USA > Vermont > Bennington County > Manchester > Manchester, Vermont : a pleasant land among the mountains, 1761-1961 > Part 7
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Five school districts were established in June 1783 and nine in September 1791. Two more were formed by the town meeting of March 12, 1805 with another set off in 1841. In 1843 there were thirteen districts and one more was created by the town meeting of 1848. In 1849, 1859, and 1860 sixteen districts reported scholars. This seems to have been the maximum.
Consolidation and abolition of various districts diminished the number to the thirteen shown on the map of Manchester in Beers' Atlas of Bennington County published in 1869. One of these was a fractional district shared with Sandgate in the southwest corner of the town. The district in the Beartown area was also shared with Sandgate for a while.
Each of these school districts was a sort of municipal entity in itself, each having its own taxes, grand list, and officers. These were moderator, clerk, collector, treasurer, auditor, and prudential com- mittee-one man who had general charge of the district's affairs.
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MANCHESTER, VERMONT
Winter and summer schools were held, sometimes designated as "man" or "woman" schools depending on the sex of the teacher.
Money was raised by tax on the grand list of the district and a payment of one cent a day by parents for the attendance of their children. This was known as money raised "on the scholar." Town money derived from the rent of school lots was distributed to the districts according to the number of scholars in each. As far as can be ascertained, there were only three such lots in Manchester.
In Manchester, the town had considerable influence in school affairs in spite of powers centered in the individual districts. The town meeting of 1787 voted to rent school lands, and a special meet- ing that December voted an extension of time for payment of school lot rents to James Sweet and Elijah Benton because their barns burned.
A town meeting of 1790 appointed trustees of school lands, and one in 1796 voted to elect a school treasurer to take charge of money belonging to the schools. Thaddeus Stevens was elected. That meeting also chose a committee of one member from each district to number the scholars therein. Perhaps that did not work, as a town meeting February 8, 1798 voted to have the trustees take the num- ber of scholars in their respective districts and make a return to the school treasurer. The town meeting of March 31, 1800 voted to have one school treasurer, indicating that there may have been more than one previously or the word "one" may have been inserted in that particular vote.
The 1802 town meeting voted to have a committee of one in each school district to regulate the districts in town if necessary. Trus- tees for the school districts were also chosen at town meetings. They were provided for in Vermont's first school law, October 22, 1782-"Each town shall appoint one or more meet persons within each district ... who together with the Selectmen of the town shall be trustees of the schools in such towns." These trustees had the power to lease school lands and real estate and to administer such funds as bonds, leases, and securities pertaining to the schools. They apparently had nothing to do with district tax monies. Two trustees were chosen for the south school district on the main road in March 1806.
The town as a whole attempted to accept some financial respon-
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sibility for the schools in 1821. A meeting December 24 voted one- half cent on the grand list for the support of common schools. Later it was voted to reconsider that decision. A three-cent tax was voted March 12, 1827.
From district clerks' record books, district meeting warnings, and an i873 superintendent's report comes a fair picture of district school administration previous to 1892.
In 1853 District No. 3 (Manchester Village) collected money "on the scholar" for a total of $23.11 for the winter school and $24.44 for the summer school. Money on the grand list for the winter school totaled $31.15 and for the summer school, $53.19. The winter school, eighteen weeks ending April 1, 1854, was taught by Julia Ann Sargent. Her wages at $3.12 weekly amounted to $56.16. Apparently the district paid her board at $1.15 a week. The whole expense of the school that term was $94.22. There was $51.17 pub- lic money to meet this expense, leaving a balance of $43.05 to be raised. The tax was made to cover expenses of collecting runaways, abatements, and deficiency of the summer school bill viz .:
One cent per day on scholar totaling $23.11
Three and one half per cent on the grand list 31.15
$54.26
At a meeting of District No. 3 held at the schoolhouse on the last Tuesday of March 1861 at seven o'clock in the afternoon, officers were elected and it was voted that the summer school for the ensu- ing year be taught by a female. It was also voted that the entire ex- pense of supporting the school for the next year be raised on the grand list, except the teacher's board, for which the prudential committee was authorized to raise sufficient tax. It was voted that the teacher board "around" among the families sending scholars in proportion to the attendance. Total expenses for the school for the year ending March 31, 1861 were $236.32. The tax raised on the grand list was 15%.
