USA > Maine > York County > York > New England miniature; a history of York, Maine > Part 15
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
143
Schools
our language, could form one syllable in spelling-my mind being otherwise occupied during the war-until I returned home on the restoration of peace, in 1783. My mother has frequently told me, that when she was taught the alphabet the i and j had been called long i and short i; and U and V, open U and picked U. But these inconvenient perplexities were not sanctioned by her, nor were they practiced since my remembrance. Although Johnson's Dictionary still un- happily blends these letters in the alphabetical arrangement of words.
. Yours respectfully H. Sewall
Master Moody was the first preceptor to engage a teacher of dancing in a boys' school in order to give instruction in manners and deportment. At least two York boys, Joseph Emerson and Jonathan Sayward Barrell, received the benefits of education at Dummer Academy.
In 1785, when affairs of war demanded less attention after the Revolution, the condition of the schools received closer examination. An inspection committee reported that there should be more schools added to provide for the increase in the number of pupils. In 1791 the Ground Nut Hill section was granted a common school for one term of three months, and in the next year the Tatnick region was allowed one for a similar term.
In 1796 a committee of seven men, appointed to make a more thorough inspection "to Examine the Situation of the Schools in the Several Districts", laid out and defined seven districts; 1, Center; 2, Cyder Hill and Scituate; 3, The Upper Parish; 4, South Side of the River; 5, Cape Neddick; 6, Ground Root Hill; and 7, Tatnick and Agamenticus. The report was accepted and also a vote was passed "that a School Committee be raised to Superintend and regulate the Schools".
In 1798, for some unknown reason, the town failed to appropriate funds for a grammar school and was therefore prompt- ly indicted by the Grand Jury. It will be apparent that throughout the following century more credit for the advancement of schools is due to the enforcement of acts of legislature than to the fore- sight of the voters of York. The town, while not yet suffering from the various embargoes which precipitated the War of 1812, was endeavoring to spread the usual appropriations made in former years over seven districts where there had been but four, and had neglected the grammar school in order to make ends meet. Moreover there was pressure, annually, from districts which
144
NEW ENGLAND MINIATURE
asked for two schoolhouses-and teachers-where there had been but one before. Changes were made from year to year, indicating the varying success of what might be called lobbyists to win more privileges for their districts.
The effect of hard times first appeared in 1806, when an extra twenty dollars above the regular appropriation for schools was raised to buy books for poor children. In 1807 the usual twelve hundred dollars for schools was cut to nine hundred. In 1815 one thousand dollars was appropriated for schools, while twenty-two hundred was raised for support of the poor. In 1819 the town, again in danger of prosecution by Massachusetts for not maintaining a grammar school, appropriated one hundred and fifty dollars and attempted to encourage private contributions by offering to hold such a school in contributing districts for periods of time proportionate to the amounts raised plus a suitable share of the special town fund.
An act of the new Maine Legislature, passed March 15, 1821, determined the minimum amount of money which the towns must raise for the support of schools. The result in York was that the usual appropriation of $1000 was raised by law to $1289.60. Three thousand was spent for support of the poor.
In 1822 a committee "ascertained the bounds of the School Districts", now thirteen in number: 1, Center; 2, Lower District on the South Side of the River; 3, Upper District, South Side; 4, Scotland; 5, Birch Hill; 6, Tatnick West; 7, Tatnick East; 8, North Village; 9, Ground Root Hill West; 10, Ground Root Hill East; 11, Cape Neddick; 12, Scituate; 13, Cider Hill.
In 1824, it was voted that "the Superintending School Committee be three persons and they receive $3 for their services and that they visit each District School twice in a year and receive no pay unless they so attend". In 1827 their pay was raised to nine dollars each. An upward trend in the times became apparent. In 1832, $1394 was raised for schools; $1041.29 was spent on paupers.
