STUDENTS IN THE LAST SECOND GRADE CLASS taught by Peggy Carter Seal at Mortonsville Elementary School are pictured on a square of the quilt depicting their memories of that year. (Photo by Bob Vlach)
By Bob Vlach
Woodford Sun Staff
The memories came flooding back when Erin (Tulenko) Casimir and Raelynn (Burke) Waters were looking at a quilt their class made in the spring of their second grade year at Mortonsville Elementary School. Each quilt square brings back a memory from their 1991-92 school year, which was also the final school year that Mortonsville Elementary was open.
A quilt square depicting their teacher Peggy Carter Seal’s home (a log cabin in Troy) is a reminder of the close bonds built with classmates that year. “I think about that field trip every time we drive by your house,” Raelynn tells Carter Seal. Their class made butter that day at the cabin – and many more memories.
“I don’t think that everybody remembers second grade,” says Raelynn. “But I think (we do because) there were … so many things that we got to experience.”
“Now,” adds Erin, “I look at this quilt and I’m like, ‘Holy cow, how did we do all this?’”
Another quilt square depicting a train is a reminder of the Nickel’s Worth Club, when visitors like railroad enthusiast Winfrey Adkins came to Mortonsville Elementary – usually on Fridays – to visit Carter Seal’s class.
For Adkins, the topic of his visit had to be trains because he owned Nostalgia Station Toy and Train Museum, while also being an avid collector. “So, I took trains from my personal collection,” he remembers, “…and let the kids handle them.”
Years before that visit, Carter Seal remembers her students telling guests, “You’ve got to give us at least a nickel’s worth,” because that’s what every student contributed in past years to treat their visitors to lunch, she says.
Looking at Matthew Lay’s quilt square and his drawing of a train, Carter Seal says, “… He did a good job. They all did a good job.”
Her students practiced drawing their memories on sheets of paper before using permanent markers to draw them on the quilt squares, which were sewn together by moms.
The quilt was made to celebrate Kentucky’s bicentennial, so squares also feature the state bird, a cardinal, and the state flower, a goldenrod.
A time capsule was buried somewhere on the grounds of Mortonsville Elementary that year too, but like their class quilt, Erin and Raelynn, both 2002 graduates of Woodford County High School, say they didn’t know its whereabouts.
The pair came to the Woodford County Historical Society on a September afternoon after receiving a call from Carter Seal telling them she was donating the class quilt to the Historical Society.
“I was excited to see this (quilt) again,” says Erin, “because I did remember it.” Looking at the quilt squares reminds her and Raelynn of the many former classmates who somehow have stayed connected in one way or another.
With the help of Erin and Raelynn getting the word out to their second grade classmates on social media, Carter Seal is hopeful many of them will stop by the Historical Society so they can see their memories from Mortonsville’s last school year.
The Mortonsville school building is now in disrepair because, unlike other schools that have been closed, it has not been repurposed as a community center or apartment building.
Knowing their former school on Delaney Ferry Road likely needs to be demolished and will not be repurposed is “really sad,” says Erin.
“I loved it out there,” remembers Carter Seal, who taught in the same classroom at Mortonsville Elementary for 25-and-a-half years. She loved teaching at Southside Elementary too, but says, “there just something (special about being able to teach) the whole family at Mortonsville.”
Repurposing of other schools
Former school buildings across Woodford County have been repurposed for other uses.
Versailles Elementary School was repurposed as Versailles School Apartments in 2016. Two decades earlier, Midway School was repurposed as Midway School Apartments. Both adaptive reuse projects were completed by AU Associates.
Nonesuch Elementary School was repurposed as Irish Acres and The Glitz restaurant, and a former school gymnasium is now Millville Community Center.
Pisgah Elementary School was repurposed as Woodford County Public Schools Central Office/Board of Education building, but its future is now in limbo after Central Office was moved to the former Woodford County High School on Frankfort Street in 2025.
The former Versailles High School/Woodford County Middle School building, constructed in 1928, is no longer on the corner of Lexington and Maple streets after being torn down in December 2017.