USA > Vermont > Windham County > Rockingham > History of the town of Rockingham, Vermont, including the villages of Bellows Falls, Saxtons River, Rockingham, Cambridgeport and Bartonsville, 1907-1957 with family genealogies > Part 22
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For many years the Association awarded annually a prize of $50 to some member of the graduating class. Originally it was given to the student who had attended B.F.H.S. for four years and who showed the most improvement in their work during that time. In 1925 this ruling was altered to apply to the graduating student who had attended at least two years here and the award was based on scholarship as evidenced by faithfulness and attention rather than native ability; character as evinced by realiability and trustworthiness and contribu-
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tions to school life. In 1949 it was voted to own a placque to carry the names of award winners.
In 1928 the Association celebrated its 50th birthday since the first class graduated. Miss Elmendorf and Mrs. C. H. Williams, both of the class of 1874 and honorary members, were present. In 1955 the 50th anniversary of the Alumni Association since its rejuvenation in 1905 was observed. At the first celebration Judge T. E. O'Brien presented the school with a picture of Mary Barry Webb, assistant principal during his school days. Miss Judd suggested, at the 1939 meeting, that a history of the school and Association should be compiled including names and addresses of all graduates, a job which Mrs. W. C. Belknap had started in 1927. This work was con- tinued by Mrs. Thelma Reed Bronk for a number of years. It was Mrs. Belknap also, who, as Katie M. Carpenter and a member of the 1894 class, wrote the first class song ever used by any class. The preceding class was the first to publish The Oracle at graduation, the first school publication. Of that class of twelve, today Mrs. H. B. Underhill, nee Florence Young, Miss Gertrude S. Hayes and George Andrews are still living. Today the Hi-Schooler comes out each month and the Sampler appears each June honoring the senior class.
It was the 1937 officers of the Association, John Angell, Margaret Kane, Francis Bolles and Mildred Faulkner, who started the annual parade rolling, the dream child of Bolles and Angell. The first parade had a dampening effect on Alumni spirits as 200 grads marched in pouring rain with "Johnny" Angell leading on his old grey mare. But it takes more than rain, which has accompanied a number of parades with disas- trous consequences to the floats, to squelch the ardor of B.F.H.S. grads and the parade has grown bigger and better each year until today the Sunday afternoon event, which once took place on Friday evening, is one of the highlights of the year for Bellows Falls and vicinity with many out-of-town bands and drum corps and almost every class putting a float in the procession, held the week-end after graduation.
In 1938 it was voted to present a banner for the most original float which first went to the class of '36 for their chain gang float. At the 1947 Association meeting it was voted to replace the banner with a silver cup with numerals of the winning class on it, three successive winners retiring the cup for keeps to that class. The first class to win this privilege was that of '45 whose President, Bob Gillis, planned his float a year in advance. In 1956 the cup was retired by the class of '51, the second class to earn the trophy. At the '47 meeting an annual Christmas dance was voted and the same year twelve seniors who had left for service before graduation were voted into the Association, as well as Homer B. Ashland, Superintendent.
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It was in 1950 that FAlumni Day 'moved into 'a two-day: affair for the first time with games on Saturday and the parade on Sunday afternoon. Today things begin to hum on Friday night and ends on Sunday afternoon with the Alumni meeting following the parade. The week-end is filled with class reunions and every tavern and inn for miles around is reserved. Among the projects of the Association was 60 new band uniforms in: 1947 for the high school.
RURAL SCHOOLS
Once upon a time, Rockingham had 20 different schools including 12 districts and 32 teachers. That was in 1880 when the Cambridgeport School was built. In 1910 there were 7 rural schools: the Allbee or Sand Hill School, District No. 9; Bartonsville, No. 11; Lawrence's Mills, now Brockways Mills, No. 6; the Upper Meadow, No. 5; Cambridgeport, No. 7; Rockingham, Old Town, No. 3 and Pleasant Valley, No. 8. In 1912 there were five schools and in 1929 there were four. In 1955 the Bartonsville School, built in 1931 to replace the stone schoolhouse at the foot of the hill, now a summer residence, was closed, the last of the old "district" schools in town, Rock-, ingham having closed in 1951 and Cambridgeport in 1931 after more than 50 years of service. The Allbee school closed in 1912 having been in session since before 1888 and, like so many country schools today, became a dwelling house. Brockways Mills also closed in 1912 but both this and the Allbee Schools opened again in 1914 and 1915. The School at the Mills closed for good in 1924 and the children were carried to Bartonsville. This was the second school in District No. 6 originally called Nourse's Mills, as the first one washed away in the flood of '69, being located on the banks of the Williams River near the pre- sent railroad bridge. School was kept in the Parkhurst home which also housed the store and post office, until the new one was built soon afterwards, on the Springfield Road, safely . removed from the ravages of the river. For some years now this has also been used as a dwelling house but once, as a school, it had the reputation of being as "cold as a barn" in the winter and the district meetings held there often had to adjourn to a neighbor's house. But it was not too cold for divine service and the Congregationalist minister from Bellows Falls held Church and Sunday School there before the turn of the century.