By an Act of Legislature passed in 1835, the Superintend- ing School Committee was required to report on conditions found in the various districts, and in consequence the results of leaving schools to the discretion of the inhabitants of districts, pressed to make do with slender apportionments, became apparent for the first time. The committee "discovered a want of Uniformity in instruction and discipline in the arrangement of the classes, and particularly in the books used"-geographies of the edition of
145
Schools
1810-"tending to throw our Scholars behind the age in which we live by a quarter of a century". Students of arithmetic were doing well, but only about one in twelve was studying English grammar-"almost a total want of Dictionaries in nearly all of our schools"-a code of standards and uniform courses of instruc- tion should be drawn up and enforced. Out of a census of boys and girls between the ages of four and twenty-one, to the number of 1,172, 830 registered, 459 "generally attended" school, 372 rarely attended-341 "have attended no School whatever. About half of our children, therefore, may be said to be growing up without even the fundamental rudiments of education". The report closes with a quotation from a source not given: "The Public School system has been brought to a great perfection, though its Acme has by no means been reached. Some idea may be formed of the advantages we enjoy over some of the other States, when it is remarked on the authority of the Governor of Pennsylvania that there are 400,000 people in that State totally destitute of the benefits of education".
In the report for 1840, the Committee registered a protest that by hiring "teachers who have not reached the age of discre- tion", agents were "wilfully flouting the law", saying that youthful teachers were satisfactory for teaching primary grades; that about half of the female teachers employed, not having presented them- selves for examination, were without the required certificate "and we may add without ability or competency, and of course without benefit". The period when the inhabitants had conscientiously considered the welfare of their district school had evidently passed, and all school matters, including the hiring of teachers, had been left to agents who were for the most part uneducated. For almost fifty years this state of affairs grew steadily worse until the district system was ruled out of existence.
The lot of the Superintending School Committee in those years was not a happy one. Its powers were restricted to observing, advising, and reporting; for the agents of the various districts were free to act on or reject suggestions as they pleased. To earn their princely salaries (which varied between three and ten dollars each) members were obliged to visit each of the fifteen schools twice a year or forfeit their pay. They had to use diplomacy with the agents lest they be maligned by them in their reports. When conditions in any district fell short of the requirements of state law, the Committee made enemies if they so much as threatened to file a report. These men should be remembered with respect
146
NEW ENGLAND MINIATURE
and gratitude for their devotion and self-sacrifice. They were almost always ministers, doctors, lawyers, or former teachers- educated or experienced men. The agents whom they must in- fluence were often men with no education who sought the office in order to have the power to hire relatives or friends as teachers regardless of their qualifications. With these difficulties in mind, some of the reports are almost humorous in the manner in which they strain to find something to praise in the opening paragraphs and then bear down heavily on the needed criticism which usually comprised the larger portion of their observations. Dr. Jeremiah S. Putnam (1797-1877) was a past master of this; his style, erudite yet sprightly, makes his reports interesting reading. Along with Dr. Putnam, Charles C. Barrell, John A. Swett, Samuel E. Payne, Almon H. Merrow, Dr. John C. Stewart, Luther Junkins, Washington Junkins, Samuel W. Junkins, Edward A. Chapman, and Dr. Edward C. Cook were the pioneer promoters of good schools in York.
By 1850 there were fifteen school districts. In 1853 the town voted to have the report of the Superintending School Com- mittee printed and distributed with the annual auditor's report; at first the two reports were printed as separate booklets, but now they are incorporated into the annual Town Report. The hand of Dr. Jeremiah S. Putnam is apparent in that long first report. He first showed that the attendance record was not to be considered unfavorable-that the census of available pupils made by the agents listed all between the ages of four and twenty-one, whereas most of those over sixteen years of age "were engaged in the active business of life". He praised the parents for their "pecuniary sacrifices" to buy new books "with an inconsiderable amount of opposition. ... There never has been a year in the history of our schools in which so radical a change of text books has been effected.
"To sustain and foster these nurseries of learning", he continued, "will require the cordial co-operation of all our citizens, the zealous aid of the warm-hearted teacher, a more general at- tendance of the scholar, and a more thorough system of super- vision and visitation, and lastly-MONEY".
In the Committee's report for 1855, returning to the same theme, he showed that York was currently appropriating the least amount for education of any of the sixteen towns in York County.
In 1857 the town, apparently dissatisfied with this report, voted to dispense with a school committee and hire a supervisor
147
Schools
of schools for the salary of thirty dollars which had been paid to the whole Committee. Luther Junkins was chosen for the position, 118 votes to 0.
