USA > Massachusetts > Hampden County > Granville > History of Granville, Massachusetts > Part 23
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In 1884 Mr. Felton's record stops, doubtless due to his failing health, for his death occurred in 1885.
It was about this time, and for reasons like the above and similar abuses, that the district system fell into disrepute, not particularly in Granville, but throughout the Commonwealth. As might be ex- pected, the matter came to the attention of the legislature, and the result was that a law was passed providing that all towns in the Commonwealth might at their annual meeting vote upon the ques- tion of abandoning the district system and place the entire control of the schools upon the Town. The law also provided that when once the district system was given up, it could not be re-instated. Once voted out, that was the end of it. When the advantages of the
247
THE SCHOOLS
Town system became more appreciated, the law was changed to require all towns to vote on that question at regular intervals. The next step was to make the intervals between votes shorter, so that at last it became necessary to vote on this matter every year. Gran- ville voted at all the required times, and every time voted that it would not give up the district system. So it happened that Granville was one of a very few Towns using the old system, one of the few places in the Commonwealth where the voters were hard headed enough to prefer to do as their fathers had done. It is interesting to note the chronology of the events. At the annual Town meeting April 30, 1881, the Town voted as usual not to abolish the districts. At the annual meeting March 20, 1882, the Town again voted as it had the year before; 29 in favor of abolishing the districts and 43 in favor of retaining them. Even while the voters of Granville were thus asserting their independence, and incidentally defying the public opinion of the Commonwealth, a bill to abolish the district system was being considered by the General Court. It was passed, and approved by the Governor on May 12, 1882. The law was short and very much to the point. Section 1 says : The school district system in this Commonwealth is hereby abolished. Section 3 pro- vides that the act shall take effect January 1, 1883 .*
So that was that.
So it became necessary to have the property of the several dis- tricts appraised in order that the proper adjustment might be made as between the Town and the districts, and at the annual meeting March 19, 1883, a committee was chosen to make such an appraisal of the various school houses. The committee appears to have been made up of one man from each district. These were the members: Frank Robinson, Vincent E. Barnes, George H. Atkins, Charles Treat, Marshall V. Stow, James P. Cooley, Lorenzo H. Noble, John A. Root, Stephen Roberts and Ralph S. Brown. On April 16, following, the committee made its report at an adjourned meeting, as follows :
District No. 1, Center $12.
2, South Lane, East Parish 280.
3, South East 1834.
* Acts and Resolves of 1882, at page 176.
248
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
4, North East
100.
5, North Lane, East Parish
450.
66 6, Stow 0
66
7, Beech Hill
331.
66 8, Ore Hill
507.
6
9, South West
145.
66
10, South Lane, West Parish
407.
Soon after the appraisal, it was voted that one third of the amounts be paid to the respective districts that year (1883) and also another third less the district debts. There seems to be no record of what became of the last third, but without doubt it was paid the following year. Thus ended nearly a century of argument and the avoidance of responsibility which naturally resulted from the awkward duplicate system of school management which had during all that time been followed. It was a case of too many cooks.
No sooner had the control of the schools passed to the Town than it became necessary to decide whether to maintain schools in the various places where the old district school houses were, or to abandon some and have the children transported where necessary. Naturally the residents in the former districts fought to have the schools in their own neighborhood continued, and so it was decided to do that way. Undoubtedly that was, under all the circumstances, the wisest decision to reach.
It soon came about that a new school house was needed in the old Northeast district. There was nothing to do but build one, and what seems in Granville to be the inevitable wrangle over the ques- tion of where to build it, started anew. On March 22, 1886, it was voted to proceed to build a new school house. But one meeting could never settle such a difficult matter as building a five hundred dollar building, so in July of that year a special Town meeting was held and after considering sundry sites and recommending one (where the building was not built), the whole responsibility was left upon the committee, which went ahead and performed its task. A lot was secured in October of that year, the deed containing the condition usually found in the school lot deeds of that generation, to the effect that when the land ceased to be used for school purposes it should revert to the grantor. This was the last school house built for the sole use of any former district.