District No. 4 was the Parker Hill School, once called the Springfield Hill School. It was a sort of open and closed affair according to the number of children which varied extensively. It closed in 1914 and again in 1924, was again in session in 1927 closing down in 1930 for good after which it was sold and later burned down. At one time most of the children were brothers; and sisters of the teacher, Miss Winifred Maloney and lived.
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at the top of the hill above the school on what is now the Blod- gett farm. It was often suggested that the school be closed and the children transported to the Rockingham School which was also small while the Bartonsville School was too large for one teacher, averaging 32 pupils. The idea of building a new two-room school and adding the children from Brockways Mills was also considered but never accomplished.
Pleasant Valley or the Wiley District, No. 8, closed in 1916 reopened but in 1930 was sold and moved to Chester as a dwell- ing house. An interesting story concerning the origin of the school was told by Miss Grace Wiley, life-long resident of the district, to the writer shortly before her death. She said that the location of the school was long a bone of contention between the Valley people and those on the lower road, now Route 103, both of whom insisted that it be built in their locality. The latter faction had the lumber piled and ready to build about where the golf course is today. But one night it disappeared and was found the next morning in the Valley-piled and ready to build! This tale is similar to the one told of the first Rock- ingham Meetinghouse whose timbers also moved one dark night, it is said, from the site of the first planned settlement of Rock- ingham which today is conceded to have been on the hill between the covered bridge across Williams River and the John Abbott farm instead of on the meadows near the Herrick farm as former- ly supposed. (Research of George Webb.) On both occasions, to the victor went the spoils.
The Upper Meadows, No. 5, had 20 pupils at the end of the spring term in 1900 but closed in 1907 and the children were carried to Rockingham until the Williams River School re-opened in 1914. District No. 5 is now a dwelling house owned by Gordon Jacobs of Bellows Falls. At one time this school had the unusual ratio of 38 children from four families, the Olcotts, Westons and two Allbee families. For many years Simon Allbee served as clerk of the district until, one year, evidently feeling that he had been "put upon" long enough, he loudly and flatly refused to serve any longer. And at this school, as at many others, it took many an argument to per- suade the voters to erect a shed to cover the school wood pile. Among the teachers at this school were Alma Richardson, sister of Lorenzo and Herbert, later in the shoe business in Bellows Falls; Mary Nourse of North Springfield, a beloved teacher of many years service; Kate Lamb, Emma Gould, Alice Wright and Mable Roundy (Kenyon) who says that she had 22 children in 12 seats, luckily the long benches of the period. When Mrs. Kenyon was still a student there herself under Miss Lamb and in a day when district schools were not graded, it was necessary to pass a test before entering high school. Such a test was given her by school board member H. D. Ryder upon the occa- sion of his visiting the school, in the form of an "example" in
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arithmetic, called a "problem" today, which doubtless more properly defines the operation. The young student promptly handed it back correctly completed, to the astonishment of Mr. Ryder who said that several businessmen in Bellows Falls had been unable to solve the same "example." It just happened, Mrs. Kenyon says, that the class had only recently finished working that page of the arithmetic book. Perhaps a good teacher plus a good pupil made the difference.
The Williams River School, No. 2, also once known as the Adams district, dates back to the Civil War when school was kept in a small frame house by Henry Josiah Stoddard, uncle of Senator Henry Stoddard, who took up his profession without benefit of high school or college. When the new school was built, the old house was moved down the road to the Stoddard farm where it still stands, used for many years as a hog house, blackboards and all. Senator Stoddard likes to say that his uncle "taught school in a hog house." After a number of years the pupils here decreased until the school was closed and the remaining youngsters were carried to Rockingham. In 1914, at a public meeting in the high school at Bellows Falls, it was voted to re-open this school as there were now sufficient children to warrant such action on the part of the school board. But in the meantime it had been purchased by H. D. Ryder who agreed to relinquish it-hoping to get back his $200 at the next town meeting! It was used continually for more than 20 years in all with George Kenyon carrying the children from the Meadows for 17 years, to both the Rockingham and Williams River Schools. Using horses and later a Ford car, he was a veteran in the business in a day when school buses were undreamed of. The old schoolhouse has today been remodeled as a depot for the school buses which it never knew.
