If anyone was trying to find information on a typical day in a one room school house, the teacher’s ledger would probably not be the best place to look.
I remember when my grandmother, Anna McDermott, who taught in a one room school house in Hampton, shared some of her ledgers with me. She preserved them, keepsakes of a former life and time, in a desk in her living room along with other treasurers – albums of long ago relatives who only she could name, a copy of “Pansy Billings and Popsy”, a small novel she won in a spelling contest. This I have, on a shelf on a desk in my living room. These are the sorts of things I treasure – holding this old, little book – I can still remember the look of pride on her face when she showed it to me. But I don’t know what happened to the ledgers. I know the albums were removed, for us to guess at who the people might be – looking for resemblances, trying to remember stories told. I suppose the ledgers might have just been sold with the desk itself. They would have been of little worth to anyone. I like to think an historian has them, but I don’t know.
What I do know is that the ledgers had a very specific purpose: they recorded, daily, the names of the students, their attendance, grades, and, curiously, the weather. That was it. What would impress the most was the handwriting. Perfect cursive. My grandmother was proud of her handwriting, which never faltered throughout her life – perfectly formed, perfectly spelled, perfectly slanted letters. Astonishing to think that the fingers never tired, in spite of all of this recording, every day, and every year. Astonishing, considering my own scribbles, and I’m sure the scribbles of most everyone else in our modern world where handwriting, as a skill, as a value, has fallen away, has become a matter of debate as to whether or not it should even be taught.
Education hasn’t entirely changed from when I was a teacher, or even when I was a student. It really hasn’t changed all that much in terms of methodology and curriculum. “Reading and writing and ‘rithmatic,” thankfully no longer to the tune of a hickory stick. The switches and dunce caps once used have been replaced with the threat of “time out”, or the loss of recess, which children enjoyed then as now, though there was no playground or equipment except a sled and a can to kick. Our principal did have a paddle on his wall, though I don’t think it was ever used, it served as a warning, and based on our collective behavior, it generally worked. We also still teach spelling, science, history, geography, though everything evolves as our history expands and our understanding of the world develops.. Less memorization, less recitation, but the basics remain.
As does the method of instruction. We still start a lesson, from kindergarten through 12th grade, with the students’ knowledge of what they already know, using it as a spring board to further explore a topic and to spark their interest. All successful learning is cushioned in our experiences. When I taught it was called an anticipatory set, though I’m sure the word has changed – that’s what always changes – the labels, the acronyms. When I first started teaching, professional development sessions would introduce something new – and the older teachers would share what the same method was once called. We still finish a lesson with closure – a review of what was learned, and usually a follow-up most typically called “homework” that involves the use of what was learned, the practice, the practical application. In between the beginning and the end of the lesson, teachers and students alike ask and answer lots and lots of questions. Students develop further understandings as teachers appeal to all modalities — visual, auditory, kinesthetic, and tactile — using a variety of materials to reach every student in the best way they learn with the best materials schools have to offer.
It is these materials that have changed drastically through the years. When I taught, I used to say – all I really need is a black board and books. Only twenty years later, black boards are banned, and tablets and smart boards have largely replaced books. Research is done mostly on a screen, and any place in the world can be located on a computer instead of using maps and globes. Do we even use dictionaries anymore in classrooms? There are still those old relics – books. There is nothing like the thrill of a library with well-stocked shelves as wide and tall as the eye can see, and no substitute for instilling a love of literature like a lap and a picture book — it’s still the way we first learn to love to read.
Thinking back to my grandmother’s time, her tools were vastly different and far more practical. Yes, there was a blackboard, there were books for students to share, ink wells were on the desks, or on long tables attached to benches. My grandmother would tell me that she spent Sunday afternoons in the one room schoolhouse where she taught, lighting a fire to warm the room for the students’ arrival the next morning, preparing the classroom and her lesson plans. She required a broom, a feather duster, a bucket, a coal bin, kindling, matches, and fire wood. And, of course, her ledger.
