USA > Massachusetts > Essex County > Nahant > Some annals of Nahant, Massachusetts > Part 21
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There were people at that time who did not believe that the Nahant-owned company meant business. James A. Carahar circularized the town as a candidate for selectmen in 1904,
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and stated that "it is their purpose to prevent the railroad being built." But of the sincerity of this company there can be no question. They had the capital subscribed, had ob- tained preliminary estimates, attorneys were at work on the legal features, and interviews were frequent with street rail- road people. They only withdrew from a conviction that the investment was not wise and that any advantage of a Nahant- owned company hardly compensated for the risk. As for the risk, let the stockholders of the company that did build it bear witness today, although many argue that other methods would have brought better results. Other factors have given trouble and lack of patronage, and those not willing to cloud their wisdom of 1904 will attribute all troubles to these. But any suitable sinking fund for depreciation and renewals was never set up, and could not be, even before the automobile and the prohibition era were playing a large part. The gross income was never large enough to permit this important financing, even with the heavily increased fares. It is evi- dence of the sincerity of the Nahant-owned company that they promptly gave up their franchise, when stalling tactics could have postponed matters for a year or two, and the selectmen as promptly and in perfectly good faith awarded it to the other company.
The selectmen believed that the Nahant-owned company was as well able to serve the town as the other, and would be more likely to be friendly to the town's interests if a pinch came, and so, disregarding the promises of the Lynn com- pany, they awarded the franchise to the Nahanters. But the latter were faced with their surprises at the expenditure re- quired, and after considering the question thoroughly they begged leave to withdraw. A committee composed of Thomas Motley, Sr., William A. Hayes and Fred A. Wilson wrote a final report to the subscribers for the stock and expressed the opinion that no street railroad to Nahant could pay well enough to justify the expenditure. All of these considera- tions, by the two companies, by hearings, and in all talk about town, were upon the assumption of the nominal fare
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of five cents. Promptly after the award of the franchise, the Lynn-owned company perfected their arrangements and built the road. The hearing for this was on February 28, 1905, and the franchise was awarded on the same date. The com- pany agreed to certain specified trips and petitioned for track locations. This petition was signed by the directors, who were Edward E. Strout, Clifton Colburn, George W. Belonga, James A. Carahar, E. H. Brann, Charles Cabot Johnson and Walter H. Southwick. It will be noted that most of these men are Nahant men. Most of the money was from out of town men at this time, also, and the capitalization had been heavily increased, so that the cat calls of the crowded first hearing on the subject were proven to have shown only igno- rance, which is what such procedure commonly signifies. Then came a rush to build the road in time for use in the coming season. Edward E. Strout, a contractor of experi- ence, was an active man in this construction. He had come to Nahant to live, building nearly on the site of the "Old Castle" property. He died in 1915 at the age of fifty-nine. By valiant efforts the road was regularly opened for traffic on July 20, 1905, with an official car and guests in the after- noon and passenger service in the evening. A few years later it was double tracked from Mitchell's Corner to Bass Point, with the loop in the Relay House yard, and thus it came to its position of 1928.
There was so much discussion of the electric road at the time it was approved by the town that it is interesting to see how closely the road followed the scheme laid out for it twenty years earlier. In the town report for 1886 Wilson discusses the question at some length, and the following are quotations:
The anxiety and solicitude of numerous people or companies, outside of our town, to furnish us with railroad communication with Lynn, is really meritorious when regarded from the standpoint of their persistency. There are now some four or five companies anxious to enter the town with their railroad projects. First we have a steam railroad, either broad or narrow gauge, - anything
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to accomplish their object. A petition for an elevated electric road was disposed of by the legislative committee. A petition from the Lynn and Boston Horse Railroad Company is in the hands of the selectmen. A street railway company, with electricity for the motor, petitioned last fall for a location in our streets.
This question of a railroad over Long Beach is becoming an im- portant one, and some solution of it may have to be met in the near future. To our minds the least objectionable of all the schemes presented would be a surface electric road located on the Lynn Harbor side of the beach as near as possible to the water line. Have it cross Castle Road, near the bridge, and thence extend over the marsh, across Flash Road, thence through the valley. Such a location would save our roads from obstruction. This would, we think, practically save our beautiful drive, one of the principal attractions of our town. The solving of this question should be dependent upon what will add to the prosperity of the town. With such an object in view we doubt not but what, when the people pass upon the question, it will be decided for the gen- eral good of all.
