I have seen stoves with water heaters above the main body of the stove. Water would be brought in from the outside well and poured into the top

The lid and top certainly look battered (maybe from the constant banging of water buckets against them) but the "second piece" seems to match the top of the stove precisely and securely. The sides of the "second piece" are scratched (again, maybe from buckets)

Maybe there is a spigot on the back side to let the heated water out.

Just a thought.

My aunt Florence would have been a child in rural South Carolina in the 1900 decade. She told of farm work taking priority over going to school. Even so, the school year was shorter than what we think of today to minimize cutting into planting and harvest times.

I never saw her school, but I can imagine that it might have looked like this.

To me that looks like a makeshift addition; like it's not the same metal as the stove itself. I suppose it is there to extract heat from the smoke.

I wonder how much that old stove weights. I've never seen one with that second piece--to radiate heat better? No idea.

[They probably used coal, not wood. - Dave]