Recently, the Historical Society received an old Hampton School ledger from “a gentleman from Rhode Island”, a record of seven years of school, from November 28, 1859 to March 2 1866. Students in our agrarian town started school after the harvest and completed the “year” as soon as it was time to prepare the soil for planting. The ledger is from the Bigelow School, which was on the corner of Bigelow Road and Route 6. It was one of the original seven schoolhouses, in use when all grades were taught in one classroom. It is the only one of our schoolhouses which is no longer here.
According to a Hartford Courant article circa 1965, the school was built in 1829 with bricks believed to be locally sourced in brickyards operated by Andrew Litchfield. The same bricks were used to construct the North Bigelow schoolhouse. Carl Jewett, who farmed on the corner opposite the school, was among the last to graduate along with his sister Vera, Maude Hyde, Helen Spaulding, and Leila Fitts. A decline in population closed four of the schools, consolidating the seven neighborhood schools into three: one for primary grades, one for grades four through six, and one for seventh and eighth grades. The article, written by Pearl Scarpino, was written at the time of the school’s eventual demolition. Time and the elements took their toll, bricks were salvaged, and the firemen executed a controlled burn for the remains. The memories of over a century, Pearl wrote, would become “literally nothing but ashes”.
And so the newspaper article, a few photographs, and this ledger are all that seem to remain of this one room schoolhouse.
What information can we glean from such a ledger? Every page in the ledger represents 45 days of instruction. Week days, rather than dates, are used to denote time. Students were called “pupils” then, and every page lists their names. As in so many facets of the one room schoolhouse, where outhouses, and sometimes even entrances, were segregated, the names of males and females were listed separately. The lists change from year to year as new students enter and older students presumably graduate, though there’s no such distinction noted. The smallest number of pupils was 17, the largest, 42, with an average of 27 pupils in the classroom every year. Their ages ranged from 5 to 16. Their attendance was recorded, as “1 or ½”, and there were very few marked “sick”. Every page lists visitors; everyone who entered the school was named, and every page lists several of these. In a lovely scroll, “Statistics of the Weather” labels one column, and the conditions of the day are recorded: “warm, damp, muddy…good sleighing…weather moderates…more snow…warm and pleasant for winter weather.”
The penmanship is perfect. The letters are perfectly formed, the slant is even. There are no discernible spelling or grammatical errors. Recorded in ink there is no opportunity to erase a mistake and nothing – nothing — is crossed through. The words are entirely legible, though age has caused the ink to fade considerably, and in some spaces the writing is so small, minute, really, as to require a magnifying glass, or in some instances, perhaps a microscope! Calligraphy is applied to the words “Saturday and Sunday” when there was no school, and two holidays – “Thanksgiving” and “New Years” — are magnificently emblazoned on the pages in large, decorative letters. Christmas is not noted in this ledger, would not have been celebrated at this time, in this town. Fancy curlicues and feathers also embellish the pages, and at the end of one year, “Finis” is written in large, elaborate letters. An “Abstract” included at the end of every term lists statistics on commencement, closing, number of pupils, visitors, and the year’s average attendance, as well as the teacher’s name, among these: George Hammond, J. A. Barrow, Elvina Owen, Louisa Hughes, Delia Clapp.
Though there is room for current events, only the weather is noted during these years with the exception of two entries: on December 2, 1859, the words “John Brown hanged” is recorded. A week later, the words: “Others hung”.
An abolitionist charged with treason, murder and slave insurrection on November 2, 1859 after the October 16 rebellion at the Harpers Ferry Armory, Brown was a native to Connecticut, born in Torrington in 1800, but the fact of his birthplace was probably less significant than the abolition movement in Hampton at that time. Initially one would think – how odd that this would be the only news recorded in this remote corner of New England. In the midst of the succession of states, the formation of the Confederacy, the Civil War, a political climate even more divisive than it is now. Yet the item speaks to the prominent abolitionists in Hampton. Perhaps it speaks to the sentiment of our town.
Dayna McDermott
In a future issue of the Gazette, Our Rural Heritage will explore our abolitionists.