Here, twenty years before the road is built, is laid down the location which was followed, and statements which show full appreciation of the general trend which would finally bring about the adoption of the improved transportation.
Then came the automobile, in ever-increasing quantity. Among other things this meant an advance in the methods of producing forgings. Street railroad companies everywhere stood and watched this, still using for street cars the old- fashioned, heavy castings, yielding a car weighing many tons, to be driven back and forth at great expense for haulage. Finally came the automobile bus, and this forced the street car to take notice. It was a competitor. It never should have been, apparently, for it does not cost nearly as much to drive the same weight on steel wheels over steel rails as on rubber wheels over gravel or concrete roads. But all unnoticed the light-weight vehicle had crept into the field, and everywhere there was consternation among the street car companies. Several years ago Nahant had a special com- mittee of investigation, and reported against the bus and in favor of the street car. The report was accepted. Perhaps
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it now remains for the street car to become practically a bus on tracks, and thus achieve the economies which the bus has shown. Let it be gasoline driven, if need be. Indeed, street car lines are trying it. Whatever the outcome, it is said the street cars, perhaps, may in some places recover ground fool- ishly lost by too great a dependence upon the monopoly afforded by an exclusive franchise. All of this was indicated, eight or ten years ago, in the committee report which is above mentioned. This would seem to be true at Nahant, provided Washington Street in Lynn may be kept clear enough to afford reasonable passage. Over the beach the tracks are not in the travelled road, and are therefore free from the nuisance of a badly clogged passageway in midsummer.
Of course, the railroad at once found it could not operate at the five-cent fare which had been so frequently mentioned, if not promised, and at once came protests. For several years, perhaps even up to now, people grumble about the fares. The important factor, however, was the service. A reasonable service was important, and is so today, while the fare must be enough to allow a reasonable profit and maintenance in good condition. The automobile decreases patronage, and a fare may be so high that income will diminish and the purpose be defeated. It was a curious incident of the cry for lower fares that some of those who came to Nahant because it was a pleasant country town joined in it. They removed from suburban districts because they wanted less crowded sur- roundings, and then wanted the usual fare which had made those districts suburban and crowded, and might be expected to do the same for Nahant. Avoiding the suburbs they shouted that Nahant also be one, although such was not their intent. They only acted mistakenly. There are those who cry selfish to whoever would like to keep Nahant a country town. As well cry selfish to those who would make it a thickly settled suburb. A person is not selfish who wishes to live in the country and who would like to keep the town of his adoption in that class. By restrictions of various sorts Nahant has yet the chance to be what she likes as a resi-
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dential place, but steps forward must be taken or the choice will pass and the trend of events will control.
Transportation by steamboats is discussed in another chapter. This service afforded the easiest means of getting goods down from Boston. With the establishment of a definite express from Nahant to Boston the boats were used almost entirely during the summer season. Boat service was for a hundred days, or beginning late in May and ending early in September. There have been many express companies doing service in Nahant, but the only one needing mention is the old Johnson's Express, founded by Alfred D. Johnson and his cousin Jesse R. Johnson. Johnson's Nahant Ex- press was almost a Nahant institution, and almost "no man knoweth when it was not." It appears to have been started soon after Alfred Johnson's return from California -he was a forty-niner. This makes it an early express, as it is only twelve or fifteen years before that Harnden started what is said to be the first express doing that business and no other. The old stage coaches carried goods and passengers and the coach drivers did errands. On the death of its founder in 1890, Johnson's Nahant Express was taken over by Francis B. Crocker, who came to Nahant some years before to work for Johnson. He owned and managed it until 1923, when he stopped the service. Crocker was for years chief engineer of the Nahant Fire Department, and a well-known man of Nahant. He died in 1924, at the age of seventy-three, leaving a family, some of whom are residents of the town. Jesse R. Johnson did not stay in this business, so that few associate his name with it. On October 25, 1890, there was a special town meeting to fill the office of town clerk, made vacant by the death of the long-time town clerk, Alfred D. Johnson, who died on October 14. Resolutions were offered by H. C. Lodge, commending the faithful service of the former town clerk, one paragraph of which reads as follows:
During all but three years of the life of the town, Mr. Johnson has served as town clerk, being chosen thereto at thirty-four
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annual elections. The long term of office indicates not only the worth of his service, but the appreciation of his fellow citizens for his character, and for the manner in which he performed his duty. He served the town with zeal and fidelity, and his accuracy and punctuality, as well as his unfailing attendance at every town meeting, are well known to all his fellow citizens, and were rightly valued by them.
