USA > Massachusetts > Suffolk County > Winthrop > The history of Winthrop, Massachusetts ; 1630-1952 > Part 28
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Equally important with the incorporators were the men and women who served as officers and employees, for many years in most instances. As said, Mr. Whittemore was the first treasurer and still serves in that capacity. Attorney Edward A. Thomas was made a director in 1909 and served until 1930. His son Edward R. Thomas presently serves in the same capacity. The late Miss Gertrude A. Manning (Mrs. John Newman), be- came a clerk in 1910 and later was elected assistant treasurer, a position she held until 1932. Miss Alice Visall joined the bank as a clerk in 1919, succeeding Mrs. Newman as assistant treas- urer, and still serves in that office. Such terms of service are demonstrative of the bank's stability and exemplify the position the bank has held and holds in Winthrop.
Present officers include : Dr. Harvey A. Kelley, president ; Edward A. Thomas, vice president; Almon E. Whittemore, treas- urer; Alice M. Visall, assistant treasurer; and as directors, the above and : Edward A. Barclay, John C. McMurray, Clarence E. Tasker, Norman W. Davis, Harry R. Dodge, Charles W. O'Keefe and George W. Thompson.
WINTHROP SAVINGS BANK
A mutual Savings Bank-one of the group whose depositors have never lost a cent of their money-the Winthrop Savings
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Bank shares the same bank building as the Winthrop Co-opera- tive Bank and, in a large sense, shares the same management.
Like its associate institution, the Savings Bank has attracted the very best of Winthrop's financial talents and, similarly has enjoyed the services of officers and employees who have devoted many years to their responsibilities. Such is Preston B. Churchill, the treasurer, who to most Winthrop people IS the bank. He left his office as Town Clerk 28 years ago and has continued as Treasurer of the Bank ever since that time.
The Winthrop Savings Bank was formed February 9, 1914, at a meeting of citizens at 73 Jefferson Street. Present were such prominent men as : Ahrend C. J. Pope, Edward A. Thomas, Joseph L. Newton, Almon E. Whittemore, Charles A. Grant, William G. Grant, John W. Ramsey, Garfield L. Charlton, Henry Hutchinson, Thomas J. Hayes, Frank F. Cook, Lewis R. Dunn, Leslie E. Griffin, Alfred F. Henry, J. Frank Hodgkins, Allen E. Newton, John T. Totman, Timothy D. Sullivan, Jeremiah Green, Kilburn C. Brown, Elmer H. Bartlett, John A. Hutchinson, Elmer E. Dawson and W. C. Johnson.
These men voted to organize the Savings Bank and elected Almon E. Whittemore as temporary clerk and Joseph L. Newton as temporary chairman, both to serve until permanent officers were chosen.
Thus launched, the bank went quietly and carefully on its way and has continued to serve the people of the Town through the present time, accepting deposits from one dollar to five thousand. At the present time, assets total $2,918,015.59 with 5,355 depositors having a total of $2,615,599.12 on account, together with a surplus of $264,054.47.
Almon E. Whittemore is president, Frank N. Belcher and Brendan J. Keenan, vice presidents ; Preston B. Churchill, treas- urer; Miriam L. Flinn, assistant treasurer; and Edward A. Barclay, clerk. Directors are the above and Leslie E. Griffin, Edward A. Thomas, Arthur H. Curtis, Clarence E. Tasker, Harry R. Dodge and John C. McMurray.
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Chapter Twenty-Three WINTHROP SCHOOLS
By BENJAMIN A. LITTLE
Head of the English Department, Winthrop Junior High School
THE story of Winthrop schools tells of growth and trans- formation, from the simple village school to a complex urban education system.
The earliest residents of Pullin Point may have made ar- rangements for schooling in old Boston or tutoring at home. The first sure record we have of a school in Winthrop-that is, on Pullin Point land-is the manuscript roll of twenty-three scholars at John Tewksbury's house, starting February 3, 1779, and including four of his own children, to learn reading and writing. A few of the children came for arithmetic. The house was the old Bill house, dating from about 1637, which stood on the site of the present 29 Beal St., near Lincoln.