249
THE SCHOOLS
A new and very beneficial policy was adopted as a result of a change in the law of the Commonwealth, in the matter of superin- tendence. Theretofore the school committee, or a special committee, acted as superintendent, but now two or more Towns were author- ized to unite in employing some one as a superintendent who was educated and qualified to serve in that capacity. At the annual Town meeting in 1890, it was voted to accept the recently passed act relating to Superintendents of Schools, and also that Granville would join with Southwick, Agawam and Longmeadow, or any one of them, in the employment of a superintendent. But all this came to nothing. New ideas are adopted slowly, and especially is this true among hill-dwelling people. Granville would have no super- intendent until time enough had elapsed for the idea to sink in and then come to the surface as something indigenous. This came to pass two years later when, upon the urgent recommendation of the school committee that the experiment be tried out for at least two years, Mr. U. G. Wheeler was employed, in conjunction with other towns. The idea worked so well that Granville has always from that time had the services and advice of a competent superintendent.
Fully as important as the superintendent was the changing policy of the committee. This was concerning the transporting of school children living in areas where only a very small school could be kept to schools with a larger number of pupils. The tendency to have fewer and larger and, inferentially at least, better schools became manifest first in 1891 when at the annual Town meeting $150. was appropriated for transportation of scholars. This was the last step in leaving the "little red school house" to the mists of antiquity and sentiment. It was merely a question of time when they would all be gone. The policy of abandoning the weak schools and transporting the pupils in that area has been consistently fol- lowed and the small outlying school houses have been sold or other- wise disposed of. The fact that all such school houses stood on land which had been conveyed to the various districts or the Town con- ditioned upon the continued use for school purposes, made the exit of the old school houses much easier and more speedy. To such an extent were the pupils transported in 1929, that at a special Town
250
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
meeting January 23, 1930, it was voted to purchase a bus for that use.
Because the school house built by the Southeast district, as a result of the fire of June 15, 1871, was the largest and most con- venient in town, all the pupils living east of the Great Valley were carried to that school. This made conditions there very crowded and with a slight rise in school population some additional facilities had to be provided. Places which could be used as school rooms were not numerous, but finally the then Committee arranged for the use of the hall on the second floor of the building where the Gibbons' store was located. Such quarters for a school were entirely unsatisfactory, but it was the best that then could be done. The entire Town realized the situation and at a Town meeting on February 16, 1925, a committee was chosen "to inquire into the need of more school accommodations." This inquiry the committee made in due time and reported that the need was imperative, and that a new and larger building ought to be provided forthwith. Whereupon sundry sites were proposed, including an addition to the lot where the school house then stood, and the Town found itself plunged into the same old quagmire of argument and hesita- tion as to which site to select. This sort of backing and filling con- tinued nearly eight years before it came to anything definite. Meeting after meeting was held. Argument after argument. Much temper was lost and no little stubbornness displayed until finally the die was cast and at a Town meeting on January 19, 1933, it was voted to buy the so-called Pendleton lot on the south side of Maple Street at the eastern edge of the village of Granville, opposite the home of Mr. Wilbur E. Pendleton, for the sum of $2500.00. By deed dated February 17, 1933, Mr. Pendleton con- veyed to the Inhabitants of Granville the lot bounded as follows; Bounded north on the highway 335 feet; east on land of Napoleon Marcotte about 666 feet; south on land of Burt J. Roberts 338 feet; and west on his own land about 716 feet. Building operations did not lag. A modern up to date brick building was erected, with oil heating, at a total cost for the entire plant of $31147.69 and it was ready for use early in December, but it was not occupied until Janu- ary 1934. In a competition, open to all the schools in New England,
251
THE SCHOOLS
this new school house, standing almost in the shadow of Sodom Mountain, won second prize for suitability and fitness for the work to be carried on in it. It is called the Village School and the lot on which it stands is large enough for all the pupils to have an abund- ance of space for playgrounds. According to the report of the Super- intendent of Schools which appears in the town report for 1934, there were 80 pupils receiving instruction there, and in all the rest of the Town there were only two schools, one at Ore Hill having 17 pupils and one in South Lane having 15 pupils.
