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(EDITOR’S NOTE: Today the Sun-Gazette offers the next installment in a weekly history series that tells the stories of those who came before us.)

When the Williamsport Area School District celebrates the 25th anniversary of the current Jackson Primary School this week, it will highlight the long history of the school, which has carried it through several incarnations.

Although the school now is anchored in the Newberry Street neighborhood, in its early years — in the 1800s — the school was situated on Arch Street across from the present-day site of Lycoming Presbyterian Church, accord

ing to accounts from that time recorded in “Williamsport Schools Through the Years,” by the Williamsport Education

Association, and published by the Williamsport Technical Institute, a division of the school district in 1958.

In “A Centennial History of Newberry,” published in 1876, it was noted that “The children found the old stone Presbyterian Church a grand play house for their school days.”

Jackson School as it was first called, was the second school built in Lycoming County, second only to a Quaker school built at Pennsdale. It was named for the seventh president of the United States, Andrew Jackson, and probably the practice of naming schools in the area after presidents began with Jackson, according to the history of the schools.

In 1870, according to the publication, a new school was built on Diamond Street, the first building to be built by the Williamsport School Board in Newberry.

The school was described as a “two-story, four-room brick building, which house the lower grades on the first floor and the upper grades on the second floor. The rooms on the second floor were divided by sliding doors, which could be opened for special occasions such as box socials and square dances. Seating was on long benches, running parallel to the sliding doors. The doors contained a little window through which the teachers could converse.”

The March 1870 Daily Lycoming Gazette and West Branch Bulletin stated, “The scholars, who were assembled at the old school rooms, formed in a procession and accompanied by their teachers, marched to the new building.”

In 1892, according to the publication, a new Jackson Building was erected on Linn Street at the present site of Old Jackson Recreation Center. It stated:

“This was a 10-room brick building. It had double seats and recitation benches … This centrally located school in the hear of Newberry became a community center. Here, during the First World War, machines were moved in and the ladies sewed and knitted for the Red Cross.”

It continued, “During the Second World War, the teachers from the Roosevelt, Lincoln and Jackson schools, spent long evenings rationing gasoline and sugar and registering soldiers. Scrap-iron was collected and placed around the flag pole, once reaching as high as the pole itself. The central hall was piled high with crates of flattened tin cans for the war effort.”

Before Roosevelt Junior High School was built in 1921, Jackson School housed nine grades, but when Roosevelt opened, only the first five grades were at Jackson.

Then, in 1950, according to the publication, the Jackson Building was destroyed by fire. For a year and a half after that, Jackson held half-sessions with Lincoln School, which was in Newberry. The next Jackson School opened in 1952 at its present site.

Forty years later the school was overcrowded and was demolished to make way for the construction of the current building, which opened in 1993. In 2013, a districtwide reconfiguration designated it as a primary school, serving students in kindergarten through third grade.