USA > Maine > Lincoln County > Waldoboro > History of old Broad Bay and Waldoboro, Volume 2 > Part 44
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60
There are a goodly number of the very best teachers, and others that the Committee would not approve except on grounds that there were no better to be had. . .. It is quite a mistake to think of hiring a cheap teacher for the sake of economy. ... By far the greatest evil under which your schools suffer is the want of suitable schoolhouses. Both as to size and arrangement there is an extensive and woeful deficit here. In the lan- guage of our State Report: "Many of them are so constructed in size that not more than from sixty-four cubic feet are allowed to each child and no arrangement for ventilation. So far as space is concerned it is equivalent to putting each scholar into a cubic box 4' in diameter and keeping him there for hours in succession without any means of chang- ing the atmosphere." Your committee would refer you to what they consider a model schoolhouse, but there is none, not one in town which in the matter of comfort or convenience is in all respects what it ought to be; while some of them are a reproach and a by-word. From this con- sideration alone the town loses one fourth at least of the advantage of its schooling, while from the same cause their children are doomed to suffer, and many are laying the foundations of incurable diseases. [Italics mine.]
This report was signed by the energetic Reverend Dodge and two other Board Members. Between 1851 and 1853 the num- ber of school districts rose from twenty-three to twenty-eight which gives a fair indication of caprice and gerrymandering on the part of the voters in certain areas. There were cases where families or small groups in remote back-districts sought to be set
1Copies of these earliest School Committee Reports were made available to me from the papers of Dr. William H. Hahn, Friendship, Me.
392
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
off in school districts by themselves. In such instances the motive is not clear, but it did create a condition under which funds al- lotted to such districts could be very easily misapplied. In 1853 districts number 2, 4, 11, 16 and 18 were reported as being "char- acterized by a spirit of insubordination." Blackboards were still missing and these along with outline maps, globes, and cubical blocks were recommended by the Committee - indeed they were to be continued to be recommended for another quarter of a cen- tury. Under the conditions which existed school was not a very attractive experience. Truancy was rife and absenteeism was steadily building up the town's illiteracy. In 1854 the Committee reported the whole number of pupils attending school as 1,773, with an average attendance of 1,126, which would mean roughly that out of every seventeen pupils there were six, or over one third, who did not attend school. The Committee this year seems to have been dominated by a licked psychology, for the major emphasis was not to come to grips with the problem but rather to carp over "the poor and stinted quality of the fuel."
In 1856 the Committee in its report again became frank and illuminating, with the curtain drawn back on some of the dis- tricts, and with comments on some of the schools and teachers. It reported $3,014.00 available for education, which allowed an expenditure for the year of $1.70 per pupil. Like some of its prede- cessors the Committee stressed the lack of interest on the part of parents and scholars as being evidenced by the old evil of irregu- larity in attendance, and continued:
Some of the schools have been nearly worthless on this account. District No. 1, [Dutch Neck] was one of the best schools in town. Miss Dorinda Storer had charge of the summer and winter schools . . . a good system of classification was adopted in this school. District No. 17 [North Waldoboro, Walter neighborhood], John Samson, Agent, Mr. Whiting S. Clark, Teacher, no school made better progress. Other good schools were District No. 10, Cyrus Gowan, Teacher; No. 11, Nathan B. Gowan, Teacher, both good but too crowded. William Seiders in the western village was eminently successful. School of William Boyd Creamer was faithfully instructed. The schools in a number of districts were marked by the dissatisfaction of parents, an evil of the greatest magnitude. Schools in District 5, 7, and 26 were impaired by the lack of a good and united feeling between parents and teachers. District No. 6 [the village] was not successful, but light was ahead.