Warnings in 1858 and 1869 contained articles to see if board for the teacher should be raised on the grand list or on the scholar. Apparently, as has been noted, it was the custom to raise part of school expenses by a tax upon parents according to the attendance
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of their youngsters. The first school law of 1782 sanctioned this method by calling it a "subscription" in proportion to the number of children sent to school. Such a subscription, however, was as legally collectible as any tax.
In 1893 when the single town school district became effective, the school tax was $.25 on the grand list of $10,911.09. The total tax was $.90 and the schools cost a total of $3,438.30. Teachers' pay came to $2,588.25 and there were 513 children of school age.
The school tax inched upward, increasing along with the grand list until it reached $1.00 in 1923, below which it never dropped. The grand list that year was $24,961.08 and the total town tax rate was $2.10. In 1945 the tax began to register wider gains, moving from $1.16 to $1.36 with the total tax changing from $3.25 to $3.61. Taxes jumped in 1950 from $5.50 to $6.25; the rise in school tax was from $1.76 to $2.94. In the meantime, the grand list had advanced to $28,445.03. In 1952 the school tax made $3.00 and four years later, $4.10. The grand list then made a new high of $30,737.25. After a year's respite at $3.77 the school tax went over $5.00 while the grand list dropped off. While a $5.00 tax is a far cry from the $.30 tax of sixty years ago, such is also the case with all school costs which the taxes must meet.
Teachers' salaries, which totaled $2,588.25 in 1893, were $76,300 in 1959. An article in a town meeting warning some years ago was to see if voters would authorize more than $24 to Burr and Burton Seminary for secondary school tuition. In 1905 the figure was $65; in 1960, $385. Fortunately, during this time when expenses and the taxes to meet them have so increased, the grand list repre- senting the town's wealth has tripled as the base for necessary taxes.
A legislative act of 1782 for school administration provided that school districts could be created, abolished, or united with another by vote of the town. Towns could also set a citizen of one district into another. A perusal of town meeting records up to 1892 reveals that Manchester voters certainly availed themselves of the powers granted by that law and the town's school districts were adminis- tered according to its provisions.
The individual school districts were a source of considerable neighborhood friction and must have been more or less of a munici- pal nuisance judging from the frequency with which town meetings appointed committees to report on the advisability of altering them.
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This problem appeared on the agenda of twenty-three meetings between 1793 and 1884. Recommendations from such committees were frequently dismissed, but sometimes followed. The town meeting of March 5, 1872 voted to discontinue District No. 16 by annexing it to No. 3. A meeting, March 7, 1876 at Adams Hall, Factory Point, voted to abolish District No. 14 and divide it be- tween Districts No. 8 and No. 12.
Families were permitted to change from one district to another, sometimes due to crowded conditions or to a case of neighborhood squabbles. A meeting in March 1795 voted to permit three families to be connected to the middle district on the main road and a meet- ing March 29, 1796 voted that Philow Sperry and James Sidway be added to the same school district.
In 1870 the Legislature passed a township school system law permissive in nature, but from 1870 to 1892 only forty towns changed from the district to town system and fifteen of those re- verted to districts. Manchester citizens consistently voted down the town system beginning in 1871 with a vote of forty to fifty-eight. The town system was voted down in four later meetings, but in 1892 the Legislature abolished the old district system and made the town system governed by three directors compulsory.
In 1893, in conformity with the law, Manchester elected three school directors setting their pay at $2 a day for time actually spent. They were H. Eggleston, elected for three years; W. H. Bundy, two years; William Hicks, one year.
Meetings, when the district system was in use, were held in late afternoon at five or six o'clock. Warnings for District No. 9 meet- ings from 1828 to 1830 were concerned with problems of repairing the old Center school or building a new one. An article in the 1835 warning was "to take into consideration whether the condition of our school cannot be improved by employing an additional teacher or a new one as the District may think best."