Two other votes relating to the schools, passed in 1933 when the entire country was in the throes of hard times following the World War and when there was much unemployment and wages were being drastically reduced, are of particular interest. One passed at the Town meeting on January 13 was to ask the Selectmen not to employ married persons for teachers. This was in line with what was being done elsewhere. The other at the Town meeting of February 27 was that the salaries of the teachers should not be reduced. This was decidedly not in line with other Towns and Cities where very generally teachers received substantial reductions.
Attention has been repeatedly called to the existence of the Great Valley, and this is quite necessary if one is to understand some of the happenings in this historic Town. It must be constantly borne in mind. One of the least obscure manifestations of the influence of this Valley is a sort of natural rivalry between those residing west of the Valley and those east of it. Before the days of automobiles a trip from the west side of the Town to the east side and return was a journey of no small magnitude and not lightly to be under- taken. The Great Valley was appropriately so called. It is deep and its sides are steep. The road across it is, for horses, an arduous climb. It is a climb down in and then a climb up out. Such a condition operates to prevent easy intercourse between the two parts of the Town, and any peculiarities of opinion on one side of the Great Valley as to those on the other side are naturally accepted by the younger generation as part of their environment. So, when most of the pupils in Town were carried to the school in Granville to be taught and the new Village School was erected, there were those in the west part of the Town who felt that the east side was getting
252
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
more than its share, and that the west side also must have a mod- ern and up-to-date school building. Now comes the exception that proves the rule. The residents on the west side of the Great Valley proposed to get their school building willy nilly. So when it was learned that to bring back times of prosperity to this nation, the Federal government was handing out large sums of money for various enterprises, schools among others, the then Town School Committee made application for aid in building a school house in the west part of the Town. Weeks went by and the Committee worked industriously. Finally word was received by the Committee that the government would pay forty per cent. of the cost of a $25000.00 school building. It was unfortunately necessary to get a vote of the Town for the other sixty per cent. of the cost. The subject was not discussed publicly. The first intimation the people on the east side of the Great Valley had of the proposal was when a warning for a Town meeting appeared in the usual place, called for October 16, 1935, to see what the Town would do about it. There were inquiries as to what it was all about, but no discussion. The time was short and when the meeting came to order, nearly all the voters west of the Valley were present and voted for the school proposition, while only a few from the east side of the Town were there to object. It was voted to proceed to secure a site and build a new school house upon it, the entire cost of which should be $25000.00, which sum was duly appropriated, and it was voted also to accept the forty per cent. of such cost upon the terms offered by the government. It would seem that the 31 pupils on that side of the Valley were to be well taken care of. Plans were secured, but it turned out that the Committee had reckoned without its host. No contractor could be found who would undertake the contract for the price available, and very few cared to be under the govern- ment control which had been laid down as a condition. As a result, it was voted at a subsequent Town meeting to rescind the vote of October 16th, and the whole matter was temporarily given up. Later, however, the subject was generally discussed and at a Town meeting which was widely expected, the Town voted to go ahead on its own responsibility and provide the much needed school house, and appropriated $15000.00 for that purpose.
THE SCHOOLS 253
The picture of Granville's educational system would be entirely inadequate and incomplete if one should overlook that interesting development, the private academies. Of these Granville had three. The first one at West Granville, the second at Granville Center, and the third at Granville Corners. The second one, however, does not have anything to do with the instruction given by Dr. Cooley at his home to some 800 or more boys whom he fitted for college during his long pastorate. He never called his teaching a school, or an academy, although he taught academic branches. He never em- ployed any assistants. All his instruction was given by himself personally and there can be little doubt that his taking so many boys into his home to teach them is the principal reason why the academy at the Center was not built earlier.
