The Coplin Schoolhouse was built in the early 1800s in Jackson Plantation before the Civil War. Coplin is a plantation in Franklin County, organized for election purposes on July 3, 1866. On March 10, 1893, and again on March 5, 1895, it was reorganized as the successor to Jackson Plantation and Copelin (as it was then spelled) Plantation.
The Schoolhouse is located on State Route 16, approximately 4.5 miles southwest of the junction of State Route 16 and State Route 27 in the Village of Stratton. The Schoolhouse is a modest one-room wooden frame building that appears to be the only school in the Plantation since its organization in 1866. This school, built around 1840, is a local landmark noting the Plantation's history of education.
The Schoolhouse served as the place where the plantation organizational meeting was held in 1866 and was where the inhabitants voted for this early form of government of the plantation.
The Schoolhouse closed in June 1943. The teacher then was Mrs. Ellen Bachelder. Students from 1942-1943 were Grade 1: Christine Scribner and Joanne Abbott, Grade 3: Roberta Bachelder, Grade 4: Harriet Bachelder, Grade 7: Marcel Libby, and Grade 8: Celia Bachelder. Harriet (Bachelder) Powers is the only surviving student to have attended the Coplin Plantation Schoolhouse.
The interior retains original chalkboards, a teacher's desk, 14 student desks, an organ, a Victrola, a period wood stove, other furnishings, pictures, schoolbooks, and other memorabilia.
In 1985 the Coplin Plantation Schoolhouse Historical Society was formed for the express purpose of preserving the building. On September 11, 1997, the Coplin Plantation Schoolhouse was entered in the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service, Department of Interior, Washington DC.
Today, it is a living museum attesting to the educational environment in the early 1900s.