With the first church and the plow and sailboat on the town seal, the designer included a one-room schoolhouse which must represent that erected in 1805 on part of the lot where the town hall was later to stand. While no record of its cost or size seems to have been kept, it was said by Lucius Floyd to have been twenty by twenty-five feet, with plank seats and desks extending lengthwise, over which the scholars tumbled to their places. We have the statement of David Floyd that the people built in 1847 "a better building entirely from their own resources." By that time the name Chelsea Point was current for the area, and the Main Street bridge-a toll bridge for several years-was in use. School had been fairly regular, on the evidence of its list of scholars for its twenty-sixth winter term, 1840, which is in the historical collection at the Winthrop Public Library along with the 1845 list. In his address at the opening of the exhibit, as part of the fiftieth anniversary in 1902, Mr. Floyd mentioned a school kept at Point Shirley in the eighteenth century by John Sale, and a schoolhouse erected there in 1834, ten years before the building of the Revere Copper Company's works there.
When North Chelsea was incorporated in 1846, including
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what later became Revere and Winthrop, the Pullin Point school was District No. 2, and the report for 1851 lists 37 children there, 18 at Point Shirley. The first appropriation for Winthrop's own schools was $400.00; this grew to $600.00 in 1856, the year a town hall was built with the purpose of providing two separate rooms for the grammar and the primary school. Each of these two schools now enrolled over thirty pupils; and that at Point Shirley had more than fifteen, in a new one-room building.
Throughout the early years there was a constant changing of teachers. They were chiefly women ; some came from Normal School, some had had no training or experience. They came for small weekly pay-but went, more often than not, because of ill health. When men were secured, it was likely that they would teach just a season or two to get funds for their own further education. The committees of those days, elected for only one year, often commend the work done despite the wide span of age and level assigned to one teacher; they earnestly tell both the teachers and the parents what is wrong. Attendance was a constant problem : "too many marks for tardiness and absence." During the winter of 1857-58 the primary school of 39 pupils averaged only 21 present; and the committee in 1860 charged the mother with the responsibility of sending the child "punctually and constantly to school."
The same committee, questioning the need of more than half a year of school time for boys of grammar school age because so much of a boy's practical education was to be had at home on the farm, yet recommended for them a male teacher, notwith- standing the greater expense. And though the primary school suffered in "order and energy" from its teacher's ill health, the report emphasizes in italics, Not a scholar has died during the year. The poignant implication is not lessened as one observes the record of the town's payments to men serving in the Union Army and to their families requiring aid.
Singing lessons were begun during war days. A Mr. Wiggin, secured to teach grammar school, formed classes in his- tory, physiology, natural philosophy (forerunner of today's gen- eral science course), and algebra; and in 1863 taught Latin. Despite praise and an increase in salary, he remained less than three years.
Attendance prizes were offered in 1864, and as a further incentive (in 1867) an honor class of ten pupils was formed, to be announced on Examination Day.
When the town again voted (1868) to employ a man for the grammar school, which had an average attendance of fifty, the annual appropriation for schools reached $1,000.00. This
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was augmented by receipts from the State School Fund and the new Dog Tax. Rental of the Town Hall for preaching services, lectures and dances brought revenue but increased the house- keeping problem. To overcome crowding, 22 of the older chil- dren were moved upstairs in the hall as a grammar school in 1870, an intermediate school of 51 was formed, and 40 were left in the primary school. The next year's report asserted, "We practically have a high school," for seven branches seldom of- fered in grammar schools were being taught here. The season was memorable for other reasons, too : not one teacher resigned; drawing was made a study required by law; and the Ladies Union Circle earned and donated $125.00 for teaching vocal music in the town.
During the 70's the village schools continued to grow up. Requirements of pupils for entering Boston's higher schools in- fluenced the list of studies. More systematic operation is in- dicated by the issuance in March, 1878, of the school committee's penwritten "Rules and Regulations for the Government of the Public Schools of the Town of Winthrop," concerning hours, cere- monies, playground rules, suspensions, and excuses for absence, tardiness, or "dismission." To these was appended the grammar school course of study, naming not only the basic "R's" but United States history, geography, algebra, physiology, and astronomy ; natural philosophy reappeared in 1880.
