Radio Script #1095

Little Talks on Common Things
October 10, 1976

Among the manuscripts at the Redington Museum is the brief record of the meetings of a Kennebec school district beginning 145 years ago in 1831. The district was located near Fort Halifax and was called Winslow District No.1.

At that time, the method of operating schools was to divide the to on into districts of convenient size so that no child would have to walk more than a mile to attend school. Each district had its own one-room schoolhouse and a supervisor or agent elected by the district’s inhabitants.

The districts were not separate taxing bodies. Each district decided on how much money it would raise for its school, then collect that money on some pro-rata basis. The method of financing was not that independent. The entire town raised a certain amount of money for all school districts, then the money was divided among the several districts according to the student population. By student population was meant not the number actually attending school, but the number of children in the district between the ages of 4 and 21. While boys and girls seldom started school before the age of six, one was entitled to attend after he had reached the fourth birthday. But why extend the privilege to the age of 21? That was to accommodate boys. After a boy became 12 or 13 years old his work was needed on farms, and Maine was then decidedly an agricultural state. Even if he were not a farm boy, a 14 year old often worked on some other family’s land.

Schools then had three terms a year. During the spring and fall terms few older boys could attend. They were free to go only in the winter. So often the best they could get was one term a year as a teenager. That is why many of them continued as long as the law allowed them to be taught at public expense – that is, to the age of 21. That prevailing custom among the older boys also explains a teaching practice in the early nineteenth century. Because of the presence of those older boys, the supervisors thought it necessary to replace the usual women teachers with men. Women were considered satisfactory for the spring and fall terms, with only the smaller children to contend with, but the school must have a good, stout man to maintain discipline in the winter.

In all society, one custom often explains another. Many people today are amazed when they learn that, in all the early New England colleges, the long annual vacation was in the winter, not in the summer. At Colby in the 1830s, for instance, commencement came in late August, and there was only two weeks interval before the new college year opened in September.

The fall term at college closed about the 20th of December and the next term (always called spring term – there was no winter term) did not begin until mid-February. It extended until early May, when after one week’s vacation, the last term of the year, called the summer term got underway. The reason for that calendar that seems so strange to us was that the college men – there were no women then in college – were in demand to to teach in the hundreds of one-room common schools.

Well, so much for the background of district schools in 1831, when this old Winslow record was written.

The district meetings called for the formality of the town meeting. A justice of the peace was required to issue a warrant to a town constable. One such was issued on December 16, 1831 to Charles Hayden of Winslow, in these words: “In the name of the State of Maine you are required forthwith to notify and warn the male inhabitants of School District No. 1 in the town of Winslow of 21 years of age and upward, who are qualified to vote in common town affairs, to meet at the dwelling house of Clark Drummond on Friday, December 16, 1831. at six o’clock in the afternoon for the following purpose:

1. To choose a moderator.
2. To see if the District will repair the schoolhouse and in what manner.
3. To raise such sum of money as shall be deemed necessary to complete the repairs and furnish a suitable stove.
4. To choose a committee to supervise these repairs and procure the stove.
5. To determine when and how the money necessary for repairs and stove shall be collected.”

Now that warrant reveals another fact about the old district schools. While for teaching and current operation each district was dependent on its share of the town tax for schools, each district was solely responsible for the building and upkeep of its schoolhouse.

When that 1831 meeting was actually held, the assembled male inhabitants of District 1, after choosing Charles Hayden as moderator and Clark Drummond as clerk, got down to business and voted $25 for general repairs and $32 for a stove. To get that needed $57, they voted to ask the selectmen of Winslow to levy and collect from the inhabitants of the district a special tax.

Thus we learn that, for its building, a district had to be responsible, but it could ask the town officially to be its tax collector.

Four years later District One’s schoolhouse had become so dilapidated that a new one was imperative. Without setting any amount, the District in 1835 voted to build a new schoolhouse and out buildings. Evidently, they expected another meeting before starting to build, because they authorized a committee to secure offers of land for the schoolhouse.