The warning for a school district meeting of the Mill District in 1818 indicates procedures in what was later known as the Factory Point or Center District :
NOTICE
The inhabitants of the Mill or Middle School District are hereby
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Warned to meet at the School House in said District on Friday the 30th instant at 5 o'clock P.M. for the following purposes viz :
1. To choose a moderator to govern the meeting.
2. To choose a District Clerk for the year ensuing.
3. To choose a school committee for the year ensuing.
4. To choose a District Collector for the year ensuing.
5. To make necessary arrangements for a Winter school and do other business proper to be done at said meeting.
By order of the Committee, Chester Clark, District Clerk.
One would judge by the number of petitions addressed to the clerk of the district to call a meeting that there was no regularly appointed time. Frequently articles of the warnings followed pur- poses indicated in the petitions. A petition to Aaron Baker, Clerk of the District of the Mill School at Factory Point, November 23, 1841 proposed :
To see if the inhabitants of said District will have a Woman School in addition to the Man School, and appropriate an equal share of the public money for the same, and also to see if the District will vote to raise money on the Grand List for the payment of schooling of children in said District who are unable to pay for themselves.
An excerpt from the clerk's book of District No. 4 (West Road) concerning the March 18, 1878 meeting provides another sample of school business of that period. After officers were elected, it was voted to have seven months of school, three in summer and four in winter.
Voted to raise 20c on the dollar. Voted to get 10 cords of 16-inch wood, beach, birtch, and maple to be got by the first of August, to be got by Henry A. Carpenter at $1.45 per cord, to be measured by Albert Whit- ten, to be put in the wood house and corded up. Board bid off by J. G. Whitten at 170 cts. a week. The Summer school to begin the first day of May. Winter school to begin the first of November.
However peculiar and unique these old-time school procedures may seem in comparison with today's practices, it should be re- membered that they were clearly spelled out in that first law of 1782 and reaffirmed in succeeding legislation. Manchester's administra- tion of its schools seems to have faithfully followed the prescrip-
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tions of early state legislation. Between 1764 when first settlement began and 1782 there was no outside guide nor any record as to the practices followed. It is probable that they did not differ much from those later recorded and it is quite likely that the law of 1782 was based on existing procedures.
The office of town superintendent was created by the Legislature of 1845. These superintendents-as many as three could be chosen -were elected in town meeting. The Manchester meeting, March 3, 1846, elected three superintendents of the common schools- Henry Blackaller, William A. Burnham, and John Pettibone. They were re-elected the following year, but in 1848 only one, Burnham, was elected. The law provided compensation of $1.00 a day, to be paid by the town. Town superintendents were frequently ministers. Their duties under this law were:
1. To assume the supervisory duties of the prudential committee.
2. To visit each school once a year.
3. To perform the duties generally pertaining to the office.
4. To examine teachers and grant certificates.
Records of teachers examined and certificated had to be deposit- ed with the town clerk. A typical report in May 1850 read :
Miss Susan S. Roberts has this day been examined and found qualified to instruct in Orthography, Reading, Writing, Geography, Arithmetic, and English Grammar, and having given satisfactory evidence of good moral character, she is hereby licensed to teach school in the town of Manchester for the term of one year from this date.
W. A. Burnham, Superintendent of Common Schools for the Town of Manchester. Received for record and recorded by me May 30, 1850 E. Harris, Town Clerk.
This process of certification was in effect until 1889. In 1885, eighteen such examinations and certifications were recorded by the town clerk.
The formation of unions of two or more towns for purposes of school supervision became permissive by law in 1906. In 1912 Man- chester, Dorset, and Sunderland composed District No. 38 with Harry B. Dickinson, superintendent. Supervisory unions were made mandatory in 1915 and the position of town superintendent
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was abolished. Manchester joined with four other towns, Arlington, Sunderland, Shaftsbury, and North Bennington. John D. Whittier was superintendent. His report in the 1918 Town Report was the first to appear in the annual town report. Others have been pub- lished in the Manchester Journal and at least one was published as a pamphlet in 1873.
