USA > New Hampshire > Coos County > Lancaster > History of Lancaster, New Hampshire > Part 19
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On the face toward the street, and directly above the water trough, is this inscription :
" Thou shalt bring forth them water out of this rock. So shalt thou give the congregation and their beasts drink."
On the globe surmounting the fountain the words ; "PRO BONO PUBLICO."
These fountains render to the village, and to the traveler over our streets, a valuable service, one that it is impossible to properly esti- mate in words or figures. One has to see the use of them, especially
SUMMIT MT. WASHINGTON, 1862.
KENT FOUNTAIN.
BENTON FOUNTAIN.
..
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LANCASTER FROM 1850 TO THE PRESENT TIME.
on the hot days of summer, and the mute expressions of comfort shown by the animals daily throughout the year, in order to appre- ciate their worth to the community. No more fitting memorial can be made of the dead by their friends. One such fountain does more for humanity and civilization than all the granite and marble that can be piled up in a cemetery, I care not how artistic that pile may be. The one is a living memorial, imparting life, strength, health, cheer and comfort every day; the other is a dead thing, a " storied memorial."
In 1890, the population of the town had reached 3,367, and the valuation, as shown by the assessment for that year, $1,636,813.00. The valuation is low, and probably does not represent more that 75 per cent. of the actual value of property in the town. The value of the property of the people of this town shows conditions that are satisfactory evidence of prosperity, and that all the comforts of life can be found among the citizens. The showing of the present time is much better than seven years ago. Add to the valuation, which is the basis of the taxes of the town, the vast amount of property not taxed by the town, and the wealth record of Lancaster would be swelled to a very much larger sum, a sum that would rank it as one of the wealthiest of country towns in the state.
An event of considerable interest, and well worthy a place in these chronicles, was the coaching parade of 1895, which was repeated in 1896, with great success.
For many years coaching parades have been held at Bethlehem and Conway, and other places of resort for summer tourists in this mountain section. These events have always been highly appreci- ated, both by the visitors and the citizens of the places in which they have been held.
In 1895, it was thought by some parties that Lancaster, inasmuch as it was quite a resort for tourists, should have a parade, or as they are more popularly styled, a gala day. After considerable corres- pondence with the managers of other coaching parades, railroads, and proprietors of the mountain hotels and boarding-houses, com- mittees were appointed at a public meeting called at the Lancaster House for that purpose, and all necessary arrangements were made for a gala day on August 15, 1895. The name under which it was advertised and managed was "The North-Side Coaching Parade." Encouragement was received that the proprietors and guests of the leading hotels and boarding-houses about the mountains would take part in the parade. The railroads, especially the Maine Central, cooperated to its success. This road generously loaned the commit- tee enough bunting to decorate all the public buildings of the vil- lage. The citizens took a deep interest in the movement, and by contributions of money and the elaborate decoration of their houses
12
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
guaranteed its success. The enterprise was well advertised; and when the day came it was one of those glorious days of summer that puts every living thing at its best. Heavy rains a few days be- fore had laid the dust and refreshed all nature. The day broke with a clear sky, and by eight o'clock the streets began to fill up with people. Streams of teams kept coming over the hills, and large excursion trains arrived from all the railroads, so that by ten o'clock there was such a throng of people as is rarely seen in a country village. Gov. Charles A. Busiel, and many distinguished citizens from abroad, were present to witness the event. Scores of finely- decorated coaches and carriages were in line, as well as a variety of exhibitions of the various industries and enterprises of the town. Two bands, the Berlin Cornet band and the Saranac band, of Lit- tleton, discoursed music on the occasion. Taken all in all, it was an indescribable profusion of beauty and pleasure, a scene never to be forgotten, but one that surpasses the powers of anyone to describe in the limits of the space that we can devote to it.
Grand as was this first gala day, as great as its success was, it was repeated the next year under the same management and committees. There were in it such variations from that of the previous year that made it even more attractive in many respects.
