One-Room School

August 18, 1988

By Isabel Morse Maresh

Methods of education have changed, but for those of us whose education was in a one-room schoolhouse, we believe that there is no comparable schooling.

The school day started with packing a cold lunch, consisting of biscuits and whatever was available to put between them. There was no peanut butter and jelly, nor mayonnaise or ketchup.

The walk over the hill to the Brainard School in Northport was through the valley on what is now Route 52 for eight-tenths of a mile. It was bitter cold with the wind coming down over the mountain. In those days, it was open land.

We would stop halfway at the Hills' house to get warm. The house with its just started morning fires was not much warmer than outdoors, but out of the wind.

With David and Eugene on the last trek to school, we then picked up Verlesta and Elisha. We found the schoolroom not much warmer, either. The old woodstove stood near the front of the room. Its stovepipe ran the length of the room, but only warmed the area around it. The windows rattled when the wind blew.

In severe winter, the desks were pulled into a circle around the stove. One winter a family lived on Bird Hill and the children were nearly frozen when they arrived at school. The teacher made us chase them around the stove. I now know why.

Sometimes the teacher was janitor, other times, cousins across the road did the janitorial work which included starting the wood fires. Some winters the teacher boarded in the neighborhood.

The teacher taught eight grades. With a large attendance, the older pupils helped teach the younger ones. If a younger pupil was smart or advanced, they could learn the lessons taught to the upper classes.

The enclosed photo [to be added] shows the entire student body of Brainard School about the last of our attendance there. They are Raymond Morse, Verlesta HIlls, Annie Morse, David and Eugene Porter, Barbara Dean, Isabel and Sylvia Morse.

In the fall of 1946, the one-room school of Northport was abandoned, and we were put on school buses, and bussed over Prescott Hill, through Rocky Road to the converted Consolidated School at Brown's corner.