Good news - Ray Rouleau sold the Sunfish.

Working at the West Hill School today was interesting, but because the building had been used for storage, first by the town after the school closed in 1919, and later it was "rented" for storage by a nearby resident. In 1979 a group of citizens interested in preserving the building and it's history, persuaded the town to give it to the historical society. They were able to get a grant to restore it, replacing one whole wall and the floor. In the 1990's, students in David Book's heritage class at Cabot School researched and completed the restoration as close as possible to how it used to be. The school was in District #4, and was built in about 1886 to replace the Kimball school a short distance away.

One thing I found today that particularly interested me was a math book that apparently belonged to Fleming Milligan. There was no date, but the writing was a child's and his address was S. Peacham. How his book ended up in our one-room restored school house we may never know, but I'm sure some of you will recognize his name. Fleming "Flee" Milligan ran a grocery store across from Hastings Store in West Danville for many years.

Everything in the school had been removed after it closed in 1919, so all the desks, maps, books, slates and other fixtures have come from other sources. Some from other Cabot schools, some donated from personal collections, found at yard sales or antique shops. This photo shows the high shelf with benches that span the wall at the back of the classroom. This was the school's "library" where reference books were kept and students could study.

This school is very different compared to the one-room school I attended on Cabot Plains. The Plains School, District #1, was built in 1929. The first school in District #1 was at the corner of what is now Cabot Plains Rd. and the Bayley Hazen Road, just below the Plains Cemetery. After the first settlers moved lock, stock and barrel to the Center of Town, a new school was built about a mile east of there. We pass it after making the turn in front of the Plains School - it's part of the now deserted Maynard farm, and was made into a garage. The 1929 version of the Plains School was modern - running water, central heat, a stage, lots of windows (that weren't very tight and let the snow sift down onto us so we had to move our desks away from the windows on windy days), separate cloak rooms for girls and boys, even inside toilets. This is a typical water pail with tin cup and dipper everyone shared for drinking.

The one-room schools were the heart of each small community. They were meeting places for social gatherings as well as school functions. There were many more farms operating in town, and more children per family than now. Schools were placed so children would have no further than two miles to walk, and the teachers "boarded around," changing boarding places every few weeks, and walked to school with the students.

I enjoyed working there today.