In 1925 Manchester was in the Bennington North District with Dorset, Pawlet, Rupert, and Sunderland under B. P. Hamlin, superintendent. He was succeeded by Edwin L. Bigelow in 1926. Sandgate, Danby, and Mt. Tabor joined the group in 1935 with the name changed to Bennington-Rutland District, as three towns of the district were in Rutland County. That district is the same now with Arza Dean, superintendent. He succeeded Bigelow, who re- tired in 1957 after thirty-one years of service.
Medical inspection in the schools was voted in 1912, dental clinics in 1938. As town appropriations for the Manchester Welfare and Nursing Association increased, appropriations for medical in- spection and dental clinics ceased. Those functions have been un- der the management of the association since 1946.
Manchester schools have been fortunate in recent years for sup- port received from the Parent-Teacher Associations, which after the establishment of the central elementary school in 1950 united as one organization for the town.
Figures of school enrollment over the years are interesting, though their degree of accuracy is somewhat doubtful. For one thing, limits of legal school age have varied :
1795
four years to twenty
1797 four years to eighteen
1865
four years to twenty
1897
five years to eighteen
1915 six years to eighteen
When as many as sixteen individual districts were reporting en- rollments prior to 1893, frequently some were missing from the records. Statistics of later years did not distinguish between ele- mentary and secondary pupils. So taking these factors into consid- eration, the degree of uniformity in enrollment is rather surprising. The average number of pupils listed for sixty-six years since 1832
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is 463. The 1959 enrollment was 369 elementary and 144 secondary for a total of 513. In twenty of those sixty-six years, enrollment was in the 500s. The only year with any great variance was 1851 when 616 pupils were listed.
The history of the school buildings themselves may be of interest. On March 1, 1870 the clerk of District No. 3 was requested to warn a meeting to see what action the district would take toward procur - ing a new site for the schoolhouse and removing the schoolhouse thereon. The district was to vote a tax for defraying the expenses. The schoolhouse then stood between the Court House and the Congregational church. Eventually the school was moved to the lot on which it is now located, though at first it was set on the east side of the lot bordering on the West Road. F. H. Orvis provided the lot and paid for moving the school. He wanted to improve the view from the Equinox House. The schoolhouse was sold in 1952 and is now a private home.
The superintendent's report for 1873 sheds some light on the sort of environment that many of the early schools provided:
Some of the buildings in this town, if not all that could be wished, are very good. Those in Districts No. 3, 6, and 9 are convenient, comfortable and in most respects fitted for the use to which they are put. The one in No. 4 is not much inferior to any of the above, but for lack of five or six dollars worth of repair upon the underpinning and plastering, it has been very uncomfortable during the winter. Those in Nos. 2 and 10 have a trim external appearance and might be made as inviting within by a small outlay. Of the houses in the remaining districts you must excuse me from speaking, for I can find nothing pleasant to say of any one of them.
The superintendent continued his report by noting that though there was a marked contrast in the schoolhouses themselves, there was a striking uniformity in the matter of furniture.
A chair, a teacher's desk, and a broom are generally considered indis- pensable to the school room, though I find some houses where even these are luxuries too expensive to be enjoyed. But beyond this meager outfit, only one, even of the best of the school buildings, has been indulged. District No. 3-all honor to its intelligent liberality-has provided itself with an excellent set of wall maps. With this exception, any apparatus for assisting the teacher in the work of instruction will be sought in vain through the entire town.
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MANCHESTER, VERMONT
Additions were made to the Village school (No. 3) until in 1914 it became a three-room building. A four-room building was con- structed at the Mill District (Center) in 1829 to replace the original one located near the cemetery. The 1829 building was sold in 1869 for $85 and was moved to a site near the home of Harry Adams. It was known for years as Adams Hall and is now the Battenkill Locker, though it is now in a slightly different position on the property. A new school was built in 1869 which was remodeled and enlarged about 1887 to become the four-room Center school in use until 1950.
The next addition to the school system was the well-constructed, two-room Depot or Merriman school which cost $9,092.98 in 1912. This gave the town four one-room rural buildings-Barnumville, East Manchester, Hollister, and West Road; the two-room school at the Depot; a three-room building at the Village; and the four- room school at the Center. The teaching staff numbered thirteen.