CHAPTER XVII
SCHOOLS
THE first school in Nahant was in a room in the old Hood homestead, elsewhere mentioned. An old resident of Nahant, quoted by E. J. Johnson, writes that it was kept for twelve weeks in winter, and that his teacher was Nancy Carter. This room was always called the "School Room." When it began its service is not known. E. B. Johnson places it well back before 1780, or perhaps to the time when only the Hoods and Breeds had children to attend school. This was outgrown and superseded by the little red schoolhouse nearly across Nahant Road from the present Town Hall, on what is now the Sigourney estate. This house was earlier a shoe- maker's shop. The seats were benches around the sides, with the teacher's table at one end. Here were accommodations for about thirty scholars. Clarissa Herrick was the first teacher in this building, and she married Richard Hood, son of Richard Hood who built the Hood Hotel, later the Rice House on Nahant Road, across from Wharf Street. The next teacher was Betsey Graves, who taught from 1812 to 1816, and who married Joseph Johnson in 1819. From a journal which she kept we have a list of the pupils in 1812, as follows:
Joseph Johnson. Jonathan Johnson.
Clarissa A. Johnson.
George A. Hood.
Francis Johnson.
Harriet Organs.
David B. Mudge.
Eliza Johnson. Pamela Johnson. Mary Johnson.
Albert Newel.
Thomas Rich.
Welcome W. Johnson.
Priscilla Hitchings.
George L. Johnson.
These Johnsons are all children of Caleb and Joseph Johnson, who were brothers and sons of the original Nahant Johnson.
Thomas Handasyd Perkins
Amos A. Lawrence
James H. Beal 1823-1904
Frank Merriam 1850-1923
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SCHOOLS
Besides these pupils, entered as permanent scholars, there were transients, - Thomas and Amos Bulfinch, George and Henry Stone, Malinda Howard, Augustus Breed, Thomas and Otis Stone, Mary Stone and Nabby Breed. Here appears a considerable number of Stones, but the family seems not to have remained in Nahant.
Then in 1818-19 the "Old Stone Schoolhouse" was built, close to Pleasant Street, nearly across the road from the house now owned and occupied by William F. Waters, long- time town clerk. This was made from pasture stone and was about twenty-five feet square with a hip roof. There was a window on each side and two in the front, on each side of the entrance door. A sketch of this schoolhouse, hanging in the Public Library, was made in 1895 from a verbal descrip- tion given by Edmund B. Johnson. The latter said that this building was erected chiefly through the interest of William Wood, who founded the library in this same year. The facts are not clear, except that from Wood's known interest in public libraries, it would seem likely that he was more inter- ested in this building as a library than as a school. For many years it served the little village as church and hall, library and school, the public meeting place of the town. There was a bell in the cupola with the bell rope dropping down into the center of the schoolroom. Children of summer residents attended, at least while the Rev. Samuel J. May was a teacher. Here, so says May, as recorded in the "Life of Samuel Joseph May," published in 1873, the great historian Motley learned to read. It is said that Charles W. Eliot, famous Harvard University president, was also a student. He was a son of Samuel A. Eliot, who owned the Mifflin house. There was a sort of prudential committee that used to control the school, collecting the small sum allowed by Lynn for its maintenance, and soliciting more from those whose children attended it. For long years Joseph Johnson was a leader on this committee.