SEWERS.
Taken together with the completed system of water-works, the sewer system constitutes one of the most important public improve- ments in the history of the town. After the water-works were com- pleted there became a demand for adequate sewer facilities to render the use of the hydrant system more effective, as there was no means of disposing of a surplus of water consequent upon many uses of such a system. This, together with the question of disposing of sur- face water, and especially the sanitary requirements of the village, made a sewer system necessary.
There had been some public sewers and many private ones put in from time to time, but these were small and generally disconnected. Many of them discharged into the river within the limits of the village, which from an æsthetic and sanitary point of view made them extremely objectionable. It was desired to either do away with these or combine them and find a place of discharge farther down the river.
The first sewer ever put down in the village was in 1848, by Rob- ert Sawyer, surveyor of highways. It was a plank box, running from Dr. Stickney's office, where W. I. Hatch's jewelry store now is, to the river near the north end of the bridge. This undertaking pro- voked a great deal of comment and criticism at the time; but it proved to be a very serviceable sewer for many years. In fact, it
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COACHING PARADE, 1895.
ARCH ON MAIN STREET, 1895.
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LANCASTER FROM 1850 TO THE PRESENT TIME.
would be as good to-day as any if the proper precautions had been taken to keep it from filling with silt from the streets. It was never flushed, except as the surface water flushed it after a heavy rain- fall. When the sewer was cut through in the summer of 1896, at the corner of Main and Middle streets, the plank were found to be perfectly sound, and will last yet for many years.
Other sewers were put in from time to time as there was a press- ing demand for them. In the March meeting of 1894, a move was made to have a complete and perfect system of sewers put in. A committee was appointed to investigate the needs of the village and have a survey made, and report to the next meeting as a basis of action in the matter. This committee took the matter in hand, and securing the services of F. H. Fuller, C. E., had a survey made of the village streets, and reported the results to the annual meeting of 1895. The matter was discussed, and brought up at an adjourned meeting. It went over again until at the March meeting of 1896, when a committee was appointed to act in connection with the se- lectmen in putting in a system that should meet the demands of the village, and also Grange village in the eastern part of the town. The sum of $30,000 was raised by bonding the town to pay off its float- ing indebtedness, the remainder to be used upon the construction of the sewer system as far as it would complete it that year. The work to be done upon the sewers was to be so done as to be the beginning of a system that could, in the future, be completed and perfected to meet the needs of the village.
The committee appointed to serve in connection with the select- men were: I. W. Drew, J. I. Williams, H. O. Kent, Burleigh Rob- erts, and George F. Black. The selectmen were: William H. Hart- ley, Joseph D. Howe, and Gilbert A. Marshall. This joint commit- tee met and organized March 21, 1896. Henry O. Kent was made chairman, W. H. Hartley, clerk.
G. H. Allen, C. E., of Manchester was engaged to examine ex- isting sewers and investigate the several plans proposed. Previous surveys made by Williams & Osborne were approved by Mr. Allen, and the work of construction proceeded.
It was found that after providing for the payment of town debts then outstanding there was left, available for sewer construction, $10,000. The work commenced June 23, 1896, under the direction of W. H. Hartley, J. D. Howe, and G. A. Marshall (selectmen), as an executive committee of the joint committee. G. H. Allen was made consulting engineer, with Williams & Osborne doing the de- tails of the engineering work on the ground.
The committee decided to employ only labor from the town, by which means encouragement was offered to the working men of the town, instead of bringing in foreign labor of a cheaper and question-
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
able order. This was a wise measure from several points of view, and was highly commended by the citizens of the town.
The outlets were sought, and located on Isreals river. Three dis- tinct systems were decided upon. The first one includes all the ter- ritory south of Isreals river, and discharges into the river on Water street, a little above the bridge of the B. & M. railroad.
The second division comprises Bunker Hill street east of Summer street, Summer street south of Bunker Hill street, Middle street, Hill street, Fletcher street, Richardson's court, Main street south of Bunker Hill, and Canal street, with the outlet on the Hopkinson meadow.
