In 1895, Connecticut passed a compulsory education law for children ages eight to 14. With the demise of the one-room schoolhouses scattered throughout the town, Norfolk had to come up with a method of transportation to get children to the larger, centrally located Center School. Rural towns across the country faced a similar challenge. In 1892, Wayne Works, an automotive company in Indiana, developed its horse-drawn “School Car” for a school district in Ohio, with a single entrance in the back and long wooden benches along the sides. By 1914, the company was producing a motorized School Car with an extended-wheel-base Model T chassis. It soon became the most popular mode of school transport in the country, launching the school bus era as we know it today. In this undated photograph, the Norfolk School Car is being hauled out of the snow by a horse-drawn sleigh.

—Ann Havemeyer