In point of fact there were great inner stirrings going on in District No. 6, checked, thwarted, and constantly humiliated as it had been by the back-district folk. As far back as 1855 the School Committee had vaguely and veiledly commented in the following language: "Few subjects ever have heretofore been laid before you for your consideration of more vast importance to
393
Educational Anarchy
the social, educational and secular interest of this whole town than the contemplated organization of schools in District No. 6." In this same year this district had made itself a more compact and workable organization by getting a small April Town Meeting to divide the district, setting off "all west of Waldoboro river to be a Distinct district." In this manner it separated itself from what had been a source of interference in its educational projects, for the outskirts of this section of the old district had had a well- developed lunatic fringe. The next year we learn from the re- port of the Committee that "the District [No. 6] has wisely de- termined on a model schoolhouse, and the grade system. The cause of education, the good of the community join in the earnest cry: Godspeed the day!" In all certainty this was the most revo- lutionary and progressive step taken in a century of educational development in the town.
The outcome of this determination in the village was "the Old Brick Schoolhouse," built in 1857 by the district and not by the town. There are few details now available on the history of its construction, but I was often told in my boyhood that my neighbor, Moses Burkett, furnished the teams to haul the granite for the foundation of the building. The structure was reared on the site of one of the two district school lots that had been in the possession of the district since 1822. The site of the other school was also on Friendship Road, in the field back of the house now owned by Ralph Dean and occupied by Mrs. Isabel Boothby. Had the villagers been compelled to await the assent of the back- district folk, such a building would never have been erected, but here was one situation in which the outsiders were helpless, for from early days it had been the established practice that each district should build its own schoolhouse at its own expense.
For once the villagers did what they pleased, and the back- district folk could only give vent to their spite and frustration by defacing the new structure on their way home when they chanced to be in the village on a dark night. This practice of "abusing the new Central Schoolhouse" drew a rebuke from the School Committee in the April meeting of 1859. In brief it said: "This state of things should not exist. The house had been built at great expense and reflects honor and credit upon the district. See to it that its beauty is not marred, and that it may remain a noble monument of correct public sentiment."
The erection of this building proved the key to future progress in the central district. There was, however, during these years no parallel progress in the outside areas. There the agelong evils seemed ever recurring. At the Town Meeting on April 13, 1857, the School Committee issued its annual jeremiad, a more
394
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
than usually revealing complaint. An excerpted paragraph follows:
The many and frequent changes and alterations in the school dis- tricts which have been made for the last few years, have produced an unfortunate state of things as regards our schools. The districts are be- coming too numerous. Most every neighborhood seems anxious to be- come a school district by themselves. The result is we are having but short schools, and according to the universal experience of those inter- ested in schools, nothing is gained by small districts and short schools. There was a time in the recollection of many present, when school dis- tricts embraced an extent of five or six miles, and it was not considered burdensome to travel that distance.
The report of the Committee of 1859 has also its revealing features. At this time the town was at the peak of its population, and the school census showed 2,300 pupils. For these boys and girls the Committee recommended "good, healthy locations for schoolhouses," and added:
The location of several schoolhouses in the town is strongly sugges- tive ... that a place entirely useless for any earthly purpose is just the situation for a schoolhouse .... Your Committee has visited several old and dilapidated schoolhouses, ventilated abundantly from the four sides, top and floor. There are only twelve good schoolhouses in the town. Certainly some are fit only for habitations of owls and bats, so far have they gone to decay.
In the back-districts the agents were in the main still run- ning the schools either in ignorance of, or indifference to, state laws, engaging "utter strangers for teachers before sending them up for examination." The report, too, sounded a very modern note on the question of teachers' wages: "Let the teachers be paid fair wages," it said. "Every effort put forth to engage cheap teachers, is an effort to have poor schools." The Committee fur- ther reveals "that the mean average attendance of scholars in your schools during the year 1858 was but 26 percent - a proportion less by one half than any other town in the County." This year there was a change in some of the texts. Worcester's Spellers were introduced in the place of Town's, and Hilliards Readers in the place of Town's Readers, which had been in use for ten years. The Committee declared the change an important one, "since," and this is significant, "good readers will not average two to a school." On this note the history of education in Waldoboro prior to the Civil War ended.
