In 1763, Hampton established school districts, eventually numbering seven: the Center District or “Village”, Appaquag, Union or “Rawson”, North Bigelow, South Bigelow, Goshen, or “Clark’s Corner”, and Howard’s Valley. We started our exploration of each of these sections with the town’s center, the busiest section; with its storied residences, from colonial beginnings to a summer destination, and its multiple institutions — the meeting house, library, general store, firehouse, town hall — the history of the village required two years to complete. Conversely, the smallest section, Appaquag, should only take two.

Since September is “Back to School” month, we’ll start with information on the Appaquag School. Built in 1774, the Appaquag School’s original location was on the west side of Pomfret Road, set in one of Hampton’s most pastoral scenes, where horses are secure within white fences along gently rolling hills. Despite this seemingly idyllic location, there was no playground at the school, due to its proximity to the road and the fact that it was hemmed in with the fields of a neighboring farm. And though Appaquag was one of the smallest schoolhouses, and one of the first to close, Hampton Remembers — Alison Davis’ remarkable collection of interviews from the residents who were born here around the turn of the 20th century — has several personal accounts from several of its students, who remember their schoolhouse vividly and fondly.

Students at Hampton Elementary School might like to compare this schedule with their own:
From 1902 to 1908 I attended the Appaquag School in the north end of town…. The teacher rang a handbell at five minutes before nine and we had to be in our seats at nine o’clock. First the teacher checked the attendance, and then we all joined in the Lord’s Prayer. We didn’t pledge allegiance to the flag in those days as they do now. We were anywhere from fifteen to twenty children ranging in age from six to sixteen and graded strictly according to ability. A fourteen –year-old and a nine-year-old would often be using the same book.

I remember the long-bodied stove, the four rows of desks, made of wood with metal frames, the settee in front, the two aisles, the teacher’s desk and a small cupboard on the wall that held the school library. On the right of the stove was another settee for recitations. Near the stove it was usually too hot and in the back of the room you froze!

Every day we had assignments in reading, writing and arithmetic, history and geography and twice a week spelling and physiology. We had penmanship fifteen minutes every day. Each scholar had a writing book kept in the teacher’s desk. After we had practiced fifteen minutes with pen and ink on loose paper — an inkwell on each desk filled from the teacher’s bottle, we were allowed to copy one line in our book. We had a fifteen minute recess at 10:30 and another at 2:45. and generally one hour at lunchtime except on the shortest winter days when it was cut down to a half hour and we went home at 3:30 instead of 4. At the end of recess the handbell was rung because we played on the neighbors’ land and all up and down the road. There wasn’t much of a schoolyard, you see, the building being right on the road with the open fields coming up all around it. It was a nice little building.

In the wintertime it got so dark we couldn’t study and the way the teacher took care of that – she’d have a spellin’ match. She’d name two leaders and they’d pick their teams right down through and then one line would try to spell the other one down. A spelling match was always fun. You wanted to be the first one to be picked and the last one to spell down. We also had recitations, poetry and things like that on dark winter days. We used to learn a lot of poetry by heart those days.

Arthur Kimball

In small towns, a child’s relative sometimes taught in the school. This would necessitate a different standard of good behavior for the student. One might also attend school with a sibling, or possibly eight of them. One wonders how that dynamic might impact the “quarreling” mentioned here:

I went to Appaquag School when my sister Annie, later Annie Edmond, was the teacher there when she was only seventeen. I was in the oldest grades and taller than she was but I had to be good! The older children helped the younger children, and we studied while the other class was up in front. We just took our turns. The little ones could have a nap in the afternoon – there was an extra settee and if they wanted they could lie on the settee and sleep.

The desks were mostly double. Only the upper grade, the really elite, had desks to themselves. You had to have a partner at the double desks and you had to keep your books separate, and if you didn’t you quarreled.

Helen Matthews

Student population in a small town such as ours has always been an issue:
We lived up on Kenyon Road and all eight of us went to the Bell School and we always walked. There was one year that there was only two in our family – the rest was older and th’ others was younger that went to school down to this Bell School and there was no school. Because there was only two children! So the town had to hire my father to carry us over to what they called the Appaquag School. Yes, up theya’. For one year. Then the next year a family moved in down here and they had five children, so that brought us back into this district. So that’s the only time that I ever went – eyah, only just down to this school.

Helen Whitehouse

Despite the lack of a playground and equipment, students, then as now, found ways to entertain themselves: Our favorite game at Appaquag School was “Duck on the Rock.” Each player threw a small stone at a rock that was set up on a bigger roc k and we tried to knock it off. We had what we called a “duck tender” – he was “it” and he had to put that duck back on the rock after people had knocked it off and then try to catch somebody before they could go in and get their stone and get back. That was quite a lot of fun. It was kinda risky business—I know I got that finger smashed – I had put the thing on there and I hadn’t got my hand off when Everett Kimball threw a stone and caught me right there.

Harold Stone

Snow was another adventure. Where there was a hill, there was sledding; where there was a pond, skating. Here where there was neither, there were snowmen and forts to build, and a wintery version of tag. Inside recess, a version of the water game, “Marco-Polo”.
We played a game sometimes called “Fox and Geese” but we called it “Bushel”. We went out in the field in the deep snow and made a center and then we made paths and circles around it with connecting paths and put someone in the center and that one had to go out and catch someone. The first one he caught without stepping out of the paths had to go back in the center and be “it”. That was quite a game!

“Jacob and Rachel;” was a popular indoor game for older boys and girls. A boy, blindfolded, would be Jacob and stand in the center of a circle of boys and girls. One girl would disguise her voice and call out “Jacob!” The boy, if unable to identify the girl, would ask “Rachel?” and she would call out again “Jacob!” This would go on back and forth until the boy said her name.

Arthur Kimball

In spite of the legendary stories of walking miles to school through snow and ice, transportation was provided for students who lived a distance from the school:
When they closed Appaquag for lack of scholars and we had to be transported to Bell School we went in what was a two-seater wagon only there were seven of us altogether and the driver, that made eight, so they needed to accommodate more – they had the seats going along the sides front to back instead of sideways – you faced each other in the middle. In cold weather the blanket went over our knees – I’d put the blanket over my knees, tuck it in, and then it’d go up and over the next one. Of course the circulation was good all around in back of our knees. That was an early school bus!

Harold Stone

Four of the seven schools eventually closed due to decreases in student enrollment. Appaquag was one of them. It was later sold to the American Legion for the veterans’ use and was moved from its location on Pomfret Road to the corner of North Bigelow and Windy Hill, where it stands today as a residence. Owners Ellen and John Rodriguez have altered the small building, necessarily and beautifully, and there’s little that resembles the original structure. Unlike some of our one room schoolhouses, where the separate entrances and the black boards and the coat pegs were preserved, Ellen confirms that there was little evidence of it as a school house when they purchased it; all that remained were initials carved into a wall.

But it was built of sturdy stuff, as attested to by its survival, and remains in Hampton’s history texts as the Appaquag Schoolhouse, and in the recollections recorded in Hampton Remembers, where so many years later, the students who once sat at its rows of desks, stoked its woodstove, wrote from an ink well, recited poetry, and played in the fields surrounding it — recalled so many details of their beloved, little one room schoolhouse.

Dayna McDermott