The third division comprises Main street north of Bunker Hill street, North Main street, Kilkenny street, Bridge street, Wolcott street, Wallace street, Summer street north of Bunker Hill street, Bunker Hill west of Summer street, Cemetery street, Railroad street, and High street, and discharges near the railroad bridge.
This gives the village 25,570 feet of sewers, 13,424 feet of which is of the old system, and 12,570 feet of the new. The committee recommend the future construction of 16,628 feet, necessary to cover the entire village. There was also put in 500 feet in Grange village. The entire expense of the above work was $10,597.73.
With the completion of this system the village now has thorough sanitary drainage of both streets and buildings. This taken in con- nection with the water system gives every promise of a service that cannot but greatly enhance the healthfulness and comfort of life in the village. The only urgent needs to the perfection of the service of this sewer system are better grading of streets to facilitate the rapid running off of surface waters, and proper grading and mac- adamizing to facilitate cleanliness. All of these things will come, no doubt, in due time; and when accomplished will add greatly to the already attractive appearance of the village.
CHAPTER XII.
EDUCATION.
THE FIRST SCHOOLS-THE FOUNDATIONS OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS-LANCAS- TER ACADEMY-GRADED SCHOOL-HIGH SCHOOL-GENERAL INTEREST IN EDUCATION -PRESENT CONDITION OF EDUCATION IN THE TOWN.
The earliest attempts at education in the town were private enter- prises of which no records were kept, and hence after a lapse of more than a century we have very little exact knowledge of those first efforts to plant the school in Lancaster. The records of the first fifty years or more have been lost, so that all the exact informa-
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THE FIRST SCHOOLS.
tion we can get is found in the records of the town showing action at its meetings, as preserved in town records. Besides this there are a few private documents that throw some light on the sub- ject. There are interesting traditions connected with the first schools that are of interest, and we give them for what they are worth.
Tradition says that Ruth Stockwell, the first white woman in town, gathered the children of the first settlers into her house, and gave them some instruction in the simpler branches, as reading, spelling, and possibly arithmetic, and writing. How systematic, and how regular, or how long that sort of teaching was continued we are not informed. Tradition has been chiefly interested in connecting her name with the first real effort at teaching the children of her neigh- borhood. Her work may have been mere seed planting that ma- tured into a school, and called for what tradition also says was the first schoolhouse in town, a rude log cabin built somewhere on the river terrace eastward of the house of Ruth Stockwell, and near the house of her father, David Page. At all events, when the town was divided into districts, the one in that vicinity was numbered one, as indicating that it was older than number two in the Bucknam neigh- borhood. Just who was the first school-master in that old school in the Stockwell and Page neighborhood we are not quite sure.
A Mr. Bradley taught there in 1789, and may have been the first teacher for anything that we know to the contrary. It appears that Mr. Bradley taught that school for several years; but aside from the fact of his teaching there we know very little of him. We do know, however, as a matter of history that one Joseph Bergin from Boston, Mass., was the first teacher in the Bucknam neighborhood, now known as District No. 2, although the old numbers have no real significance except to those who were familiar with the dis- trict system, which was abolished in 1885, when the present town system came into use. Of him Edwards Bucknam wrote in his diary : "June 12, 1787, Joseph Bergin came up from Boston. June 13, Joseph Bergin went to wash his clothes at Lacous's. June 14, Bergin came to my house. June 20, Bergin went to keeping school for 6 months at $5 a month."
These first schools had short and irregular terms, as the people had little money to spend upon them, and the teachers were seldom men who cared to work for produce as they had no families to make use of such stuff. They could not market produce or convert it into money. When the schools were open, only the younger children could be spared to attend them. Adino Nye Brackett, who came to Lancaster at twelve years of age, said he never attended school after that time more than six months all told. Maj. John W. Weeks, who came here in 1786, left on record the statement that he
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HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
never attended school more than ten or twelve months in Lancaster. The same was likely true of many other families, though we have no knowledge of the fact.
