Remembering The Old School Days
Oral Histories
Orvie Shaw
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Date Oct 7, 1991
Place: His house, North Road Salsibury
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Paul Shaw- “Where did you go to school?”
Orvie- “I went to school in Salisbury, where the library is, and at Academy Hall. And I went a part of the year to Proctor Academy and got sick and came home and never went back.”
Paul Shaw- “You never went to the school up on the hill?”
Orvie- “Yeah I did. I forgot about that. My first school was right up there on North Road. Villa and I went up there.”
Paul Shaw- “Why did you on North Road if you lived on Shaw hill?
Orvie- “I was living with my aunt top there. I had TB she brought me up took care of me. Villa Webster other words Villa Shaw.”
Paul Shaw- “So you started at the North Road School, then you went to the Shaw Hill school. How many years did you go there?”
Orvie- “Shaw Hill School, oh probably about three or four.”
Paul Shaw- “What year did they close that school?”
Orvie- ” Hard to tell. Jimminy Christmas. If I’d be join to school there Id’ been 10 years old. That would be about 1917. I’d say that school closed about 1920.”
Paul Shaw- “How many kids did you have?”
Orvie- “In that school?”
Paul Shaw-“Yes.”
Orvie- “Oh, probably 15-18. The biggest part of the them were Shaws and Jurtas.”
Paul Shaw- “Did you have school all year, or were there terms with breaks in them?”
Orvie- “We had school nine months just the same as they do today. We might have a weeks vacation in mud time but other than that we kept right around the nine months. And George Beauly’s mother as our teacher up there on Shaw Hill, Alice Perrreault.”
Paul Shaw- “There were some Peros in Warner that were French and they cut it down to Pero. After third grade you went down to the heights?”
Orvie- “Yea, I went where the library is. Then from there I went to Academy Hall, and I graduated down there.”
Paul Shaw- “At Academy Hall, what year did you graduate?”
Orvie- “Lets see I was fourteen. That was about 1921.”
Paul Shaw-“How many kids were there in your class, eight grade?”
Orvie- “Buster Taylor, and Charlie Taylor, and Shirley Sanborn. There were about six of us in the graduating class Herman Ham, and I think Sturart Mitchell, who lived where young Johny Shaefer lives and myself thats six or seven.”
Paul Shaw- “How many in the overall school?”
Orvie- “Oh. probably there was thirty, thirty five. It could have been around forty.”
Paul Shaw- “How many teacher said you, have just one?”
Orvie- “Yes The first teacher I ever had was up there at North Road, and it was Ida Price’s sister Evelyn. That was the first teacher I ever had. Then I had Mrs. Perreault who taught at Shaw Hill. Then I went to Salisbury and I had a woman by the name of …hmmm… can’t remember that at all. Then Mrs Perreault taught us down at South Road. I don’t think she ever taught at the Heights.”
Paul Shaw- “So Mrs. Perrreault was your teacher in the eighth grade at Acdemy hall?”
Orvie- “Yes.”
Paul Shaw- “What was school like, did you have any running water, or anything like that?”
Orvie- “Oh we had to carry our own water, we didn’t have any hot lunches. We didn’t walk there to school but when we went up to the Heights we walked to school, two miles. It lacked a tenth of a mile of being two miles and they wouldn’t take us. They’d go right by us in the school bus and wouldn’t pick us up. They told the school bus driver that if he did pick us up they’d fire him so we walked. I started school when I was five, and I walked to that school.
And when my wife started teaching school in Salisbury in 1934, I believe, in Academy Hall, she a had 48 kids in school, eight grades and she was the jainior, fire-keeper, and was the whole business and she got $650 a year salary. Norma (Lovejoy) was talking the other night. She look back in 1935 and the teacher got $700-$750. they’d raised it a little bit and she started out at $650. She taught six months, got sick and never went back.”
Paul Shaw- “Did several kids from Salisbury go to Proctor in those days?”
Orvie- “Harley (Shaw) went to Proctor, and Marion, Dolly and Freddie went to Andover High School.”
Paul Shaw- “Did any of them go to Franklin High School?”
Orvie- “No. The one was my daughter, she went down there. That’s all of our family, my brother and sisters.”