The era of private academies swept over New England like a wave. Not every Town had one, but most Towns did, and many of those schools established in the first part of the nineteenth century are still flourishing. When the impulse for learning, above the common school grade taught in the usual country schools, was felt in Granville is not exactly known, but it must have been about 1835. West Granville, although insisting still on calling itself the Middle Parish in Granville, had had not a few highly educated men, and being convinced that a knowledge of the higher education was desirable, some of its progressive residents set about getting it. Whether they were guided by the experience of other Towns or not, we are unfortunately unable now to determine. Records upon the subject are almost nil. It was, however, finally determined to start a subscription and if possible raise the necessary funds that way. This was done and by some good fortune it has come down to us and here it is :
Nathan Parsons and son $50.00
Frederick Hodgkins 5.00
Rev. Henry Eddy
50.00
G. W. Shepard
5.00
William H. Squire
50.00
Lyman Shepard
40.00
Dr. Vincent Holcomb
50.00
Noah Cooley 100.55
Samuel and Luman Parsons
Moss
15.00
30.00
A. L. Curtiss
25.00
Dea. H. Robinson
25.00
Ezra Baldwin
10.00
Seth Coe
39.91
Leander Harger
3.00
Jabez Atkins
10.00
John Kent
5.00
1.
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HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
Jesse Rose
9.50
George W. Terret 5.00
Josiah Atkins
10.00
Nathan Atkins 5.00
Wetmore Baldwin
5.00
J. R. and M. K. Bates
15.00
D. L. Munn
3.67
Levi Parsons 7.00
F. G. Baker
5.00
William A. Baldwin 10.00
Joel D. Harger
5.00
Ethan Coe
5.00
Samuel Wilcox
2.00
Roderick Spelman 6.00
Edmund Monson
5.00
Elizur Robinson
5.00
Without doubt there were others too, who gave labor and ma- terials. The number of contributors indicates the general interest in the enterprise. It is not known whether the academy was built where it now stands, just east of the meeting house, or whether it was erected on some near-by site and ultimately moved to its present location. An exhaustive search for a deed in connection with its location has been entirely barren of results. It is with diffidence that the following suggestion is offered, but it has the support of the only shred of documentary evidence so far uncovered. It is submitted that it was erected on the Green, the common land, where it now stands. Like the building of the meeting house, it was an enterprise of common interest and concern, and what more natural than to build it on common land? At any rate it was erected and was first used in 1837. Whether the Parish Committee supervised its construction is open to any one's guess, but it is beyond doubt that that Committee had control of it after it was erected, because there appears in the records of the Middle Parish a vote passed April 3, 1850, in the following words: "voted to choose a board of Trustees to have the supervision of the Academy School." Whether such a board was chosen or not, does not appear, and if chosen, the names of those so selected do not appear. It may well be that no such board was chosen, but the vote clearly shows that the control of the Academy was then in the hands of the Parish Committee, and the ownership of the building seems to have been similar to that of the meeting house.
The subjects taught were those of the high schools of the present day, but great stress was laid upon Latin, Greek and Philosophy, these being considered the foundation of all education. Tuition was from three dollars to four dollars a term, of which there were three in each academic year. Board was somewhere around a dollar
255
THE SCHOOLS
and fifty cents per week. When board and tuition were figured together, a dollar and seventy-five cents a week covered the bill. The Academy drew its students not only from Granville, but also from surrounding Towns, even from as far as Whately, Massa- chusetts, and Farmington, Connecticut.
A more or less fragmentary list of the teachers at the Academy has been collected and is here offered in order that such information as it contains may not be lost. It is not pretended that the order of succession is as here given.
Francis Warner
1837 to 1840
Noah S. Bartlett
1840 to 1845
Timothy A. Hazen
Edward Manley Foster Susan Holcomb
Mary Wilchell Newell
Albert Starkweather
Simon W. Hatheway
Whiting Russell H. Conwell
about 1863
Eleazer Hayden George H. Atkins 1869
Mr. Atkins was the last one to conduct a school in the Academy building. Public instruction had progressed to the point where the modern high school was available in many places and the small private academies in the remoter locations could not attract pupils enough to make their continuance profitable.