In 1851 this building was torn down and on the same site was erected the two-room wooden building which so many
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Nahanters can remember and in which they attended school. It was dedicated on September 16, 1851. It is said to have been notable for a new system of ventilation, and was con- sidered a thoroughly modern school building. For a time the upper floor was the schoolroom and the lower floor was an assembly room, but in 1853 a second school was established, so there were primary and grammar schools. Apparently the lower room was used also as an assembly room until the Town Hall was built in 1868. This school building had a cupola with the old bell hung in it from the "Old Stone Schoolhouse." It had double entrances with separate stair- ways and coat rooms for boys and girls. It was a comfort- able commodious structure, up to the limit of its accommo- dations, and served the town well until the Valley Road schoolhouse was built. The old stone schoolhouse, and at first this newer one, only occupied a small plot of land, leav- ing not over ten feet all around the later and larger building. In 1854 the town bought the lot of about a half acre on Pleasant Street adjoining this smaller lot, and which is the school yard familiar in recent years. In 1853, the first year of Nahant as a separate township, a cellar and furnace were added to the school building. The town apparently began in 1858 to buy school books for the use of pupils.
In 1875 the small hall on the first floor of the Town Hall was set aside for school purposes, and a high school was estab- lished of which Charles J. Hayward was the first principal. This room remained about as originally equipped, until a little later the small anteroom on the second floor was used as a recitation room. Still later, in 1887, an addition was put on the rear of the Town Hall, affording a larger recitation room and other spaces for Town Hall purposes. And in a few years followed the one-story addition extending toward the Public Library and used as a police court room. This brings the old Town Hall to the condition it holds at present.
In 1880 a fourth schoolroom was established in hired quarters on Summer Street. This was the primary school, and a re- grading of the three lower schools brought the system into
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SCHOOLS
correlation with the high school, which was flourishing. In 1883 a new grammar schoolhouse was erected, up on Nahant Road near High Street, on land owned by the town and now a part of the cemetery grounds. This allowed the primary school to move from Summer Street into the Pleasant Street school building, and the arrangements continued until the completion of the Valley Road schoolhouse, in 1905. This building absorbed all the grades and the high school. The grammar school building was given over to the police de- partment. The older building on Pleasant Street was torn down. The room in the old Town Hall building was left idle, and finally used as a basket ball room. Then in 1916 came the school building on Nahant Road, named the J. T. Wilson School, in honor of the man who for so many years headed the school department.
The long list of teachers needs no special mention except for a few of them. A list of men teachers is given for reference purposes, up to 1900, as frequently some one asks about them:
1854-55
. E. G. Partridge.
1879 1880
G. H. Eldredge.
1861
.
J. Wesley Boyden.
1881
A. H. Kenerson. ·
1862-63
J. Wesley Boyden.
1882
A. H. Kenerson.
1864
.
G. A. Southworth. Wm. Reed, Jr.
1883
W. P. Hood.
1865
Wm. Reed, Jr. .
1884-86
Geo. M. Strout.
1866-67
E. N. Smith. .
1887
. Geo. M. Strout.
1868
. E. N. Smith.
A. E. Briggs.
E. H. Jose.
1888
A. E. Briggs. .
1869
E. H. Jose.
C. L. Judkins.
1872
. H. H. Scott.
1891
. C. L. Judkins.
H. D. Wyatt.
H. R. White.
H. V. King.
1892-94
H. R. White. .
1873
. E. C. Carrigan.
1895
H. R. White.
1874-77 .
C. J. Hayward.
1896
. A. B. Crawford.
1878
· C. J. Hayward.
O. A. Tuttle.
G. H. Eldredge.
1897-1900
. O. A. Tuttle.
.
Luther Dame.
.
.
W. P. Hood.
·
·
.
H. H. Scott.
1889-90
C. L. Judkins. .
C. J. Hayward.
A. B. Crawford.
There are three long-time and well-known teachers who may be mentioned. Miss Carrie V. Hammond taught from
G. H. Eldredge.
1856-60
Luther Dame.