….
Paul Shaw- ” I assume you had some chores to do on the farm before you went to school?”
Orvie- “I guess I did! I did. When I went to Proctor Academy I worked for George Woodard who used to be the mailman. Did you every know him? I used to get up at five o’clock in the morning, do chores till nine, and walk to Proctor which wasn’t very far, come home and do chores again until nine at night. No wonder I couldn’t keep up at school. I was sick, I just couldn’t do it. I was only fourteen.”
Paul Shaw- “When you were younger and going to school in Salisbury what was you day like then?”
Orvie- “Well, we’d clean out the barn and feed the cows and the horses, feed the sheep. If the hens needed any water, stuff we’d do that. We had chores, all of us did.”
Liza Buzzell
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD. and Joy Chamberlain
Dec 6, 1988
Place: the New London Nursing Home
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Paul Shaw- ..”Where did you go to school?”
Liza- “I went to South Road and when I went into the office, I went three nights a week right to the school teacher. I took all the studies they had in school. I went for a year, and I paid her for it. I really got as much, cause I had her alone. And I had time enough to study”.
Joy n Chamberlin- “Do you remember who your teachers were?”.
Liza- ..”Stickney was one . She married Ned Little. That was Deacon Little’s father. He lived at home. Edith Durgin.. She was from Boscawen, I went to school with her. And I went to school with James your brother.” (actually uncle).
Paul Shaw- “That was at South Road”
Liza- “Yes.”
Paul Shaw- “I knew he (James Shaw) taught at Shaw’s Corner School and Smith”s Corner, that’s the first I ever knew he taught at South Road.”
Liza- “He taught at the South Road quite awhile. We used to try and get his goat…”
Joy Chamberlin- “Where did people to school when they went to high school?”
Liza- “High School? I guess some come here to Proctor (located in Andover) and some to Franklin. Harley Shaw and some of those kids went to Proctor.”
……………………
Paul Shaw- “Where was the Greeley School?”
Liza- “Right next to Fred Greeley’s house, just down the hill as you went to Ed Sawyer’s, going to Warner. They were going to school there when I drove the mail.”
Joy Chamberlain- “There was a school at West Salisbury?”
Liza- “Yes, and there was a school at Salisbury Heights. And every Memorial Day when I was a kid they had a band come here and they used to come down in one of those old coasters and then they went around to all the cemeteries with flags. We kids were crazy to get a ride. You had to toe the mark to get along. You had to keep still. Then they had the exercises down in the Gallinger Grove. Senator Gallinger had a lane that went from Salisbury Heights over to Leander Sawyer’s. It was quite a celebration. they used to have a band, a ball game, and a dance in the evening.”
Fred Courser Jr.
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Sept 2, 1988
Place: Warner, NH
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Regarding schools in the flood plane area and Couchtown over the border into Warner.
Paul Shaw- “Tell me about Couchtown. That was between Smith’s Corner and the Schoodac part of Warner, right?”
Fred- “There were quite a few houses. A good many of them were Couches. There were different schools in the town of Warner that they called the Couchtown School, but they took the children from Salisbury, Webster and Warner. The Stevens boys, over by Alfred Sawyers orchard, went to school there. John Huntooon lived with grandfather, John Morgan, in Couchtown, he went to school there. Abner Mason was in Warner…”
Paul Shaw-” Was the schoolhouse by the Union Meeting House?” (in the town of Salisbury)
Fred- “That was after. It might have been built before that, but I know that John Huntoon, one of the Stevens boys, and Abner all went to the last of the Couchtown schools in Warner, pupils from three different towns. The town report for Warner for 1866 said that the old schoolhouse, because I’ve read it, was in pretty bad shape. Each one in the district who were sending children to the school were to give the proceeds of one sheep to have a new schoolhouse, and one they could be proud of. And they did built it 1867. The school kept going until about 1900.”
Paul Shaw- “We have a picture of the Smith”s Corner School and with a list of the pupils that were attending it. I think Jim Shaw was teaching at the time that picture was taken”
Fred-” Vi Taylor who just died, she was 97, least week, she taught there and Mrs. Fred Downs was one of the last teachers that taught there. She was Helen Smith before she married Fred Downs.”