In his report for 1858, the supervisor announced the in- auguration of a change in District 1 where there were two school- houses; all pupils under eight years of age were to be assigned to one school called the primary, and all over that age to be assembled in the other school and graded according to age rather than to qualification. There may be some connection between this ruling and the fact that outbreaks of disorder, organized attempts to break up a school, schoolteachers treated disrespectfully and even manhandled, for which behavior pupils were threatened with court action, first began to appear in the following years. The town voted to return to the Superintending School Committee system.
It is possible that the demoralizing effect of war times may have been partly responsible after the Civil War broke out in 1861. In the 1866 report "the committee suggests to agents of districts, great care in the selection of teachers-procuring not such simply as are in a literary point of view qualified, but such as are in all respects qualified for that particular place". (The italics are the Committee's.)
In 1873 by Act of Legislature, the state extended an offer to all towns in Maine to share equally, up to five hundred dollars, in any appropriation made by a town to establish a free high school. The subject was brought up in town meetings almost an- nually thereafter, but action was indefinitely postponed.
The first evidence of a combined effort to supply free transportation to pupils appears in the report for the year 1869, when it was noted that attendance and scholarship had been good in District 13 because the parents voted money to be spent to take the children to school in inclement weather. This action marks also a gradual growth of interest in schools by the parents in various districts. Judging by the tone of their subsequent annual reports, the School Committee became emboldened to present conditions more bluntly, and in 1873 (Dr. Putnam was again on the Board) they declared flatly that teachers who failed to carry out state requirements would be dismissed, and that "the crying wants of our Town are-Agents who know their duties and will perform them". This was indeed a turning point.
Between 1873 and 1878, District 1 was hard pressed for suitable classroom facilities in the Village. Because the old school-
148
NEW ENGLAND MINIATURE
house behind the church was no longer adequate, the old gaol was also used, and a room in the town hall was set off for the grammar school. Mrs. Mary Caswell Baker used to tell gleefully that she had received her early education in the cemetery, the town hall, and the gaol. The schoolhouse now used as the Village Fire Station was finally built in 1879. The report for that year carried a strong plea for a free high school.
In the succeeding years several innovations were suggested. In 1881 the Committee asked for the introduction of music into the schools. In 1882 citizens contributed a sum sufficient to buy a Webster's Unabridged Dictionary for the grammar school. In 1884 there was a request for a playground for every school. In 1888 the town voted to authorize the selectmen to hire a truant officer.
In 1888, the State Supervisor of Schools having been suc- cessful after a five-year campaign in getting for all towns by an Act of Legislature the necessary permission, the town voted to abolish the district school system, and took measures to acquire ownership of the school buildings.
In 1889, under Article 15, the town voted to raise five hundred dollars for the support of a free high school. The first- year program resulted in a class being conducted for one term in the lower town hall. The town voted also to furnish free textbooks to all the pupils in each school.
In 1890, with only four hundred dollars raised, the high school was held, for one term each, in the Village (District 1), Scotland (District 4), and in Cape Neddick (District 11). Thus the high school became a moving school-in the nineties known somewhat scornfully as the "High School on Wheels".
The free high school did not meet with success in its first ten years. Supervisor of Schools Edward A. Chapman summed up the reasons in his report for 1889 and 1890. "The school", he wrote, "does not meet the needs of the more advanced pupils. By changing from place to place after each term a regular course of study cannot be pursued. ... in order to graduate. This result can be secured only by the permanent location of the school". In Cape Neddick he was obliged to admit some pupils of lower grades in order to make up his enrollment. In the second year he noted that few attended all of the terms, and therefore the whole body of pupils was not equally advanced. In 1891 no sum was raised for keeping a high school.
149
Schools
And so it varied during that decade. In some of those years there were no high-school classes; in 1899 they were held at the former Christian Church building which stood at the fork of U.S. 1 and the Berwick Road, then known as Scotland Corner. The first students to graduate were Rebecca Parsons and John Junkins of the Class of 1899.
In 1900 ten thousand dollars was appropriated as a start towards a high school, and in 1902 the new building on the Organug Road was formally dedicated-at the private expense of the Superintending School Committee. The modern school system may be said to have arrived with that dedication.