The Barber School District, No. 12, on the hill beyond the covered bridge over the Saxtons River, was in session soon after 1880, the teachers including a Miss Davis from Putney (old record books owned by Mrs. Melvin Noyes) and Miss Katharine "Kate" Stevens, now Mrs. Walter Glynn. This was located near Barber Park and named for the same family who originally owned a farm in that place.
Transportation to the district school was once a matter of. everyone for himself with the town re-imbursing them. Or a neighbor collected a load of children to take to school, along with his own in a buckboard, a Model T or a sleigh. In good weather, many children walked. At one time Annie Benson, who was also an early R.F.D. Carrier, drove the school team from the Upper Meadows to the Rockingham School and in 1912 and '13, Hattie, her mother, furnished school transportation for a dollar a day. Some carriers got as little as 20c per day and some received $1.38, depending on the distance traveled.
High school students from Saxtons River went back and
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forth on the trolleys after 1900 with their fares paid by the town. After the trolleys ceased in 1924, Saxtons River and Cambridge- port students were carried by E. A. "Ned" Pierce who also carried those from Grafton who met him in Cambridgeport as well as grammar school children outside of the village for the Saxtons River grade school. He retired January 1, 1956, hav- ing driven the Saxtons River school bus into Bellows Falls High School for 30 years, from the days of the old seven-passenger car to the present load of 66 children in the big orange bus, without an accident. When he started, buses were driver- owned; today they are school-owned and often the private cars were more carefully tended by their owners and kept in warm garages. Drivers of any school bus must, by law, have a physical examination each year. Until 1926, country pupils provided their own transportation into high school at Bellows Falls and many a horse and buggy was put up for the day in the local livery stables, Frost's stable being the last one to fade from the scene when garages took over. Farm children, when back home at night and the horse stabled in the barn, did not go back to school that evening for basketball, play or glee club rehearsal.
In 1931, all grade school pupils living at least a mile and a half from the nearest school and all high school pupils, were allowed bus transportation on school-owned buses. Among the early drivers were Lester Parkhurst, Harry Spencer, Tecumseh Sherman and Edward Soboleski, the latter two the present drivers from Rockingham. Before school buses arrived in 1926, drivers who carried children in their own cars included Harry S. White, Lester Parkhurst and Mrs. N. L. Divoll, Sr. They were often late, coming and going, as the Model T's ploughed through the snow and mud of the dirt roads and even the main roads which were morasses from which they often had to be extricated with planks and farmer's horses in the '20's. Today the big buses pick up their loads from Pleasant Valley and Parker Hill and carry them into Bellows Falls and only on an icy day do they run into trouble.
Mr. Parkhurst started carrying the children in 1924 when his school district at Brockways Mills closed. He used two horses until he was hired by the town to carry high school pupils into Bellows Falls two years later, grade school children still going to Bartonsville. He started with one bus but eventually used six at various times with a special bus for out-of-town trips for the football and baseball teams. Once his bus tipped over on Parker Hill in the days of April mud and dirt roads. His old Ford was long a familiar sight as it gathered its young- sters along the road each morning and dropped them off again at night. A friend to all children, "Les" was in this 20th year of service when he was killed in a tragic accident one Sunday in March, 1945 as he returned from his self-imposed task of carry-
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ing all the local kids in to Sunday School at Bellows Falls. Sliding on the icy crossing into the path of an on-coming train, he was instantly killed in sight of his home and family, along with his son Roscoe of Ludlow, Vt., his son-in-law, Romaine Garrapy and Mr. Garrapy's 13 year-old son. The next year the first town-owned bus was purchased and in 1954 the school board bought a new 66-passenger bus at a cost of $5,000 with a taxi used for the children on the Darby Hill road. Cost of student transportation rose from $1,551.43 in 1914 to $3,040.13 in 1924. In 1933 it was $6,706.45; in 1942, $6,736.78; in 1943, $7,209.50; in 1945, $10,262.82 and in 1954, $7,507.26. The 1945 figure included purchase of new buses.