Ruth Dunlap Bracey
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Aug 21, 1988
Place: West Salisbury, NH
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Discussing her parents Frank and Abby Dunlap.
Dr. Shaw- “I have read an article about the Mills School, and I know that Fred and Abbie both went to the Mills School, and they were one of several couples that went to the school that wound up getting married. Were you aware of that?”
Ruth- “I wasn’t aware of who went to the Mills School, but I was aware that dad and mother did. I am aware of the fact that back in those days the schoolhouse was the center of all social activities that dad and mother did, probably the political activity as well. I can imagine that going to the schoolhouse for the functions was the thing that started the romance. It continued to be a very fruitful romance. I imagine that dad and mother, along with other couples found the glamor of romance in the little one room schoolhouse.
I came her with my mother when she was helping my grandmother take care of grandpa. (about 1921). My mother said, “I’ll keep you out of school for a year because I would rather you didn’t start your schooling in a one room school house”. I never went to school until I was seven years old.
Now the school we are talking about, the Mills School, is on the Bay Road, just beyond the little bay and just below where Bud Prince’s house is today, and up the river from Pingrey Bridge, and on the side of he road away from the river. There are several picutres of this school that around that were taken in 1900. I don’t know when the school closed.”
Norma Lovejoy
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Date Feb 5,1991
Place: Salisbury home of the Lovejoys
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Paul Shaw-When you came here in 1938 what did you do for activities?”
Norma- “Oh, we ran the farm. We had some animals, a few animals. After I had been here, I guess a couple of years, I drove a school bus. Then people asked me to..I served on, was chairman of the school board, and I just stayed on at the school board. I was off a couple of years back in the fifties, I think it was, and then went back on again”.
Paul Shaw- “That means you were on the school aboard long before it was consolidated, you were part of the Town of Salisbury school board.”
Norma- “Yes. There were three people on the board then.”
Paul Shaw- “What were the major problems then?”
Norma- “We didn’t have many problems then. Usually, it was muddy roads and getting the kids to school in the spring.”
Paul Shaw- “How many schools were there then?”
Norma- “Only two then, the one at the Heights and throne at South Road. When I was on the Board we put the first four grades at South Road and the upper four grades at the Heights. Originally there were eight grades in each school.”
Paul Shaw-“Do you remember any of the teachers in those early days?”
Norma- “When I came here Mrs. Keneval was on of the teachers (from Boscawen) and Maude Prince was the teacher for some years after that. She came in ’42, it was in the war years, I know. She taught through ’53, somewhere about that time and went to East Andover. The teachers that came in after that, I can’t remember all their names. We had teachers coming and going, and now the time has gone by and I really have forgotten. They were out of town people, most of them.”
Paul Shaw- “Now you did a paper on the history of the schools. Do you remember how many small district schools there were at one time?”
Norma- “I can’t remember for sure, but I think that at one time there were twelve schoolhouses in Salisbury.”
Paul Shaw- -“Do you know where the Mountain School might have been?”
Norma- “No, I don’t know where that was. The only ones I can remember was the Smith’s Corner one, which was torn down then the government bought the land over there (the flood control area) and the one at West Salisbury but neither one of those was used as a school since I lived in Salisbury.
Oh yes, there was another one on Greeley Hill. That building is there but it is not (being) used as a school. Then there was the one over on North Road that somebody set on fire one day quite a few years ago when Mr. Pterson was alive.”
Paul Shaw- “When did the Merrimack valley School District get organized. Was Salisbury in that right from the start?”.
Norma- “Yes. Salisbury was in that right from the start. We worked on it for about a year and a half or two years. I can’t remember the exact time, but I think the district itself was formed in 1965, and became operative the following year in June 1966.”
Paul Shaw- “Who was on the school board at the time of the union?”
Norma- “I wasn’t on the board a the time. I was off, but I was on the study committee, and we went for it. Edna Ballam was on the board and Don Nixon. I can’t remember who was the third member. We could check by looking on the town report.”
Paul Shaw-“Was there anything else about the schools that you want to say?”
Norma- “No, I don’t think so.”
Paul Shaw- “When Salisbury went into the Merrimack Valley school district you had the two schools?”