A. H. Kenerson.
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SOME ANNALS OF NAHANT
1873 to 1914. Miss Florence A. Johnson began in 1881 and resigned in 1927. Both of these, upon their retirement, were honored by the people of the town, who tendered them receptions and gifts, in appreciation of their long usefulness. Miss Nellie M. Palmer taught from 1879 to 1904, the year of her death, and was loved and honored as a teacher of the little beginners of life. Miss Hammond is a daughter of John Q. Hammond, prominent in town affairs in early days. Miss Johnson is a daughter of Edward J. Johnson, who likewise was a town official and who was a lifelong resident of Nahant. Miss Johnson did notable work in encouraging the study of birds and flowers. An herbarium, prepared at one time, won a medal when exhibited at the Massachu- setts Horticultural Society. It is now in the Nahant Public Library. These three Nahanters, in public school service, belie the old rule that local people are not the best for such positions, for they have done hard and faithful work full of good results. There is always a desire, in any locality, for residents of the place to fill public positions. It is convenient, and, of course, the applicants may be as fit as any others. But it is not commendable practice. Honest people do their best always, but there is an unconscious though real reliance upon a background of friends, able to bring more or less pressure upon public officials, which halts incentive a little. In the schools there is the possibility of hearings and a natural dislike of a school committee to make a stir over a resident in a small town. These factors may never take shape, but they are always in the wind. A teacher should, then, even for his own sake, seek employment away from home, where his full efforts are enlisted, and nothing else. There is more character building of young people by getting away from home and out on their own feet altogether. These successes for Nahant, as mentioned, do not affect the principle, for that was good luck rather than good practice. A school committee should always be able to say good-bye to a teacher with the least fuss and feathers. They are the judges of in- efficiency or lack of co-operation. They should be able to
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say they want instructions obeyed. Of course, the committee may be wrong, but as some one must have power in the depart- ment, who is it to be? Some one elected for the purpose or some one acquiring the power in another way?
The various yearly reports of the school committee are interesting, but too long and numerous to be quoted exten- sively. It is rather curious to note that in 1872 J. T. Wilson, writing the school report, cites the need of training for proper use of leisure. This is a factor of education emphasized recently, and this reference to it of over fifty years ago has its significance. It reads as follows:
We have already seen the hours of manual labor universally reduced, and it cannot be supposed that this decrease in the re- quirements of time for labor is at an end. Our hours of leisure are to increase, and for what? Upon the solution of this question depends our destiny.
All through these years the school committees have tried to steer clearly through the many issues of education, leaning not too far back lest they become unprogressive; nor too far forward to meet the latest erratic experiment. It is always a task. Between the fine arts and the useful arts, the vocational and the academic, the major and minor, the three "R's" and a widespread feast of learning, the humdrum and the imagina- tive, a rational course is hard to steer. Today outcries against educational methods are stronger than ever, for special reasons apparently not traceable directly to unusual educational in- efficiency. Many still insist on drill, drill, drill, and many would even teach integral calculus before arithmetic, because the child should have the more imaginative during its more imaginative years. Until some of these things are settled, educational peace is not expected. The diapason of dis- cordant voices at least shows divergences of opinion proving no clear road forward. An education that is "good behavior to the young, comfort to the old, riches to the poor and deco- ration to the rich" is certainly not abroad among the schools and colleges so largely as wanted and needed. The education of today, with its improperly digested accessories, is what
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leads so many men to lives of quiet desperation. Cures are possible but slow in arriving. Everywhere there is talk, but educators plod along, unheeding, mostly, the cries from obvious injury. Common sense is supplanted by a super- sense, which is desirable as a team mate, but needing a harness and guiding reins or it cannot pull the load or find the right direction, and Phi Beta Kappa keys worn in a proper pectoral position are not sure guides to efficient leaders.
In a little town like Nahant the schools can step out in new adventures somewhat more easily than in larger places. Yet the greater need is for a steady policy without vacillations from pillar to post. Every change might well be for a while an effort to correct an identified fault, and never a mere branching into some new ism decorated with the gold lace and filigree of further theorizing. Theory is important, but in education the most important thing is, why is so large a proportion of people careworn and harassed? It is not an inevitable condition of mankind since Eve's fall, for enough in every condition of life are not so to prove its needlessness for most, unless misfortune overtakes them. Meantime, Obe- dience, Consideration and Concentration - three needs of people at work and living together - languish and fade. This is all old, very much as the faults of the flapper are revealed in the Old Testament. But old things are not neces- sarily outworn. Certain life values persist unchanging, - the verities; others shift about with the years and generations. What does education do to classify them for those who need to know the differences? Education is properly assimilated in- formation. What about the assimilation? People are getting information the way the automobilist saw Rome, remembering it as that old burg where the roads were so rough. Of what use is the information or the visit to Rome? This preachment is, of course, not directed at Nahant schools, but at schools and schooling in general. Incidentally let every one be urged to read or reread Batchelder's "Keeping Up With Lizzie," a real compendium of economics and sociology applicable to present- day conditions, and a good story delivering a sermon without
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