In 1916 rural school teachers with a year or less of teaching, started life at ten dollars a week and paid three dollars of it for board and room, usually that country board which, today, could hardly be figured in dollars and cents. A breakfast of oatmeal and thick cream poured out of a tin pail in the pantry, baked potatoes and sausages; buckwheat cakes from the tall brown batter pitcher which stood perennially on the back of the wood stove, augmented by maple syrup, was all the result of the landlady's work since five o'clock that morning. There never was much difference between dinner and supper with more baked potatoes, salt port and milk gravy or some of the home- cured meat from the crocks in the cellar. In winter there was always plenty of fresh-killed and frozen meat hanging in the barn. And lots of pie for dessert as diets were not of major importance in those halcyon days, vitamins practically unheard of and no farmer's wife considered fruit important to the menu.
A summer session at an approved normal school upped the teacher's stipend forty years ago to the munificent sum of twelve dollars a week. In 1913 a rural teacher received $9.67 per week. Experienced town teachers made about $13.00 a week. About 1920, some towns paid their "female" teachers $7.17 a week but male teachers three times as much, a hang- over, evidently, from the early days when masculine intelli- gence had a higher monetary value. In 1934, rural teachers in Rockingham received about $25 a week.
In 1912, the school report was a separate booklet and not included in the Town Report. That fall there were 108 pupils in the rural schools of the town but the number dwindled to 84 during the winter term. In its detailed and interesting report, the booklet showed that often rural teachers did their own janitor work like Winifred Maloney on Parker Hill and often a woman's name appeared as receiving remuneration for "clean- ing schoolhouses." For many years Mrs. Hattie Wooley who lived near the Rockingham schoolhouse and who sent a big family there, was "custodian" and had the fire going early on those bitter winter mornings when the children and teacher, too, stumbled in, half frozen, to huddle around the cheerful
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POSTAL EMPLOYEES WHEN POST OFFICE WAS CONSTRUCTED
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U. S. POST OFFICE IN BELLOWS FALLS
BROOKSIDE MILK
hate Spe 1-THE
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BELLOWS FALLS CO-OPERATIVE CREAMERY
.QCBINGHAM
HOSPITAL
ENTRANCE TO PARKING LOT AND NEW ROCKINGHAM MEMORIAL HOSPITAL BUILT IN 1955
MRS. HETTY GREEN
Bello ws Fallo 9
RESIDENCE OF HETTY GREEN, Now Owned by The Village of Bellows Falls, the front as a Park, the rear as a Parking Lot
NEW ROCKINGHAM SWIMMING CENTER AT BELLOWS FALLS PLAYGROUND, Constructed in 1958
MINARDS POND BRIDGE AND GATEHOUSE
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warmth of the big chunk stove in front of the teacher's desk.
Inexperienced teachers were always placed first in rural schools, "to cut their teeth" although there was often nine times as much work to do as in a single grade in town. Those days are over in Rockingham, for better or for worse, although there are still one-room schools among the hills and valleys of Vermont where young neophytes start their teaching careers the hard way. But the memory of those little schools will live long in the memories of those who taught there and of those who studied there.
In 1931 the Town of Rockingham received the Proctor Prize for the best school in the county the preceding year. The award of $100 was given to the Bartonsville School and used to beautify the school grounds.
AMUSEMENTS AND RECREATION OF HALF A CENTURY
Good times fifty years ago were simple as compared with those of today. Beginning with ping-pong and croquet of the nineties, they moved steadily along the trail of His Master's Voice, silent films and hay rides and the "talkies" to radio and TV today. Youth was once thrilled with such country plea- sures as sleigh rides when the livery stable furnished a long sled and two pair of horses or a farmer oblingly hitched up his wood sled and spread it with hay, fragrant bedding for the romances of long ago. Or buffalo robes and straw kept every- one warm on the road to Grafton, Westminster or Chester where an oyster supper and dance awaited them, each at a quarter a head. Such songs as Seeing Nellie Home and The Bear Went Over the Mountain rang under the cold stars.
Box socials were in style in the district school or Grange to raise money for a paint job or a new floor and then, as today, amateur theatricals and square dancing were popular, the latter with a local fiddler or orchestra furnishing the music. Winter evenings had not grown far from the isinglass door of the parlor heater or the snapping wood fire in the kitchen stove for central heating was still an innovation especially in the country. The Youth's Companion and St. Nicholas, The Old Farmer's Al- manac and The New England Homestead went hand in hand with the phonograph with cylindrical rollers, apples and popcorn and such games as flinch, pit, caroms, dominoes and authors.
