PRESQUE ISLE --TOWN SCHOOLS: Extracts from Maine Histories Written by School Children Sprague's Journal of Maine History Volume 9, April, May, June, 1921 No. 2 Page 90 Contributed by Androscoggin Historical Society http://www.rootsweb.com/~meandrhs Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm No study is more enticing than the achievements of men and the study becomes doubly interesting when it has to do with the beginnings of things with which we are now perfectly familiar. Many of the schools of our state, from the little country school on the hillside to the girls in our state normal schools, are doing research work in local history and are producing some very fine stories of the beginnings of their town. Miss Nellie Jordan, with her class in the Aroostook State Normal School, produced some wonderful books, each student taking for her own work her local town. In some instances, the book compiled is a community affair, each child contributing some fact or some paragraph or some source material from which the paragraph is written. I hope the work may be carried on in future years. Teachers who have not begun it will find explicit directions in our little booklet, "One Hundred Years of Statehood and One Hundred Leading Facts of Maine." I am giving herewith some of the paragraphs culled from the books sent in to the office by schools throughout the state. It will be noted that these paragraphs are finished exercises in English and show a very nice discrimination of leading facts. It is really worth something to the child or even to a high school stu-dent to make some original investigation from the sources of information, collect that data around a central idea and write it up definitely and purposefully. I am pleased to call the atten-tion of the teachers of the state to the following very fine paragraphs or extracts from Maine books. PRESQUE ISLE (By Alda E. Haines) "The first school in the village was held in a room above the saw and grist mill of Dennis Fairbanks who was the founder of the town. This school was taught by the daughter of Mr. Fair-banks who had what was then considered a good education. She must certainly have had patience, enthusiasm and courage or the inconveniences of such a room and the lack of equipment would have made the school a failure. That it was not a failure we are sure, since the boys and girls who attended it became Presque Isle's most honored citizens."