That word in the record “outbuildings” in the plural is interesting. It means they considered that the proprieties of the time demanded two out-door privies, one for each sex. In the first school I attended near the end of the same century, there was a single out-building divided into two halves by a stout partition – and with two separate entrances.

The district held not only one more, but numerous meetings before they got that schoolhouse. On January 5, 1836, they voted to accept the committee’s plan to place the schoolhouse on the north line of Clark Drummond’s land. For $5 Drummond would give the district a lease of the land as long as the schoolhouse stood on it.

They met again on January 26 and voted to rescind the previous vote. Apparently negotiations had meanwhile been conducted with Lemuel Starkey, for on February 10 it was voted to relieve Starkey from his bid to build the schoolhouse if he would pay the district $6.

On March 9, they again voted to place the building on the Drummond land by a vote of 5 to 4. It seems a favorable vote by a majority of all the district’s voters was required for action, so the moderator declared that those five prevailing votes being less than a majority, the motion was defeated. Merton Taylor offered to furnish a site near the old schoolhouse for $12, but that too failed to pass. In desperation, the district decided to apply to the selectmen to set up a committee to locate the new schoolhouse. That committee did its work and reported as follows: “March 15, 1836. The undersigned to whom was assigned the subject of locating a new schoolhouse for District 1, recommend the lot on Clark Drummond’s north line on the west side of the road. We have come to that decision because of the difficulty of obtaining a lot near the center of the district and because the recommended lot can be obtained for $10, and $5 of that sum will be paid by one individual in the district, and the ground in front of said lot will be leveled by another.” That statement was signed by Robert Ayer and James Hamlin, selectmen of Winslow.

The District accepted the verdict and the next day voted to raise $325 to build the school by special assessment in the district to be collected by the town. The building committee did an economical job. Instead of spending the whole $325, they reported as follows on November 3, 1836: “We the undersigned, committee to build a schoolhouse for District 1 this past summer, had the same built by Robert Drummond for the sum of $294.75. We have examined the building and report that it has been completed according to agreement, and we order the selectmen to draw to Robert Drummond an order for that amount from the town treasury, reimbursing that treasury by a tax on the district. Signed: Alvin Haskell, Bryan Purber, Clark Drummond.”

The records show that in 1837 Charles Taylor brought a law suit against the district. The reason is not given, but it may well have been because of some legal claim he thought he had over the plight of the Taylor family when Merton’s land offer was rejected. Anyhow on August 13, 1837, the district voted to raise $25 to defray expenses arising because of that suit. Nearly three months elapsed, and on December 29 they rescinded that vote, and appropriated instead $12.83 for the legal expenses, apparently the amount needed after settlement of the case had been reached.

It often happens that old record books contain entries for more than one organization, and that is true of this one. In the back of the book are minutes of a religious organization, the Union Society of Vassalboro and Winslow. The first entry is dated January 5, 1829, and reads: “To Clark Drummond, an inhabitant of the town of Winslow and one of the persons who have applied to me for a warrant to call a meeting of a number of persons of Winslow and Vassalboro and other places who are desirous of forming into a religious parish or society for the purpose of erecting a meeting house for public worship and other uses, and to be entitled to all the privileges of an incorporated society according to the laws of the State of Maine. You are hereby required to notify all persons having this concern, and particularly the named applicants, to meet at the schoolhouse near Clark Drummond’s on Monday, January 5, 1829 at 6 o’clock P.M. to act on the above purpose.”

The meeting was duly held. The vote to build was unanimous, but there was dispute on some features of the building. It was finally decided to have a gallery behind the pulpit.

Like all such buildings in their day, this one was financed by sale of pews, but two denominations rather than one were involved. So it was decided to divide the Sabbath use between the Free Baptists and the Methodists according to the value of the pews owned by members of each sect. There was a proviso, however, that if either society wanted use for a quarterly meeting on a Sunday assigned to the other society, the latter shall give way and exchange for some other Sunday.

In hope of avoiding future trouble the document of agreement had this condition attached. “Both denominations shall at all times use every opportunity to accommodate, promote and secure the peace of harmony, and happiness of each other.”

Year: 1976