Androscoggin County ME Archives History - Books .....Schools 1899 ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/me/mefiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 November 16, 2008, 5:36 am Book Title: History Of Durham, Maine VI. SCHOOLS At the first town meeting held in Royalsborough Feb. 24, 1774 O. Israel Bagley, William Gerrish and Stephen Chase were chosen a committee to "pick out a lot for a Scule lot." If any school existed in Royaisborough before this date it was held in some private house. Tradition says that there was a school in the house of O. Israel Bagley and this is confirmed by an entry in his Account Book, March 8, 1779, "payd Danil Wizwell the chool master 7:10:0; to 3 weaks and three days 10:10:0." In 1780 the town meeting was held at the school-house. This is its first mention. It was built by Benjamin Vining on his own land, lot 71, and both house and land were- bought of Vining by the town in 17S1. March 16, 1780 it was voted "to have School this year and to muve Scull according to pools." This points to the conclusion that schools had been held in private houses in different parts of the town. A little later the same year it was voted "to take that money that was voted for School to Defray town charges." The town was heavily burdened with taxes for the Revolutionary War. Schools were suspended. Sept. 12, 1781 voted '"'to have School this winter." The next year $100 in silver were appropriated for schools, two-thirds to be expended in summer and the rest in winter. After the purchase of Vining's school-house the public school was held there. Soon the southern part of the town began to ask for a school of their own. May 5, 1783, "voted not to Sett of the quakers to have School by themselves but to have the advantage of the town School." The next year, however, it was decided to have school three months during the winter and that the people "on the eastern side of Joseph Noyes River brook" have one-third of the $40 raised for schools. Thus the town was divided into two districts by the stream in the southern part of the town running through the "Great meadow." March 27, 1785, the following vote was passed, "Beginning at Christopher trases and Down to the grate meador Pond Down the mast Road to the goer voted to have School this year the hole of the year or 12 months. Voted to muve the School in foer Parts of the town at mr. Thomas Parsons and hear at this hous (Vining's School House?) and at Mr. Joshua Strouts and in the South west part of the Plantation." There are no records for the next four years. In 1789, at the first town meeting of Durham, forty-five pounds were voted to schools. In 1790 it was voted to divide the town into six school districts, three on each side of the Great Meadow, and to build five more school-houses. This vote was reconsidered at a subsequent meeting, and the town seems to have decided to leave the building of school-houses to the respective districts. April 4, 1791, the town voted that the "School be Divided into Seven Districts, Three on the eastern Side of the Great Meadow and Four on the Western Side of the Meadow," and that the Selectmen divide the school and money as they see fit. The appropriations for schools steadily increased till in 1797 they reached $266.68 and in 1803, $400. With the growth of population modifications and subdivisions of the above mentioned seven districts were necessary. In 1802 Jacob Sawyer, Joseph Sawyer and Ebenezer Bragdon were set off to Joshua Miller's School class. The same year the school district on the County Road was divided by the Selectmen as follows: "Beginning at Freeport Line on the County Road in said Town as follows viz. Saml. Goodwin, Heirs of Capt. John Scott, Josiah Burnham, Nathaniel Osgood, John Saddleman, Nehemiah Hooper, John Eaton, Aaron Osgood, Elisha Stetson, John Lincoln, Benjamin Roberts, Aaron Allen, George Gerrish, Reuben Dyer, John Richards." This was called District No. one. It shows who were the residents on the lower County Road in 1802 and the order of their houses. The school-house cost $175, and was built by Joseph Osgood. $3.84 were paid for "andiorns and fier Shovel." The table cost $1.50; a chair $1.; and a "pale," 33 cents. It is seen that there were no stoves for school-houses. The big fire-place filled with logs and chips together with a liberal use of the ferule, kept the pupils warm. April 13, 1802, William Mitchell, Jr. sold for one dollar to Abel True, School Com. land 24 ft by 22 ft on the "County Road leading from Gloucester to Brunswick" for a school-house. This was west of the Church at Methodist Corner. At a legal town meeting held 1810 the following persons were constituted school district No. 2: John Collins, Abraham Fisher, Nicholas Varney, Cornelius Douglas, Caleb Estes, Nicholas Varney Jr., Samuel Collins, Abijah Collins, Joshua Clough, Bachelder Ring, O. Israel Fifield, Elisha Tuttle, Reuben Tuttle Jr., Joseph Estes, Nathan Hawkes, James Welch, Joseph Ward, Samuel Welch, Nicholas Pinkham, Samuel Field, Sarah Clough, and Katherine Bailey. These lived in the vicinity of the Friends' Meeting House. In 1819 there was a redivision of the town into thirteen school districts. The numbering was changed so that the district along the River road in the northern part of the town was called number one and has remained so ever since. Old school district number one on the lower County Road to Freeport is now number eight. Number two has been since 1819 the middle district of the three across the northern part of the town, while the old number two of the Friends' neighborhood is now number ten. Up to 1809 the inhabitants near S. W. Bend attended School at the Flouse on \ ining's land, the first one built, on the County Road nearly a mile from the river. In 1809 an assessment of $259.14 was made on the Bend