The new grammar school building was completed in 1914, built on Scituate Row, on what was originally the Curtis grant. Over a period of years the remaining district schools have been abandoned. With the closing of the Agamenticus School in 1957, the number of schools has been reduced to four, the two in the Village, one at York Beach, one at Cape Neddick.
Since that day, more than fifty years ago, when the town could at last speak with pride of its new high school, there has never been any opposition voiced in town meetings to the appro- priation of any sums of money requested by the school authorities. Many graduates have gone on to college, and having acquired higher education, more and more of them are returning to their home town.
Thus far has the Town of York progressed since the days when Supervisor Luther Junkins wrote in his report for 1858:
So much more is required of us now than of our fathers in bygone days, in the infancy and early history of our Country, which has so rapidly increased in population, wealth, territory, and power, stretching from the Atlantic Ocean on the east to the Pacific on the west, [and which] from a population of about 3,000,000 has increased to 30,000,000, and from thirteen to thirty-three states.
THE OLD GAOL AND THE COURT HOUSE
FROM A STUDY of the earliest court records, it would appear that the first settlers tried to get along without jails and prisons by carrying out the decrees of the courts as soon as sen- tences were passed. Debts were settled by execution on real or personal property. A debtor could be taken and sold into servitude for such time or labor as would be considered the value of the obligation. The ducking stool and the stocks and bilboes were the correctives ordered when the levying of fines proved inadequate; sometimes the guilty parties were offered a choice of either, and sometimes they did penance in both ways. The lash was the pun- ishment for certain crimes or for repeated offenses, and here again damage to the person could sometimes be avoided by payment of cash or the equivalent. In short, it seems that justice was done in daylight hours, and then the offenders returned to their homes.
In twenty years' time, however, the number and character of new settlers changed, and the need of a prison or house of correction became evident. In a court session in 1651 it was "Ordered that the towns of Gorgeana and Kittery are to build each of them a pryson".
In 1653 the Province Court ordered all the towns to send to York their contributions towards building the prison. In 1666, "It is ordered that this Western devision of the Province of Mayn shall build a sufficient pryson at York before the last of September next, in 1667".
It was surely in use in 1668, for in April of that year Peter Weare, committed by royal justices for getting signatures to petitions favoring Massachusetts, protested that he was "at last cast into prison where I found nothing but ye flore to ly upon". (Doc. Hist. Me., IV, 214.)
In a court held in 1673 "the Overseers of the pryson [were] presented for not finishing thereof by which neglect the County is Damnified the said persons being Capt. John Wincoll, Edward Rishworth, William Hammond and Ric: Banks are fined each 5£
150
151
Old Gaol and Courthouse
the Court doth order that the said Committee shall carry on and perfect the work of the prison by the first of December next". And in the same session John Parker, sued by George Norton "for not detayning Peter Weare in pryson", in defense declared "the pryson was not sufficient". The keeper probably meant that the prison was too cold for habitation. In 1674, by order of the court :
In regard of the Couldness of the present season and the Inconveniency and unfitness of the Pryson to entertayne prisoners this winter time, it is therefore ordered that until a more convenient pryson be erected or the season be more moderate it shall be lawful for John Parker His Majesty's Gaolkeeper at York to remove his prysoners to his house- Prysoners shall have their lyberty to come to the meeting on the Lord's Day with the keeper of the Gaol.
In 1686 "This court doth order and appoint that the Prison at Yorke shall be sufficiently repayred with the addition of a Chimney and at Fort Loyal-both which Gaoles shall serve as Houses of Correction". It may be assumed that the fireplace in the dungeon was built as a result of this order. Until years later, the whole structure consisted of only one dungeon.
In the October 1695 Court of Quarter Sessions, it was ordered: "It being hazardous travelling with prisoners to the Common goale by reason of the Indian Enemy also the Goal being much out of Repair. ... the Sheriff shall Constitute any house which he thinks most convenient for a common County Goale for the present". In the April term following, the court ordered a committee "to see whats amiss" in the prison, but limited to ten pounds the cost for repairs.