Norma- “No. In 1959 we built the original school on Whittemore Road, then all the children were transported to that building. So we a had a central school at the time we joined the MV school district.”
Paul Shaw- “How many students did you have in salisbury at that time?”
Norma- ” I can’t remember exactly, but I would say there were between fifty to sixty kids. That was eight grades. We have five grades up here now and I think there are about ninety children in those five grades.”
Henry Stevens b. April 25, 1890-d. 1981
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Summer 1978
Place: Concord and Salisbury
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Isabel Eaton b. Salisbury 1907
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Date November 1992
Place: Greenville, NH
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Paul Shaw- “And how about school, where did you go to school?”
Isabel- “Smith’s Corner. A one room school, about fifteen students. I had to walk about a mile and a quarter, carry my lunch box…”
Paul Shaw- “Who were some of the other students?”
Isabel- “The Baileys, Bill and Ruthie, and Ada. They lived up by the Salisbury dump, straight up the hill, towards Tucker Pond. I don’t whether that house is still standing or not.”.
Then there were the McAlisters, Cecil and Myron and Elinor. Then the Woods, Otis Wood’s children, Royal, Francis and Jimmy.”
….
Paul Shaw- “Tell us more about going to school at Smith’s Corner.”
Isabel- That was quite an experience . We had…the teacher had to build a fire in the morning.”
Paul Shaw- “Who was the teacher?”
Isabel- “Myra Little. One of our most , two or three times..”
Paul Shaw- “Were talking about 1913-1914.”
Isabel- “Yes. I learned to read at Myra’s desk,with her arm around me and we had the book in front of us. She read to us, and that was my way of learning.”
Paul Shaw- “How many in your class ? (grade)”
Isabel- “Me, just one!”
Paul Shaw- “How many years did you go there?”
Isabel- “I suppose… There was no such thing as grades. There was no such thing as graded classwork, and I suppose all the eight years.
But the school! The water supply came from Louis Bassett’s house. The boys had to go and get a pail of water in the morning. They had a cooler of some sort in back of the door. We each had a cup handing on a peg so that we didn’t use anybody else’s cup. About the fire. The boys brought the word in and had to keep the fire going during the day. If it was real cold in the morning we could put our chairs around, front around the stove. We’d put our feet on the stove and keep warm that way, right close to the fire. No lights. When we had our programs the fathers would bring lanterns, and hang the lanterns up around… so that they could sees the program.”
Paul Shaw- “Outside toilet facility, I presume?”
Isabel- “It was near the woodshed, beyond the hallway.”
Paul Shaw- “How many holes?”
Isabel- “Two! Ha! Ha! Now what else about the school. We had good programs, too! Really! Wonderful for what we had to do with.”
Paul Shaw- “Such as?”
Isabel- “Plays. All of us spoke pieces at Christmas , of course and especially at Memorial…at Memorial time we’d do our program, then we’d march down to the cemetery just beyond McAlister’s and march home again. That’s when you’d get stuff kicked in your shoes.
The boys were trying to figure something they could do to plaque the girls.”
Paul Shaw- “How long were your school days?”
Isabel- “We’d be in session at nine and wouldn’t get out until four. And for our lunch we’d sit with our boxes at our desk and eat our lunch, started right in again and we were busy until four.”
Paul Shaw- “At four o’clock in December it must have been…”
Isabel- “Dark, dark, yeah!”
Marion Shaw Childs
Excerpts from an Interview by Paul S. Shaw, MD.
Date July 1988
Place: Home of Paul Shaw, Salisbury NH
Published in They Said It In Salisbury by Paul S. Shaw, MD
Paul Shaw- ” How many years did you go to school there (Mills School)”
Marion- “Three”.
Paul Shaw- “And how many students were there when you were there?”
Marion- “A dozen, maybe.”
Paul Shaw- “All eight grades there?”
Marion- “Agnes Fenton was the teacher, I can say that. She came from Andover. She was a good teacher.”
Paul Shaw- “This article that’s in the Journal Tanscript about the Mills School gives a pretty complete listing of the teachers and a run-down of quite a few of the students. It also mentions that several people met their life mates while they were there. Did you know about that?”
Marion- “No.”