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(Photograph by Curtis B. Johnson, C. B. Johnson Photography)
During the wool-growing boom of the second quarter of the nineteenth century, Pawlet farms prospered, raising over twenty thousand sheep on their rocky hillsides, while five fulling mills, two carding machines, and four woolen factories on the Mettowee River and Flower Brook made use of their fleeces. One expression of the prosperity was that between 1840 and 1860 all of the town's district schools were rebuilt, at least four of them in brick. Thanks to the Pawlet Historical Society, this one-story, one-room, brick schoolhouse is the best preserved in Pawlet, and one of the finest examples remaining in the state. With a very conservative, almost Federal appearance similar to the brick district school (1818) that remains in Wallingford village, the front has a central entrance with a six-over-six window with a splayed stone lintel on each side. A wood-frame outhouse ell and a wood shed are attached at the right rear. Four large adjoining two-over-two windows were added in the rear gable end shortly after 1904, when the Vermont legislature required additional lighting in district schools. The school remained in use until 1934, when a declining population led to its closure, along with several other district schools.