District for the building of a new Scliool House. It was built on the road that leads from the Bend to Gerrish's Mill on the hill before crossing Dyer's Brook. The following persons were assessed: Andrew Adams, Symonds Baker, M. D., Simeon Blethen, John Converse, M. D., John Cushing, Micah Dyer, Heirs of David Dyer, Dennis George Dyer, Richard Dyer, John Field, William Gerrish, James Gerrish, Wm. Gerrish, Jr., Benj. Gerrish, Nath'l Gerrish, David McFarland, John McIntosh, Samuel Merrill, Joshua Merrill, John Merrill, John Nichols, Ebenezer Newell, Samuel Nichols, William Nichols, Joseph Proctor, Meshack Purmgton, Peter Parker, Barnabas Strout, Ebenezer Strout, Oliver Stoddard, Daniel Twornbly, Benjamin Vining, Josiah Vining, Bela Vining, John Vining, Benjamin Vining, Jr., Joseph Weeman, Joseph Weeman, Jr., Luke Woodward. These were in 1809 the inhabitants of S. W. Bend and down as far as Gerrish's Mill. The Schools in those days were ungraded. There was a summer and a winter term of about ten weeks each. There were few text-books. Each pupil made a manuscript arithmetic. Those of James Booker and Waitstill Webber I have seen, and they indicate such labor as must have made their owners good mathematicians. Grammar was one of the higher branches and was very little studied. In teaching penmanship the master wrote a "copy" which the pupils endeavored to imitate with a quill. Spelling-matches awakened great interest. They were often held in the evening and the whole community were "spelled down." The grown-up boys were sometimes more muscular than intellectual, and if they did not like the master, he was in danger of being carried out into a snow-drift. The switch and ferule were always in evidence, and the mischievous girls fared no better than the boys. Indeed tradition says that Master Rourk sometimes took the naughty big girls across his knee, after the manner in vogue with small members of the home circle. Nevertheless the boys and girls made progress, and the ungraded country school often produced better scholarship than the graded school of forty weeks or more in the cities. The pupils were required to take their books home and study every evening, and discipline was as strict at home as in the school-house. The names of a few old school teachers appear on the town records. The Rev. Eliphaz Chapman was paid twelve pounds and eight shillings for teaching in 1794. Parson Herrick also taught school. "Leucenday" Curtis taught three months in 1795 for four pounds and one shilling. Elizabeth Barker taught a term in 1800 for $10.50. Nancy Eaton taught in 1801; Mary-Douglas in 1799. Between 1800 and 1804 the following teachers were employed: Beniah Hanson, Isaac Green, John Martin, Isaac Davis, William Bartlett, John Staples, James Gerrish, Jr., and Joseph Gerrish. The school-master, par excellence, of those days was Martin Rourk. Teaching was his profession. He must have been a good teacher, or he would not have been so many times employed in several districts. The regular terms of school were felt to be insufficient to satisfy the thirst for education. These were supplemented from time to time by "Private Schools" or High Schools. The earliest of such schools recorded was kept by Joseph Hill in the autumn of 1836. He was then a student in Bowdoin College, where he graduated in 1838. He taught for a time at Blue Hill and died in 1S42. Hill's school at S. W. Bend was well attended. Some students came from Lisbon and from Freeport. In 1837 the school was moved to West Durham and was held in the galleries of the old Methodist church. Eleven of the twenty-one males who attended that school in 1837 became school-teachers the following winter. So writes Benjamin F. Nason who was one of the eleven. The only survivors of that company of academicians are Dr. David B. Sawyer and Albert H. Gerrish of Berlin, N. H. Some of the teachers of High Schools back in the sixties were Frank Morrill, who afterwards began the practice of law at S. W. Bend, Ira A. Shurtleff, whose brilliant career as a teacher in the West was cut short by early death, Frank E. Sleeper, now a successful physician at Sabattus, and Elbridge Y. Turner, who always had order and got an unusual amount of hard study from his pupils. One of the first teachers I can remember at the little Red School House on the River Road was Edward T. Little, a scholarly gentleman, whose early death was so much lamented. Horace P. Roberts of Lisbon was another good teacher in that school, as Alfred Jordan had been some years before. I well remember George S. Wedgwood of Litchfield as one of the best teachers I had in early days, now a prominent lawyer in Omaha, Neb. In those days few districts had less than twenty-five pupils, and some had three times that number. What sport we had at noon and recess, skating and sliding down hill 1 What mighty preparations for School Exhibitions in the old Universalist Church! I seem now to hear the dialogue of Saladin and Malek Addel as given by the beloved and lamented Lt. Sumner Strout and Fred Eveleth, now the honored Doctor of Divinity and head of a Mission School in distant Burma. Voices long hushed are still saying, "Ye call me chief," and are still reciting how "Old Ironsides at anchor lay." The tableaux were quite theatrical, yet the most pious people seemed to enjoy them. Other schools have not made so deep and lasting impressions, nor do they awaken so many memories of unalloyed happiness. Additional Comments: Extracted from: HISTORY OF DURHAM, MAINE WITH GENEALOGICAL NOTES. BY EVERETT S. STACKPOLE. PUBLISHED BY VOTE OF TOWN. LEWISTON: PRESS OF LEWISTON JOURNAL COMPANY. 1899. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/me/androscoggin/history/1899/historyo/schools19nms.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.genrecords.net/mefiles/ File size: 11.9 Kb