Returning to the history of the McDonough schools, the editor of The Evening Sun gives this writer a vacation during the week of the Chenango County Fair, written was the statement that this article would document the different text books used during the early time frame of the one-room schools which dotted Chenango County. Would you believe 315 different districts, all with a majority of framed buildings! Trust me, I know, as I am still doing detective work on the remaining townships that have not been documented in previous articles.

Mrs. Jennie Preston in her extensive research was allowed to browse and read textbooks from the Raymond Sprague family, long residents of the township of McDonough. Starting the list:

1876 - Improved system of Geography Designed for Schools, Academies, and Seminaries, by Francis McNally; 1896 - Cyr’s Third Reader; 1903 -The Leading Facts of American History by D. H. Montgomery; 1898 - The Rational Spelling Book by Dr. J. M. Rice; 1884 - The Popular History of the Civil War by Capt. George B. Hebert; 1908 - North American by R. S. Tar and Frank M. McMurry; 1897 - Applied Physiology - Frank Overton; 1899 - South America - Frank Carpenter; 1877 - The Rudiments of Written Arithmetic - Daniel Fish; 1903 - An Advanced Arithmetic - G. A. Wentworth; 1898 - Elements of Grammar and Composition - E. Oran Lyte; and 1908 - High School Algebra - Slaught and Lennes.