Conditions for learning in the Town Hall were hardly ideal. Noisy repairs and alterations were made during school hours instead of at vacation time. Overcrowded primary and inter- mediate rooms prevented proper attention to grading and classifying. Pupils had to be advanced too soon into the grammar school. This met in an over-large room, the music hall, often "unclean and odorous" from other meetings. Bids for erecting a schoolhouse were asked in 1872. When the building was finally erected in 1881, at a cost of less than $6,000.00, the select- men referred to it as "an ornament and credit to our town" and praised "the gratifying success of our schools," also calling attention to the increase of building enterprise on the "Heaven- blessed Peninsula." During twenty years the population of Winthrop had almost doubled.
The wooden Pauline Street schoolhouse originally had four rooms, housing Principal Leonard P. Frost's grammar school of 34 pupils, an intermediate school of 45, and a primary school of 68; after reorganization in 1883 the fourth room accommo- dated a high school class. McGuffey's readers were among the textbooks used, and Worcester's New Pronouncing Spelling Book was the source for training local spellers for contests with grammar school representatives of Chelsea and Revere.
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Under an act of 1873 which provided for supplying books at public expense, the Winthrop schools began in 1884 loaning pupils free books and writing materials. That year the Point Shirley school, having dwindled to four pupils, was closed and the children transported to the Centre, where to everyone's satisfaction they progressed much better, having the stimulation of a larger school group.
In June, 1884, after the customary public examinations, the high school graduated ten students in its first class, and the following June five more. Two of these fifteen became teachers. Early graduations included recitations and original essays, and music both vocal and instrumental.
Further school accommodations soon became imperative. In the decade after 1875 (when summer settlements at Ocean Spray and Winthrop Beach began) the population increased 118 per cent-Winthrop being the second fastest-growing town in the Commonwealth. In 1887, after a temporary overflow room of primary children had become necessary, 75 pupils were assigned to the new Almont Street building, serving the High- land section. The next year fifteen were accommodated in a hall over the hose house near The Colonial Inn. And the Pauline Street School took on a more imposing look as its size was doubled and a clock tower added.
By now the town's annual appropriation for school expenses amounted to $6,700.00. The internal organization of the system was developing. To retain teachers the committee adopted a limited policy of annual pay increases based on service. The course of study was printed for public information. The grammar school course of 1890 undertook the two-fold task of providing for both the students who were about to leave school and those who would continue to the high school. The local offering was conformed as nearly as possible to that of Boston, for a number of our children attended Boston schools a part of the year. Some promotions were permitted without examination, on the basis of good standing, but a child's standing would be lowered by absence and tardy marks. Today's children might be shocked to know that three recitations counted as a full day.
Such was the situation when Frank A. Douglas became principal of the grammar school in 1890. At the close of that year the town had eleven separate "schools" (rooms) meeting in three buildings, staffed twelve teachers including a special teacher in drawing. The total membership was 527; average attendance 396; and the high school graduated eight, the grammar school fifteen.
The high school was yet too small to permit full college preparation, but the possibility of sending pupils above the
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ABOUT 1895. Looking south on Shore Drive from Beach Road (on the right) toward Cottage Hill, before the boulevard was built.
JUNE 1888. This is the entire graduating class of the High School which had been established a few years prior. There were no boy graduates. From left to right: Carrie Weston, Winnie Davison, the teacher E. R. Harding, Victoria Fullerton, Minnie Noble and May Magowan.
ninth grade to East Boston had little appeal. So when the Shirley Street School was opened in the fall of 1892, the high school was moved to two rooms in that building. This move made possible the complete grading of the Pauline Street School after it had been enlarged in the panic year of 1893 to ten rooms, one in- tended as a music room. The majority of the ninth grade class graduated that year went on into high school, which now began offering two four-year courses, called the English (general) and College courses. A two-year Business course was established in 1894. By the end of 1895 it was reported with satisfaction, "We can now fit pupils for any of the New England colleges." Furthermore, complete grading had been accomplished and uni- form courses developed for the classes meeting at the Center, Highlands, and Beach. (The sectional names were thus applied.) Supervisors were in charge of music, drawing, and penmanship.
