was created in June 1896.

Land was donated by local farmer/businessman Jacob Reese Godwin, and the building was named after him.

Godwin's is an example of a type of school that developed following the Civil War with a standardized appearance. Previous schools used existing buildings or had random designs, said Russ McCabe, director emeritus of the Delaware Public Archives.

Schools like this offered education through eighth grade and were common across Delmarva at the time.

A different era

In Godwin's first decades, girls and boys were seated apart from each other and had separate entrances to the classroom. Discipline could be strict for infractions such as fighting, gambling, lying or arriving with dirty hands.

One person — a neighbor, student, or the teacher — would arrive an hour before classes to shovel coal, lightthe stove and lanterns, and draw water for washing faces and hands.

The sole teacher would teach different subjects to different grades.

For many rural dwellers, that was all the formal education they would get, although by 1936 most larger towns had high schools for students who lived close enough to walk.

Mitchell's mother, Elsie Conaway Shockley, had to walk three miles each way in all but the worst weather. She wasn't allowed by her father to continue her education after the eighth grade, Mitchell said.

The era of the one-room school ended when Gov. John G. Townsend and Pierre S. DuPont began modernizing the education system and consolidating the schools in the 1920s, Carter said.

"The kids were deprived of a lot of the educational advantages they would get from going to