of the 100th Anniversary of the Schoolhouse.
Dale MacAllister
July 19, 2009
Fifty-seven years ago last month, another centennial celebration was held in this very building. In June 1952 a large celebration was organized to mark 100 years since Walnut Grove School opened down the hill from here, just on the other side of  Cooks Creek. The event was organized to celebrate all the schools that had served children in the Dale Enterprise community. Former teacher Annie L. Heatwole gave an address about the history of education in the community. She was a daughter of Lewis J. Heatwole, who also taught for a number of years in these schools. Miss Heatwole also mentioned that the earliest schools were often held in “unused shops and other private buildings.†She added that the teachers were usually men who were known as “schoolmasters.â€Because teaching was considered a “soft job,†teachers were often those who were not physically fit for hard manual labor.
Let’s take a brief look at the three schools operated closest to this community: Walnut Grove, Pine Grove, and finally this Dale Enterprise building.  The name Dale Enterprise, by the way, was chosen for the post office name of the village in 1872. The previous name had been Millersville, named for the Miller family that ran an early store here. After the Civil War, Mr. J. W. Minnick started a new mercantile “enterprise†at the crossroads of Silver Lake Road and Route 33. Minnick’s store was located near a “dale,†so the chosen name became Dale Enterprise.
Walnut Grove
Walnut Grove was a log schoolhouse located in a grove of walnut trees at Dale Enterprise in the 1850s. It was opened about 1852 as a neighborhood school 18 years before public education became a reality in Virginia.  Since it opened before public education had begun it operated during the time that most local schools were part of Virginia’s “Common School†system. This system was designed to allow poor children to get a basic education paid for by money from the State Literary Fund. Walnut Grove Schoolhouse was located just east of Cooks Creek along the old roadbed of the Harrisonburg & Rawley Springs Turnpike. The school lasted only about seven years. When it closed, the building was sold to Albert Fishback in 1859 or 1860. Fishback, the village blacksmith, used it for his dwelling. A report about the log building, written by Jim Duncan in 1979, told that the old structure was later used as a repair shop and garage and even as the community post office for a short time. The building eventually formed the nucleus of the Raymond Burkholder house here at Dale Enterprise.
Pine Grove School
Pine Grove School, sometimes called Piney Grove, was located here at this location. In 1877, Peter S. and Nancy Reiff Heatwole deeded 80 square poles of land for the Pine Grove School along the “Harrisonburg and Rawley Springs Turnpike†to the Central District School Board. Abraham Swartz, who was also a trustee of the school, built the schoolhouse.
The school was called Pine Grove because of the many yellow pine trees surrounding it. The schoolhouse was constructed from the salvaged lumber of the earlier Fairview School, which was located where Belmont is now. Foundation stones from the old Weaver’s Schoolhouse were also used in the construction of Pine Grove.
Pine Grove School was intended for those children in the community who lived west of Cooks Creek, while those east of the creek were assigned to Weaver’s School. By the 1908–09 school year, the year it closed, Pine Grove was very crowded with 42 pupils in its single room, but amazingly two teachers, Lewis J. Heatwole, mentioned earlier,  and his daughter Elizabeth (Lizzie M. Heatwole), were both teaching in the building. In a report that year, Mr. Heatwole described the building as “an old, weather-beaten school house, with rattling windows, leaking roof and old-fashioned furniture.â€
Patrons of the school were already well aware of the need for a new schoolhouse. During Pine Grove’s February 1908 Patrons’ Day gathering, plans were made to meet later in the month to discuss securing a new schoolhouse. Interested citizens from the Dale Enterprise community, who attended the meeting, decided that a larger, three-room graded school was needed and that it should be built on the same site as Pine Grove. George F. Senger, L. F. Ritchie, and E. W. Burkholder were appointed to help raise money for the new schoolhouse. Patrons at the meeting immediately pledged more than $400 toward the building. [Read more…]