Genesee Country settlers from New England brought with them a century-and-a-half-old tradition of public education. In 1788, the Adams family from New England built a log house along the trail leading from Canandaigua to the Genesee River. James Sperry, an early settler of Ontario County, recalled that when his family arrived in the same area in 1794, there was already a school near the Adams residence, kept by Laura, one of the Adams daughters. "The next spring," Sperry recounted, "a seven by ten log schoolhouse was built one and a half miles southwest."

Sperry also recalled that, in 1797, "a young man with a pack on his back came into the neighborhood ... and introduced himself as a school teacher from the land of steady habits; proposing that they form a new district, and he would keep their school." When his proposition was accepted, he helped build another log schoolhouse. "In this school," Sperry fondly remembered, "most of us learned for the first time that the earth was round." The promulgator of that heresy, who went on to become Justice of the Peace, a member of the legislature and a Congressman, was Micah Brooks, who gave his name to the Livingston County hamlet of Brooks Grove where once stood the church now on the square at Genesee Country Village.

Not all schools and scholars were lucky enough to have uninhibited and inspiring teachers like young Micah Brooks. Most teachers were only lightly qualified, having received little, if any, professional training. In some instances, teachers were held in low regard; in other cases they might stand next to the parson in the respect of the community. The wages for male teachers were from $8 to $20 a month; for the women, they were from $4 to $10. Teachers of either gender were boarded around the district, some getting along well enough, others nearly starving.

It was in such scholhouses as the one-room building on the slope below the village that a great majority of Americans received all their formal education in the early 19th century. At times, as many as 60 pupils crowded into a single room. A child might enter when he was 3 years old. By 7, he was studying grammar. Then he would learn to write and how to "do sums." When he reached 10, his attendance was apt to be irregular, since he was then old enough to work on the farm. In some districts, there were two terms, winter and summer, the winter term nearly always was taught by a man, the summer term by a woman when the men often were engaged in farm work.

The long benches and rude desks in the Red Schoolhouse (c. 1825, from near Avon, N.Y.) have been reproduced in accordance with evidence found beneath overlays of wallpaper and paint on the wooden wainscot. The high homemade desk on a raised platform affords the teacher a position of authority.