We've had another very nice day with lots of sunshine. I met our sexton, Marvie Domey, and former sexton, Velma Smith, at the Plains Cemetery this afternoon to help figure out problems with the maps and locations of grave sites. Marvie had a problem figuring out lot ownership from deeds, and since Velma and I had mapped all seven cemeteries a number of years ago, she called on us to help. Turned out the old map showing lot locations for the Plains Cemetery has an extra row, and when Velma and I updated it, it didn't coming out right, but at the time, we thought it was that we'd made an error. Turns out someone years ago had started the map off wrong, and by unwittingly going along with that we were only adding to the confusion. I'll draw a new map and in the spring when it's reasonably warm, we'll walk the cemetery again to be sure we now have no blank spaces where there really aren't any. Today there was a bone-chilling wind, not unlike when Velma and I worked on the map in a snow squall a few years ago, and we didn't want stay out there any longer than necessary.

While there, I took a picture of the mountains in the west, and then got one of the marker showing where the Bayley Hazen Road was located. Perhaps before snow falls Fred and I will see if we can find where the army camped over the winter on in the woods above the Spaulding farm. There's a marker that's deep in the woods, very hard to find.

I'm working right now with a middle school teacher in Grand Isle who is requesting information on old one-room school houses. We still have a number of original school buildings in Cabot - at least three have been remodeled as homes. There were 14 school districts in Cabot at one time. Not all of them operated at the same time, and as near as we can tell there never was a District 13 - although there was a District 14 and 15. Rule of thumb was that there should be a school located so no child had to walk more than two miles for an education. The town is six miles square, but when one of the districts closed because of a population shift, a new district would be added wherever necessary.

The Plains had the first school near where the Plains Cemetery is now and where the seat of government was at the time. The building was eventually taken down and a new school house built about a mile away to the east, where it was more sheltered from the wind. The town voted to move the functions of government to the geographic center of the town, which was more sheltered from the weather, and a new school was built called District 2. And so it went. Schools sprang up either in someone's home or, if the community supported it, was built in a central location. They were more often known by a family name than by the district number. Therefore we had Walbridge School, Burnap, Read, etc., and the names changed as the school moved from one home to another.

It's difficult to keep track of now, but at the time the system served the community very well. Some schools didn't last very long as student numbers diminished. The Plains School was in existence the longest, closing in 1948. My mother was teaching there then and she, along with her students, went to the Village School. The school building was sold for $1,000.

This came this evening:

Nov. 11- 2009 Sunset taken from route 2 as Pat and I topped Diamond Hill on our way back from St Jay. As I was taking the picture a State Trooper pulled up behind us and turned his blue lights on to worn traffic even though we had our flashers on. He stayed with us until I got back into the car and drove off. I think he enjoyed the sunset too.

George Parizo