The first settlers here were men and women of fairly good educa- tion, who were deeply interested in educating their children; but the conditions of life were so exacting that as soon as a boy was old enough to work he had to go with his father into the woods or fields, and do the work of man. He might be spared a few months in midwinter when the demand for his labor was the least. Some of the more ambitious boys studied by the light of birch bark around the hearth after the day's work was done, and in this way added to what they got in the schools. We have no evidence that the town gave any financial aid to the schools until 1790, when at a town-meeting, December 13, thirty bushels of wheat were appro- priated for the schools that year. Wheat was then a sort of circu- lating medium that took the place of money, as we have elsewhere stated. Nearly all appropriations were then voted in wheat. At that time the town must have had two schools, which would have given each one the magnificent sum of fifteen bushels of wheat for a year's support of schools. This sum was, however, " in addition to what the law directs." How much the law directed to be raised for schools I am not sure of; but under the Provincial Laws towns were required to raise certain amounts, and to provide schools for certain lengths of time. The people in this case evidently wanted longer terms of school than they were required by law to provide. They had themselves enjoyed the advantages of pretty good schools in the older towns from which they came, and wanted their children to have as good schools as they could afford.
As the growth of population increased and expanded the inhab- ited area of the town, the demand for better schools grew stronger, and at the same time more schoolhouses were needed. So at the annual town-meeting of 1794 a committee of nine persons was chosen to divide the town into school districts. That they provided for three schools is very probable. As we have seen, the first two schools were started at the extreme ends of the town. The village had by this time come to have about six houses, which made it almost the equal of either of the two older neighborhoods. The committee, when they came to divide the town, probably foresaw the importance of the situation of the village section as the future centre of business and residence, and made it school district number one. As a new schoolhouse was required by the Stockwell section it was given third place in the list of districts, while the Bucknam neighborhood retained its former number as second on the list of schools.
By a wise provision of the original grantees of the town the terri-
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THE FOUNDATION OF THE PUBLIC SCHOOLS.
tory immediately along Isreals river from the grist mill dam to the upper dam, as we know them to-day, was reserved for mills, the rent accruing from the lands to go for the support of schools. The difficulties in the way of mills were so many and so great that the rentals of the privileges, when leases were made, were only nominal sums named as rents or considerations. The mill site now occupied by Frank Smith & Company's mills was leased to Em- mons Stockwell by a committee acting for the town, for one pint of wheat a year, the same to be paid when called for by the selectmen. One equal share of the original lands of the township was set apart for a school, and a lot adjoining the church lot, in the original vil- lage lot, was designated for a school. Such school was never established because the two other schools of which I have spoken made it unnecessary. The distribution of population did not favor a school at that point; and no schoolhouse was built until 1833, when the old first district was divided in consequence of the growth of population on the south side of Isreals river in the village. This new district was known as No. 12 until it was con- solidated with No. I to form a union district in 1869 (the school- house was on the common, opposite the east end of the old meet- ing-house).
Thus were laid the foundations of the public schools of the town, and it only required time to develop them, and make them a bless- ing to the thousands of men and women who have taken advantage of their services.
The story of these schools we have told in detail in another place, and therefore refer to them here only as showing their relation to other events and movements as they took place.
An event of great importance in the intellectual development of the town, and, in fact, to a considerable extent that of neighboring towns, was the establishment of Lancaster Academy in 1828, under a special charter from the legislature. Some thirty years of the administration of the public school system had made it evident that there was felt and recognized the necessity of an institution that should fit the sons of Coös farmers and traders for college, and to enter business life with a better training than the country, common school could give them. Accordingly some of the leading men of the town made a move for the establishment of an academy. Among that number we find named as the first trustees of the academy, William Lovejoy, John W. Weeks, Jared W. Williams, Richard Eastman, William Farrar, Thomas Carlisle, Samuel A. Pearson, Reu- ben Stephenson, and Adino N. Brackett. The academy was organ- ized, and opened its first term in the old flat-roofed court-house on the corner of Main and Bridge streets, in 1829, with Nathaniel Wil- son, a recent graduate of Dartmouth college, as preceptor.
