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Middle Gate History
The Middle Gate District and its one room schoolhouse developed when Newtown adopted a district management system and created a central Board of School Visitors. The original district had been called Bear Hills and it was formed around 1798. Shortly after 1803, when the Bridgeport-Newtown Turnpike was opened to traffic along what is today Route #25, the name was changed to Middle Gate, reflecting the presence of the Middle tollgate located on the nearby Monroe-Newtown border. It is uncertain where the original schoolhouse for this new Middle Gate district was located. On the 1854 School District map and the 1867 Beers Atlas map it can be located on the north slope of Route #25’s Tollgate Hill as it begins its rise toward the Monroe border. It was on the east side of the road, almost directly across from the Botsford Post Office.
In 1966, Gould Realty Company gifted the schoolhouse to the Newtown Historical Society and it was relocated to the front lawn of the new Middle Gate Elementary School, which was in the process of being built on Cold Spring Road.
Taken from The Old Middle Gate One Room School House by Daniel Cruson