During Queen Anne's War a special emergency prompted the court in April 1707 to issue the following order: "Whereas the Gaol at Kittery is out of repair and inasmuch as the Court of General Sessions of the Peace and Inferiour Court of Common Pleas is appointed to be holden at York during the war Ordered that a Small Prison be erected in York forthwith". On October 1, 1707, a contract was let out for a building "to be 24 foot long 16 foot wide & 7 foot between the floors" at a cost of twenty-two pounds-but until 1710 this prison, used as a house of correction, "was insufficient by reason there is no chimney therein".
In 1735 the court ordered a sufficient yard to be made of boards around His Majesty's Gaol in York. In 1736 Joseph Young, jailer, was paid five pounds for digging a cellar for the prison.
152
NEW ENGLAND MINIATURE
In 1737 Sheriff Joseph Plaisted in his "Memorial" recom- mended that the prison be "enlarged and amended". The court ordered that an addition with a cellar be built and gutters be attached to the old gaol. This appears to have been the first wood- en structure added to the stone part, and probably consisted of the kitchen and the large room and entry over the cellar. In following records the gaol is described as two parts-the stone dungeon called the Gaol and the wooden addition called the Gaol House. In 1746 the court ordered Sheriff Plaisted "to make proper partitions to the Gaol in York strong and sufficient to separate Criminals from Debtors".
In 1749 Jeremiah Moulton was involved, as judge and the recognized authority in town, in the imprisonment in the Gaol of white men held for murdering an Indian and wounding two others in Wiscasset. It was a delicate responsibility, calling for impartial but firm action. On the one hand Indians were demand- ing swift justice for the murder of one of their race; on the other, white men in York and elsewhere in New England, protesting that the killing of Indians was not murder, threatened a jail delivery. Nine guards were posted on twenty-four-hour duty at the Gaol for several days. During this time actions at the Old Gaol were carefully directed by the General Court in Boston and anxiously followed by authorities in many New England towns. One man was acquitted in a trial held in York, and the other two were taken to Massachusetts for trial. The resentment of the Indians over the outcome was one of the causes of their participa- tion in the Seven Years' War.
Colonel Jeremiah Moulton and others, in a letter dated May 21, 1751, to Lieutenant-governor Phips asking for instruc- tions, after reporting the imprisonment at York of two men sus- pected of murder on the high seas, stated :
Have committed both to Stone Gaol. . .. William Sutton in Irons in a separate room. . .. Sutton seems to be a person able to carry of [f] deep Stratagems and his guard have informed us that he would undoubtedly kill some of them in order to escape. There being but few apartments in the Gaol and other Prisoners there, [they] are afraid of his doing Mischief.
A committee appointed by the court in 1763 was ordered to carry out the making of extensive repairs, alterations, and addi- tions. The number of workmen employed and a long list of ma- terials-brick, rock, glass, oak plank, hair, etc .- was recorded,
153
Old Gaol and Courthouse
also the sum of three hundred pounds, four shillings and four- pence spent, but no description of the changes made was given. But the great amount of money spent and a reference made in a report by another committee in 1792 (" ... this stone apartment was prior to the year 1760 the only place of confinement. Since the rooms above it have been provided .. . ") lead to the belief that the second story was built in 1763.
No reports of further significant changes have been found in the court records until in 1770 a committee was appointed "to fix the Limits of the Prison or Gaol yard. ... and to fix Such Marks and Monuments as to them shall seen necessary". Their report :
Beginning at the Northerly corner of the Stone Wall on the Southwest side of the Country Road leading from the Court House in York to Wells, which corner is opposite to the Garden of the late Doctr Alexander Bulman deceased and from the corner of the said Stone Wall to run [NW] to a Ledge or flat Rock marked with the letter Y then [SW] to a corner of the Stone Wall being the North west corner of lands now improved by Moses Safford [the Hugh Holman property] then S 50° E by lands .... of said Safford 6 rods and 13 links to land heretofore of Alexander Bulman, dec., then NE or thereabouts as the Gaol Yard and fence adjoin- ing thereto now stands to the corner of the Stone Wall first mentioned within which limits and Bounds are included the Gaol, a small Barn now improved by the present gaoler Robert Rose, a Barber's Shop standing very near the corner of the Wall first mentioned built some years since by the said Robert and a Shed lately built by the said Robert near said flat Rock aforesaid marked with the letter Y.
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.