I68
HISTORY OF LANCASTER.
At that time the country was being flooded with academies, that continued for about fifty years to serve a splendid purpose in the educational development of our country; and some of those old institutions, those that happened to secure sufficient endowments to guarantee their existence in the struggle with the free public schools of equal grade for patronage, are still doing much good. A few of them have had sectarian support from churches; but the Lancaster academy was free from all sectarian entanglements, and so remained through its whole active period of life. The work it did was of a high grade, and many hundreds of youth secured in it a good, prac- tical education. It had often as preceptors able men, college grad- uates, and teachers of experience.
When a new court-house had been built on another site, the lands on which the old one stood reverted to the heirs of Maj. Jonas Wilder who gave the land for court-house and jail on conditions of their use only for those specified purposes. The old building was bought by the academy, and in 1836 was moved to the lot now occupied by the present academy building and the Unitarian church, which church site had previously been that of the gun house. Here on the new spot an addition was put on the front of the building, and it continued to be used by the institution until 1861, when it was sold for a Baptist church and a new building was erected.
This academy continued to meet the wants of the community in the matter of higher education until within the past ten years when the people began to feel the influence of a better organized public school system in the state that included the furnishing of higher instruction free to the citizens. Not wishing to neglect this universal improve- ment of the free, public school, Lancaster people began to demand graded schools as early as 1865; but it was not until some years later that they could be organized. In 1869, the twelfth district was added to the first and a Union district created, and a suitable build- ing erected. From that date to the present the village district has kept pretty well up with the advance in educational development in the state.
After the village district had enjoyed the benefits of a graded school for some fifteen years, the demand for a free high school existed. After much discussion of the subject, an arrangement was entered into between the district and the trustees of the Lancaster academy, by which the pupils fitted to pursue the higher studies were taught in the academy at the expense of the district. This arrangement, with some slight modifications, continued in exist- ence until 1897, when by act of the legislature, Academy and Union District were combined, under the title "Lancaster Academy and High School." The town is now quite as well equipped in the mat- ter of schools as the average New England town of its size and
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GENERAL INTEREST IN EDUCATION.
wealth. Under the present township system the eleven schools in the town district are well managed, have good houses, and are amply provided with text-books and other appliances free to every child. These schools are open three terms of ten weeks each, making a school year of thirty weeks' school. We have treated of these separately in Chapter 9, Part II, and the reader is referred to that account, where each school has been given the attention that its im- portance merits.
In the matter of the support of schools, a spirit of liberality has always prevailed in the town, though much indifference has existed at times in regard to the character of the school buildings, more especially in the Union district. The buildings and equipment of these schools have for many years been unequal to the demands made upon them by large numbers of pupils and able teachers. Public opinion favors good schools, and the attendance has for some years been very good. The number of illiterates in town is very few, and those of school age who are not able to read and write are fewer still. The large foreign-born element of our population enter into the hearty support and use of the schools. There are no chil- dren in the town but have a school in reasonable distance upon which they may attend the length of time required by law each year.
In 1846 there was a great awakening of public opinion and inter- est in the matter of improving the public, or common, schools of the entire country. This movement was set on foot by Horace Mann, who was secretary of the Massachusetts State Board of Education from 1837 to 1848. He aroused the whole nation to a renewed sense of the importance of the free common schools. Lancaster caught the spirit of this movement, and, like hundreds of other com- munities throughout the country, called a mass convention to con- vene at the court-house on Nov. 11, 1846, for the purpose of organ- izing the people in order to more effectively improve the public schools. I find in the Coos Democrat, of Nov. 17, 1846, the fol- lowing report of that convention, and give it here just as it appeared in the paper :
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