Any radical departure in town affairs from "the good old ways" had a slender chance of becoming an actuality if it came up in a March meeting, when the back-district folk was out in force. It stood a much better chance in the April meeting when the back-districts were immobilized by mud, or when they were
395
Educational Anarchy
.......
AO
0042
...
BELA B. AND ELIZA SPROUL HASKELL
held at home by spring work. These meetings were usually small and at times were dominated by the village vote. Thus it seems to have been in 1861, when the town by a vote of ninety-five to twenty-four decided to have its first Supervisor of Schools, and elected Bela B. Haskell to this new office. This move effected no changes in the educational picture. The reports of Mr. Haskell on his two years of service simply showed the cart rolling in the same old rut. There is the same story of old, old evils paraded at each annual Town Meeting, and the same old, old system being perpetuated by the back-district vote. This decade of the War between the States brought no substantial improvements. By 1864 the schools were again in the hands of a committee, circumscribed
396
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
in its power as of yore by the system of district agents, which retained by annual vote its prerogatives of drawing its own school money and hiring its own teachers. Then too, the town debt in this decade reached an unprecedented figure. In 1865, due to war expenditures, it stood in excess of $63,000. This great increase in the municipal debt led to a more cautious policy in budget mat- ters, and in consequence the schools received less money.
The 1870's were far more vivid and colorful in the history of education in the town. To be sure, the same old evils were present, but opposition to them was far more vocal, and was making more headway. The list of texts, introduced in 1871, furnishes a clue to the school curricula of this period, and makes it apparent that some ground was being gained. This program included reading, spelling, grammar, arithmetic, geography, Amer- ican history, and since Harkness Latin Grammar and Latin Reader are included, we may infer the introduction of Latin in the high school curriculum.
In the March meeting of 1872 the town voted to have one hundred copies of the report of the Superintending School Com- mittee printed. This practice throws a flood of new light on the educational scene in these years and provides a more personal and vivid coloring to the picture. This first printed report for the year 1871-1872, showed as of April 1, 1871, 1,399 pupils in the town, a substantial reduction from the peak years, indicating the recession in the town's population.2 The vicious system of divided authority was still in operation, the agent in each district employ- ing the teacher. The amount of money raised for schools was $4,575, and the state aid totalled $119.56, making a per capita ex- penditure for each pupil the sum of $3.35. There were still thirty- one districts; the summer term averaged twelve weeks, the winter term eleven weeks. Wages had risen slightly, the average for male teachers being $32.70 per month, and for females $4.00 per week in winter and $2.75 in summer.
The populous village district (No. 6) was served by one high school, one intermediate, and four primary schools. The high school was taught by Augustus Kennedy for one term and by Fred Whitney for the other. The winter term extended from December 4th to February 9th, and the summer term from June 6th to August 26th. For these six schools the district drew its money to the amount of $842.10, and in addition it raised its own supplementary funds for the support of its own high school, which was purely a district and not a town institution. Education in the outlying areas had changed little, and the futility of much of it may be inferred from the following typical comments from the
2The population in 1860 was 4,569, in 1870, 4,174.
397
Educational Anarchy
report: District No. 17, Zenas Feyler, agent, Miss Sarah E. Trow- bridge, teacher. "The interest in this school has been very much interrupted and broken up on account of a difficulty arising be- tween some citizens of the district and the teacher, which is wrong in the extreme." District No. 26, Miss Addie Benner, teacher. "On account of a difficulty arising between her and some of the scholars, she voluntarily closed her school." District No. 29. "The summer term of the school was commenced by Miss Rhoda Weston of Bremen, June 5, but doubting her ability to govern the school, she voluntarily abandoned it after teaching one week." Such procedures as these left a considerable amount of the school money unexpended each year. For example, in the year 1872 the Committee reported an undrawn balance of $1,102.37 from the town's appropriation of $3,360.00, or about one third which was never expended for educational purposes.