These developments had been effected under the one-day-a- week direction of Superintendent M. K. Putney, of Revere. He resigned in 1895 to give full time to duties there; and Mr. Douglas, whose active leadership had accomplished the organiza- tion in the grades, became superintendent of all schools below the high school. That fall Ervine D. Osborne came to Winthrop as principal of the high school, responsible directly to the school committee.
Winthrop's first high school building was erected in 1896- the three-story frame structure familiar to more recent classes as the Center School. It was designed by Willard M. Bacon and cost nearly twenty thousand dollars. Besides classrooms, the building provided a second-floor assembly or study room of seventy desks, a laboratory room for chemistry and physics, and a large hall on the third floor with folding settees for about 450. Corridors and entry ways were lighted by electricity. Pupils donated over a hundred dollars for an electric "programme clock."
With the opening of the high school building, the public library books housed in the Town Hall since the library was established in 1885 were moved by two hundred school children to two rooms in the high school; the library occupied this space until June, 1899, when children again carried the books (about four thousand) to the new Frost Public Library building.
The community set about using the new building for larger numbers of high school students. Twenty-one of thirty finishing grammar school in 1897 entered high school. Other indications of a general improvement in standards were evident. Both the "Business" and the "English" course had been lengthened to four years. Teaching vacancies at all grade levels were being filled largely by experienced graduates of State Normal Schools. Laws
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of 1898 made compulsory the attendance of children of ages seven to fourteen during the entire school year and required a certificate of age and schooling for part-time employment of those past fourteen. For "notifying persons under fifteen years of age from being at large after certain hours in the evening," the town meeting that June established a curfew bell; but the date suggests its objectives concerned matters other than the perennial problem of tardiness and its interference with classes. Truancy had been reduced effectively.
The annual report proudly displayed two photographs- one of the High School and the Pauline Street School, taken across the round pond, and the other of the "Shirley School"- as the name was lettered on the new sign. This and the "High- land School" also newly bearing its signboard, had been enlarged by two rooms each. The town was by now investing over twenty thousand dollars a year, and in 1900 expenses passed the twenty- seven thousand mark. Increase of accommodations had been needed about every other year. The staff had grown to 29 and four special teachers, and the pupils numbered 1,066-Center, 615 ; Beach, 194; Highlands, 126, and High School, 91. Like that of 1890, the 1900 census found Winthrop one of the fastest grow- ing towns in Massachusetts. For 1901 further classroom addi- tions were imperative, four rooms to the high school and two more to Shirley Street.
Of the June graduates in 1901, 45 of 55 went on to high school, and September registration in the town totalled 1,150.
To conform with the law, Winthrop now had to have a superintendent over all the schools, and Mr. Douglas was so elected. Seriously the high school problem of serving the whole body of students was being faced. Prepared dictionary study was required of all. Work was intensified; a stronger com- mercial course developed; home study assigned, in the upper grammar grades as well. Here the fundamentals of arithmetic, reading, daily expression received fresh emphasis. As a sign of the times, the vertical writing system in use for several years was modified to a "medial slant."
Ervine D. Osborne, returning to the principalship after three years' absence, adopted a plan of afternoon sessions for high school students needing consultation and make-up work. Athletics assumed importance, Winthrop soon developing cham- pions in the popular new game of basketball. But the buildings were again overcroweded, though the rate of growth was slacken- ing, and the laboratory was relegated to the high school base- ment.
While the building of a new high school was in progress, fire totally destroyed the Pauline Street building on Sunday morn-
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ing, January 27, 1907. Temporarily, classes were doubled up, the town hall being used for first grades. The new high school at Pauline Street and Waldemar Avenue was rapidly constructed, and in September opened its doors-an edifice of red brick and Indiana limestone, with exposed ceiling beams in Elizabethan style, costing over $88,000.00.
By another September (1908) the approximate site of the fire-ravaged Pauline Street building was accupied by a new brick schoolhouse for the grammar grades. Like the high school buildings, old and new, it was designed by Willard M. Bacon, who also planned the Frost Library and the Center Fire Station. Its clock was the gift of Edward B. Newton, in whose honor the school was named. He was the chairman of the school board for seventeen years until his death in 1911.
