The Little Red School House at the Carlton County Fairgrounds represents a typical one-room, multiple-grade school common in rural areas years ago. Many of your grandparents and great-grandparents may have attended a school such as this one.

Townships often had many of these buildings. Little by little these schools were consolidated into larger school districts, and the old buildings became town halls, churches, residences or were torn down.

One- and two-room schools housed grades 1-8. They say the younger ones got that much extra and the older ones got lots of review. There were several...