Sudbury, Massachusetts - Mary's Little Lamb Schoolhouse

I went to Mary's Schoolhouse. It wasn't open but there was plenty to see from the outside and through the windows. There were two plaques next to the schoolhouse -- one of them told how the schoolhouse came to be there and the other one had the complete "Mary Had a Little Lamb" poem on it. [Ken Balcom, 11/29/2002]

[RA: Part of one plaque reads: "This building incorporates the original redstone school house scene of the poem, which stood in the Second School District of Sterling Massachusetts. It was in use from 1798 to 1856 and was removed to this spot for preservation by Mr and Mrs. Henry Ford."]

In the 1920s or so, Henry Ford was considering turning my hometown, Sudbury MA, into a sort of "manufactured village" of Americana. This ended up falling through (and later became reality in Henry Ford's Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan). However there was one interesting incident that came out of Ford's proposed plans for Sudbury:

He took the famed "Mary Had a Little Lamb" Little Red Schoolhouse from Sterling, MA, loaded it onto a truck (I don't know if it was disassembled first or not) and moved it to Sudbury, where it still stands today. It's well-labeled as the Little Red Schoolhouse, and since it didn't originate in Sudbury I think it's safe to say it isn't all a baseless small town rumor. [AGOddball, 07/08/2001]