This arrangement of seven scattered schools had, by 1940, be- come so obsolete when compared with changing concepts and prac- tices in elementary education that agitation began for something better, centralization of the town's schools into one modern plant. Such a possibility had, in fact, been discussed at a public meeting May 22, 1913. In 1944 the school board, having been requested by the P. T. A. and other organizations to investigate the situation with centralization in view, felt justified in reporting to the town meeting its findings and definite recommendation that construction of a central building be undertaken.
A meeting June 5, 1945 authorized the school board to purchase the Dyer lots at Manchester Center as a building site and provided $1,000 for the preparation of preliminary plans. The school board engaged the services of the firm of Webber and Ericson of Rutland to do this.
Various authorizations and appropriation of funds were voted by succeeding town school district meetings. The climax was a special school district meeting vote, April 29, 1949, for a central elemen- tary school, a gymnasium-auditorium, and community center. The meeting then proceeded to adopt Article 2 of the warning with more than the necessary two-thirds vote by Australian ballot for a $400,000 bond issue to finance the project.
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The contract for construction was let to the Swanburg Construc- tion Company of Manchester, New Hampshire, August 30 and work started early in September. The job was completed sufficiently for the new school to open in September 1950. Some of the class- rooms were short of chalk boards for a while and the contractors did not leave until February 1951 owing to delays in construction of the gymnasium. The bond issue was purchased by Halsey Stuart Com- pany at a very favorable rate of one and three-fourths per cent. The bonds are being paid off at the rate of $20,000 a year with the last payment due in 1969.
Dedication exercises were held Sunday, April 1, 1951. Governor Lee Emerson and United States Senator Ralph E. Flanders were present and Commissioner of Education A. John Holden delivered an appropriate address.
The 1953 Legislature passed an act providing retroactive state aid to towns which had completed major school construction proj- ects since 1947. According to the formula provided in the act, Manchester received over $89,000, which was used to build a four- room addition to the new building. This was completed in 1954 making a total of seventeen classrooms for the new school, one of the finest and most modern educational plants in Vermont.
ยง Private Schools
THE earliest private school in Manchester, probably the one Zadock Thompson said was built in 1818, was Ira Hill's Academy. Hill graduated from the University of Vermont in 1808 with a master's degree and did some tutoring before coming to Manchester, but little is known of his school or its location.
It undoubtedly included children of elementary school age and it is known that Levi C. Orvis, who was twenty-one when he came to Manchester, also attended. At a public exhibition February 10, 1820 Hill told his female students that they
possessed minds as precious as those of the rougher sex. A new day is dawning which will soon disperse the thick mists of prejudice and the vapors of ignorance which ... long enveloped in obscurity the active genius of the fair sex.
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Hill's entire address was published "at the particular request of his scholars." He later taught in Maryland, where he died in 1838.
About 1840 a private girls' school was located in a small building behind the present Elizabeth Page Harris house. It was operated on a Congressional grant of $5,000 by Delight Sargeant Boudinot, missionary widow of a Cherokee chieftain and sister of Manchester lawyer, Leonard Sargeant. It is said that the school failed because Mrs. Boudinot was not only a poor businesswoman, but she was also so unpleasantly pious that young children were afraid of her.
In 1847 the "Manchester Classic Institute" published a catalogue of teachers and some sixty women students from Manchester and vicinity. Many of the faculty and all the "Board of Examination" were also women. One was Mrs. Joseph D. Wickham, wife of the headmaster of Burr and Burton Seminary. It is not known where or for how long this school existed, but among the subjects taught were "Greek, Latin, Instrumental music, modern languages, paint- ing, drawing, and elementary English."
Between October 31 and November 8, 1850 a "Teacher's Insti- tute" was held in Manchester by the state and under the direction of William A. Burnham, superintendent of common schools and assistant principal of Burr and Burton Seminary. An impressive list of Manchester citizens managed this institute, which attracted thirty-two men and thirty-six women as students. Teacher training classes were held in the chapel at Burr and Burton Seminary.
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