Husking bees began when the last corn was shocked into rustling wigwams in the October fields and ripe ears were piled high on barn floors. Red ears entitled a fellow to kiss his girl and work was followed by cider and doughnuts or more sub- stantial refreshments and the evening ended with dancing on the cleared floor to Money Musk and Pop Goes the Weasel. Each spring as the mud dried in the streets, the sidewalks echoed to roller skates and the pat-pat of rubber balls on the
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end of a long elastic band. Then was heard, through open win- dows, the pied piper's song, the music of the hurdy-gurdy man. As he set his hand organ firmly on its one leg and ground out the thin tunes of the Blue Danube, children gathered to follow him, to dance on the sidewalk, to timidly offer their hoarded pennies to the monkey in his tiny costume, who collected the coppers in his red cap then leaped back to his master's shoulder. The hurdy-gurdy was as American fifty years ago as the good five cent cigar, as much a sign of spring as house- cleaning or arbutus on Oak Hill where were also held many a corn roast and picnic. Children played in the brook in Wil- liam's Orchard to whose spring their parents carried jugs and pails for water when the Pond annually "turned over." Teeter- ing on the edge of a lip of land on Oak Hill, behind the New Terrace, was the famous stone known to all and sundry as "Hip-hurrah Rock," doubtless named from the small fry who, balancing precariously on top, shouted their challenge to the valley below. This rock has long since gone over the bank to oblivion below but from the rock was once a long view of the river and the village and, in late afternoon, the breath-taking spectacle of the great gold cross on St. Charles Church as it caught the western glory of the sun. This spot has been swallowed by the Griswold development today. TEMPUS FUGIT.
In 1919 there was much agitation in Vermont concerning motorcycle races which came in for severe castigation from Secretary of State, Harry A. Black, aided and abetted by other Vermont towns. Especially prominant was the notorious race which started in the Square on the Fourth of July of that year and which was won by E. K. Chase of Bellows Falls. Its course included Rutland, Manchester, Bennington and Brattleboro, over bad roads in many areas. Bennington became highly indignant over the affair although for several years these races had been popular in Worcester, Mass. But the Vermont town asked hotly what the "prominent men of Bellows Falls" were thinking of to "promote a motorcycle race over the highways of Vermont." It added that in their town, motorcyclists were fined for speeding their machines instead of "being offered inducements to get up more speed." The Rutland Herald made veiled innuendoes about a certain legislator who had put up one of the prizes. The legislator being the editor of the TIMES, he at once assured Bennington and the world in general, that he and other "prominent men" may have been misled about the affair. However, the secretary of state was finally persuaded that the whole thing was in the light of an endurance test and not a speed test and everyone was forgiven with strict orders to ask permission in the future for such events.
A club of more than thirty years standing is the Bellows Falls Country Club. Although the first ball was teed off by the President, Dana J. Pierce in 1922, it was not until April 25
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of the following year that a committee met to consider a Country Club for local enthusiasts. This committee consisted of Fred H. Babbitt, Albert H. Chandler, Clarence C. Collins, Erwin S. Whitcomb and Dana J. Pierce. It resulted in the purchase of the Frank Lane farm in Rockingham that year which con- sisted of 95 acres providing nine holes of golf with a 50 acre meadow and pasture, brook, three natural spring holes and the Williams River, providing natural hazards and a water supply. It cost $3,700 and was immediately incorporated with 800 shares authorized by the Corporation to be sold for $25 each. The first meeting of the incorporators was held in Bellows Falls May 3, 1923 with the above committee elected as Directors and Warner A. Graham as Clerk of the Corporation. A mile above Rockingham village, six miles and fifteen minutes from Bellows Falls on Route 103, it was chosen against other locations for its accessibility and nearness to nearby towns with potential members. Many people from Springfield, Vt., became members until they opened their own course in 1953. In 1925 the club borrowed $1,500 to build a new water system, the same year that Eddie Duffy was pro. In the spring of 1941 the clubhouse burned but was rebuilt at once and functions today with a large membership. In 1946 the world's one-armed golf champion put on an exhibition at the club. Mangers of the clubhouse have included Nat Pintello and wife, Gordon Jacobs and in 1955, Al Joseph who was assisted in the kitchen by Mrs. William Sargent of Saxtons River. William O'Connor of Bellows Falls was greenskeeper with John Kawaky, assistant. Present officers are President, Edward C. Vail of Chester; Vice President, Howard W. Whitcomb; Treasurer, Mary M. Howard; Max D. Bliss, Sr., Harry J. McArdle and Helen N. Hayes, Clerk, all of Bellows Falls.
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