After some years of idleness, the church decided it could use the Academy for its social purposes, and the Parish Committee came to the conclusion that it could be so used to the greater benefit of the people in the Parish, and therefore have permitted such use to the present time.
The origin of the Academy at Granville Corners presents a differ- ent picture. It was never in any sense a Parish enterprise, but on the contrary, was conceived by a few public spirited individuals and was financed by them. Also it was the outgrowth of what had gone before. As early as the first part of the 1840's the house formerly occupied by Archie Jensen was owned by two deacons of the Baptist
256
HISTORY OF GRANVILLE
Church and was used as a parsonage. When the wave of desire for instruction of high school grade made its presence felt at the Cor- ners, it seems that the then resident minister there undertook to meet the demand and started a school in the basement of his house (this house was on a rather steep side hill so the basement had win- dows toward the east), where he took in and instructed such of the youth of the Town as cared to pursue their studies beyond the point taught in the district schools. Such a school was conducted there in 1843, and some local wag deridingly dubbed it the Cellar Kitchen Academy. The late Silas B. Root told the writer that his uncle, John A. Root, was one who attended that school. When it was started, who imparted the instruction and when it ceased to function, are questions to which no answer is vouchsafed, but it establishes the fact that the so-called higher branches of education were taught at the Corners to some extent and thereby paved the way for the Academy which soon was built.
The enterprise of having an Academy necessitated, among other things, securing a building and some land on which to erect it. The whole matter was approached in the most logical way. Those who were most interested formed themselves into a corporation under the laws of the Commonwealth, by the name of the East Granville Central Academy. Who the stockholders were, and the basis of the capitalization, have not come down to us as fully as might be wished, but we have the general outline. The stockholders arranged to buy a piece of land from John Phelps, who then was the local black- smith, and proceeded forthwith to build the Academy building. All this appears to have been done in the summer of 1850, because Mr. Phelps and his wife Betsey, executed and delivered a deed to the Stockholders of the East Granville Central Academy, for the sum of $500.00 on December 14, 1850, of the land "on which the Academy building stands." The deed is recorded in Hampden Registry of Deeds in Volume 164 at page 31. This lot was on the east side of the road from Granville to Granby, and was immedi- ately north of the land owned by the Baptist Church. The building is now standing, but is somewhat altered from its original construc- tion. When built it had the main entrance in the center of the west end of the building. The principal school room occupied the entire
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THE SCHOOLS
first floor. The bell tower was on the top of the west gable. Just how the second floor was used is not certain, but some of the time a family lived there. The studies usually taught in such academies were taught there, and the first term was the winter of 1850-1851. Both boys and girls attended, and the number varied from 14 in 1857 to about 40 in 1863. Tuition was three dollars and seventy- five cents for twelve weeks. The list of the teachers there is quite incomplete but the names of some and the times when they taught there have been recovered from oblivion, and are here set down so that the information may not be lost.
Edmund Watson
1850-1851
James R. Dewey
1851-1853
John G. Ames
1853-1854
Milton B. Whitney
1860-1861
Lyman Rose
1861-1862
Martin T. Gibbons
1856-1858
Iverson Warner
Mary J. Spelman
1858-1859
W. Griffin
1859-1860
Rufus C. Hitchcock
1863-1865
Leslie D. Talmadge
1865-1866
Only those names have been assigned to definite dates which have been verified. However, what is more interesting and more unusual is a list of the pupils attending the Academy during the period of Mr. Hitchcock's instruction. He must have been a natural statistician as well as a teacher, for he kept a record of all the scholars he taught, in a life devoted chiefly to teaching. The follow- ing is a list of the pupils at the East Granville Central Academy from 1863 to 1865, together with their several ages.
age
age
Edward Bacon
19
Mary J. Clark
14
Porter W. Bacon
16
William Clifford
13
George L. Brown
16 Alice Cook
18
Jennie Brown
13 Bradford L. Cook
15
Ulissa Brown
15 Daniel Cooley
13
Herbert R. Buttles
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