Although sewing and mechanical drawing classes had been started in 1896, the schools had had no shop room. This now was provided in the Edward B. Newton School and a shop pro- gram initiated in 1910, later to be extended very importantly by Mr. Wells and Mr. Sheehan in the High School and Mr. Banham in the Junior High.
With the grammer grades in the brick building, the wooden building, renamed the Center School, now housed the first five grades in its twelve rooms. The Shirley Street School consisted of eight grades in eight rooms, and the Highland School on Almont Street had seven grades in five rooms. Total registra- tion was 1,720, of whom 248 were in the high school years.
The high school had won certificate rights of the New Eng- land College Board. Courses of study now provided freedom of election for the junior and senior years in four curriculums : Classical, Latin-English, Technical and Normal, Commercial. The graduates of 1909 would remember their class trip to Washington and probably the lunch counter conducted by the school janitor, Mr. Tewksbury. They would recall, too, the medical inspection of pupils started in November, 1906, by Dr. O. E. Johnson, and the scarlet fever epidemic that forced closing of the schools in the spring of 1908.
Good health had prevailed generally during the 80's and 90's. Health measures in the schools of those days included the special vaccination undertaken by Dr. Ingalls (of the selectmen, then acting as board of health) when smallpox attacked Boston in 1882; lawful instruction in preventive measures to combat tuberculosis; and the requirement of vaccination prerequisite since 1901 for admission to school.
In the new high school there was physical instruction for boys; they had a gym for basketball! A library had been organized, too, and catalogued (1910). Gradually the ninth
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grade was merged into the high school, making complete the transition to an "8-4" system.
In October, 1914, Mr. Osborne died from an injury ; he had seen the high school enrollment grow to nearly 550 and was ex- pecting the erection in 1915 of the three-story ell which provided more classrooms and manual training rooms. His successor, Edward R. Clarke, fostered citizenship training. Debating, the High School Congress, the monthly Echo, girls' physical training were added. Evening school was a regular part of the town life now, attracting well over a hundred students. Stenography and Americanization classes appeared in the evening program.
Wartime difficulties were numerous. First the infantile paralysis scare of 1916 delayed the fall opening till October 2. In 1917 severe weather and coal prices combined to extend the winter vacation. Influenza kept the schools closed in October, 1918. Exhibitions for parents gave way to activities ranging from military drill, home gardening, and farm work to sewing, printing, and clerical work for war committees. Yet in 1918 the high school graduated 104, and 34 of them entered higher in- stitutions. Domestic science was serving four times its prewar enrollment, a cafeteria had been inaugurated, and shop work had vastly expanded. Even in those days, however, assembly and library facilities were known to be inadequate, and because of inadequate salaries, chiefly, Winthrop lost as many as forty-five teachers in two years.
Fire destroyed the Almont Street schoolhouse on January 17, 1920. Mr. Bacon was again called on, to design the present brick Highlands School of ten rooms which was erected at Crest and Grovers Avenues and opened February 14, 1921. In- creasing prices made its original cost about $240,000.00. A brick south wing of four rooms was added to the Shirley Street School at a cost of $75,000.00.
On completion of these two projects, the year 1921 passed without interruption to the schedule. Regular teachers meetings could be resumed; courses given locally for teachers in service are mentioned, as are vocational guidance, school savings, con- certs and a radio broadcast by the high school orchestra. Athletics prospered-basketball, football, track, and girls' hockey.
The school enrollment exceeded 3,000, demanding further accommodations, and the town voted to build a junior high school. It opened in September, 1925, with N. Elliot Willis as principal, a post he held until his retirement in 1951, and as sub-master Orrin C. Davis, now the superintendent of schools. First housing the seventh and eighth grades, next season it welcomed a new seventh and retained the other classes as the eighth and ninth. With these three grades from the entire town in one building,
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the schools were placed upon a "6-3-3" plan of elementary, junior high and senior high school.
Activity was the junior high school keynote. A school traffic squad was organized; a school bank, and many clubs, teacher-sponsored but pupil-officered. Soccer and basketball schedules were played. In the shops of senior and junior high schools numerous furnishings and fixtures were made for this building and others.
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