In the larger school districts the winter terms were taught by men, among whom were names very familiar to old Waldo- boro residents. These include Moses W. Levensaler, Edward F. Levensaler, Edward Hahn, Gorham A. Castner, George K. Com- ery, Albion K. Eugley, Isaac W. Waltz and Miles T. Castner. Among the women teachers were Bernice D. Simmons, Susan Willett, Sarah J. Sides, Mary E. Gray, Melvina Castner and Julia A. Kaler. This was Miss Kaler's3 first school (District No. 22, Genthner Neighborhood). "She commenced her labors in earnest, and her efforts were crowned with better success than many with more experience." From this comment it would seem that "Aunt Julie" never wavered in girlhood from the pattern of sincerity, sweetness, and saintliness which shone forth so beautifully and gently in her later years.
The year 1873 seemed to mark the low point in education in the district schools. The Lincoln County News in its issue of January 15, 1875, commenting on this condition, observed: "Two years ago our common school system .. . had reached its lowest ebb, and our schools had become but a farce. Parents and children seemed to share a common disinterestedness." This year also marked a turning point, and in District No. 6, the educational pace-setter, there was a considerable stirring. In January 1873 the committee of the district submitted a recommendation that three primary schoolhouses be built, one each year for three years, the first to be in the south section. The News in its comment observed: "The Old School House (that is what they call it) is to be sold for what it will bring. By a small outlay for repairs it would make a quite comfortabe hen house or pig pen."4 In March the district
3Died, January, 1945.
4Monthly News, April 1873.
398
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
reconsidered its action on the three new buildings. The reason was probably to be found in the fact that in 1873 the Legislature passed an act granting aid from the state to all towns maintaining a free high school, town and state contributing dollar for dollar. This act brought the first move toward a town rather than a district high school. It also brought back-district voters into the picture, ultimately with consequent demoralization for another quarter of a century.
The question of a town appropriation for a free high school was brought before the April meeting and rejected. It was argued according to the local paper "that the village only was to be benefited and the voters from the country defeated the measure." The News commented further: "It is such actions as this, and the refusal of the village district to have suitable schoolhouses, that keeps Waldoboro behind her neighbors. It is such action that compels whole families to seek homes elsewhere." In May, how- ever, at its annual meeting District No. 6 voted $300 for a high school and received $300 from the state. There was also an appro- priation of $300 for the repair of a primary schoolhouse, and a decision that language, presumably Latin, be taught in the high school. The exact date of the beginning of secondary education in the town is not known. Since the first reference to such an insti- tution is in 1871-1872, it may be inferred that it was started purely as a district school around 1870, although prior to this time there were private schools in the village offering instruction at the secondary level. This fact constitutes one of the blackest spots in Waldoboro history. To the west, Damariscotta and Newcastle had their Lincoln Academy as early as 1802, and to the east the town of Warren incorporated its academy in 1808. Waldoboro was nearly seventy years behind its neighbors, and its failure to raise the educational level of its citizens affected markedly and pe- culiarly throughout the whole nineteenth century the character of its people and their history.
In the outlying districts there continued to be little improve- ment. In the year 1873 the school census showed "1,398 pupils in the town with an average school attendance of 809, or 58 per- cent." Among old familiar names we find those of such teachers as Bernice D. Simmons, Eliza Pierce, Sarah J. Sides, Lillian Stand- ish, Susan Ludwig, Francis Gracia, and Moses W. Levensaler. The Committee quotes Mr. Levensaler to the effect that "his school can be made more successful by procuring a blackboard if nothing more," and the Committee adds, "we conclude that he is right." This simple comment clearly reveals the conditions under which the educational system labored. Discord, strife, and violence, how- ever, were even more deadly foes of progress. The report of the Committee makes this fact more vividly clear than any obser-
399
Educational Anarchy
vations of the historian. Of the winter term in District No. 13 (Chapel Corners) it offers the following ironic summary:
The mumps and another contagious and very destructive disease known as "the district row" besieged this organization at the commence- ment. The scene of the last day's operations was fearful in the extreme, which served to raise the price of repairing the house to an exorbitant amount. However Miss M -- came out unscarred, and still retains the qualities of an able teacher.5
The comment on District No. 16 (Goshen) reveals a trend in the same direction:
This school labored under difficulties arising from a division among the inhabitants of the district; consequently the progress of the school was not what it might have been. This plague in a school is far more destructive than the mumps. Edward Hahn taught the winter term. He was obliged to leave after four weeks on account of his health. Hector L. Castner then took charge of the school. ... Mr. Castner is a teacher of considerable experience. Order in the schoolroom is his first law, and if he would raise the standard of his explanation to that of his discipline, success must surely follow.6
The report follows this tenor in too many districts. The well-taught school was rather exceptional. Typical of these few exceptions is District No. 29 (Kaler's Corner), B. C. Mayo, agent.
The winter term was taught by D. W. Meserve. It was visited by your Committee near the commencement and at the close. Mr. Meserve taught this school with his usual success. The pupils were punctual, and the attendance much larger than heretofore. The teacher was industrious and persevering, and the pupils studious, attentive and energetic.7
The Committee concludes its report with the vigorous rec- ommendation that "the Town of Waldoboro should employ one able man to supervise the schools, employ the teachers, spend all his time among the schools, and the town pay him for his services," but the town was still a half century removed from any such sound solution.
The year 1875 was marked by the passage of a state law making education compulsory and requiring attendance of all pupils for a certain number of months each year. It also marked the period in which the town took over construction of the school- houses from the districts. Such action was taken because the dis- tricts refused to act in certain sections where the school buildings were little more than ancient and shabby monuments to educa- tional indifference. Commenting on this attitude the Lincoln Coun- ty News observed: "Some schoolhouses are not fit for a pigpen,
5 Report of Superintending School Committee, 1874.
6Ibid. [Italics mine. ]
"Ibid.
400
HISTORY OF OLD BROAD BAY AND WALDOBORO
for the pig would soon root out. Some districts have been trying for fifteen years to get a new schoolhouse without success."8 The article in question in the town warrant read: "To see if the town will raise money for building a schoolhouse in District No. 16 [Goshen], the said district unreasonably neglecting to raise the money for that purpose as requested by the S. S. Committee." The town also followed the recommendation of its Committee and elected Henry Farrington as its Superintendent of Schools, at the same time nullifying this action by voting that "the districts choose their own agents and teachers." In other words, the vicious system was continued. The back-districts were willing to sanction appearances but not realities. In 1876 Mr. Farrington resigned the office, and at a May meeting the town elected "Ed Randall Ben- ner" its Supervisor of Schools.
Mr. Benner was the most competent man to head the schools in more than a century of their history. He was quiet, reserved, and modest - a scholar educated at Dartmouth in the classical tradition. Latin and Greek he read as he did English, for the pleasure of it, and he loved to thwart the gossiping postmaster and his assistant, who read all post cards for the local news they might carry, by writing such cards to his learned friends in other parts of New England in Hebrew. The new Supervisor, like all of his predecessors, was at the start hamstrung by the ancient system of district agents, who still maintained virtual educational auton- omy, each in his own bailiwick. In District No. 6 the high school was a going concern, but much like a criminal under death sen- tence, living from year to year on an indefinite reprieve. As the Lincoln County News observed (June 12, 1874): "Fifty percent of the High School tax is paid by eighteen individuals, fifteen of which send no children; those paying a ten and eighteen cent tax protest it."
Mr. Benner's period of directorship extended from 1876 to 1879, and it is sufficient to say that in this short span of years he did what he could but far from what he would have liked. In his successive reports9 there is offered a clear, but not overdrawn, picture of the condition of the schools in this decade and a very sound and modern evaluation of method and objectives. The reports are bold in their criticism and revolutionary in their sug- gestions. They follow in excerpted form:
The schools have been taught with an average success, but there is still a wide field open for their improvement. Eight teachers this year had no previous experience. About one third of the schools are good; six are excellent; a few are utter failures. The continuous succession of teachers is a major weakness.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.