Back to School in West Woodstock
By Jennie Shurtleff
Education has changed a great deal since the late 18th and early 19th centuries. Today, many students have laptops and graphing calculators . Two centuries ago, the technology of the day was a slate and a piece of chalk, or – if one was really fortunate – a quill pen, a bottle of ink, and a sheet of paper.
In West Woodstock, the first school was built around 1793. It was situated in the middle of the hamlet in the general area where the firehouse is now located. This school was described as follows in an account written by Norman Williams, who grew up in West Woodstock:
“On the north side of the street running along the flat is the schoolhouse in District No. 4. In my earliest school-days this building was a wooden structure nearly fifty feet long. It had a chimney at each end, and two front doors near the corners of the house, each opening into an entry where the boys and girls deposited their hats and bonnets. The writing-desks were placed against the wide walls, each running the length of the school-room, so that the writers sat with their faces to the wall and windows, and with their backs to the centre of the room, an arrangement which I never saw in any other house, but one which was not without its advantages. The school gathered in the house was in the winter term of three months a very large one.” This increase in the size of the winter class was due to the influx of children who had to work on farms during the spring, summer, and fall, thereby making winter the only term that they were available to attend school.
West Woodstock’s first schoolhouse burned along with the books and benches. It was replaced in 1802 by a brick building with a projecting porch. The brick school was later removed in 1858 and replaced, a few rods north of the old house, with a third schoolhouse on land donated by Reuben Daniels.
While we don’t have images of the first two schools on this site, the Woodstock History Center is fortunate to have in its collection a couple of photos of the third schoolhouse, including an 1897 photo that shows the interior of the school. It appears that children were socially distancing back then, although this was undoubtedly to prevent them from distracting one another and to maintain discipline, not to prevent the spread of germs.
Left: Exterior view of the third West Woodstock schoolhouse as it appeared in the 19th century. © Woodstock History Center
Right: Current view of the old schoolhouse re-adapted to be a fire station.
Interior view of the third West Woodstock School, circa 1897. © Woodstock History Center
Servilla Trudo, who grew up in West Woodstock, used to write a column for the Vermont Standard entitled “Old Times and Old Timers.” In this column, she relates that her aunt taught at the West Woodstock school. Her mother used to take her there to visit. Servilla states that once while visiting “I disgraced myself and had to be taken home and punished.” She doesn’t give any clue as to her offense or the punishment.
After the current building ceased to be used as an elementary school, it became home to the Woodstock Learning Clinic, a progressive educational program for children with special needs who did not have access to public education. Later still, it became the fire station for West Woodstock.
While the school in the hamlet was undoubtedly the largest of the schools in West Woodstock, there were several other schools sprinkled throughout more rural areas. Charles Morris Cobb, a young boy growing up in the Vondell Reservoir area of West Woodstock, attended the Cox District School. If Charles is to be believed, the rural schools did not always attract the most talented teachers. Charles notes disappointedly, “Had nothing to do this winter but to go to a school of 8 scholars kept by a man whom I would scruple to call a simpleton were it not for the melancholy fact that he knew a little more than I did.” The “simpleton” school teacher to whom Charles was referring was N. C. Thompson, one of my distant relatives. N. C. Thompson was only a few years older than Charles. Charles noted that his new school master “went to N. Bridgewater school last winter, was at the exhibition in March and spoke ‘Satan's address to the Devil’ or something similar. Last fall he went to Taftsville to school, which qualified him to teach our school, it being a mighty inferior affair.”
Charles goes on to note that “I believe I'm a better reader, & as good a mathematician as N.C. Thompson is. Last Sat. I showed him 2 sums that I couldn't do in Algebra. One was — divide XXXXXX - 1 (X6-1) by X-1. The other was similar — a case of division by a compound divisor. He couldn't do either of the sums, but said he would take them home & show me how Mon. morning. This morning he said he had shown them to the N. Bridgewater schoolmaster who pronounced them undoable. On this I went to work, and at 11 A.M. I had 'em both on my slate proved, and showed them to him — I did them ( or had them done) last winter & I rather tho't I could do them again.”
Despite the impediment of having one of my relatives as a teacher, Charles excelled in his studies. Although from an economically-disadvantaged household, he showed an incredible capacity for learning and commitment to his studies. In particular, he truly yearned to learn algebra. He went so far as to arrange to purchase from Mrs. E. Thomas, one of his neighbors, a second-hand Davies algebra book so that he could study it on his own. The book was 50 cents. Charles’ father told him that he couldn’t buy it, but Charles states rather defiantly, “I wrote my name in it, but God knows I’ve not paid for it yet.”
A page from Davies’ algebra book, which Charles M. Cobb was so anxious to own
In addition to discussing his struggles to learn algebra, Charles often spoke of spelling, which was an emphasis in many 19th-century curricula. Young Charles was a good speller, even though he didn’t have a spelling book from which to study. His main competition was the Shaw boy, who (according to Charles) sometimes cheated, which allowed the Shaw boy to come in first in the spelling competitions. Charles states:
“I left off at the head of our spelling class to-night for the first time. I should have done so last night, but after we got thro’ spelling that damned Shaw corrected a word that was spelled right & went to the head… Today we arranged with the master to mark every word missed, and not let Shaw correct a word at the last end and take his place, if it wasn’t missed. Well this forenoon at the last end Shaw corrected a word that the master hadn’t got marked and received instructions to stand where he was.”
Once the master began preventing the “correction” of words that had already been spelled correctly, it appears that Charles began winning the spelling competitions, and he soon was the top speller in the class. Having achieved success in spelling competitions, Charles states, “I don’t want to be so interested in my spelling lessons, as to neglect my Algebra. The spelling is of just no consequence at all – I don’t care a cuss about it, and yet I won’t be beat by Shaw – had rather throw away half my time than suffer that. As for Shaw, I s’pose he’s willing to make it his winters work to outspell me! – hasn’t any thing of more importance to attend to!”
Charles continued to study algebra despite little family support for such studies, one relative going so far as to label the study of algebra as “unnecessary nonsense.” While today’s students may relate with the difficulty in learning algebra, few perhaps encounter the added difficulty of having to try to learn algebra while not having adequate amounts of paper on which to perform the necessary calculations. Just imagine trying to do long, complex calculations on a small slate! At one point when Charles was struggling with a problem, he brainstorms a way to figure it out, but then disregards such an approach because it will take up too much paper.
Perhaps with more encouragement and resources Charles would have gone on to become a mathematician or financial wizard. Instead, he had a successful career as a musician as well as worked for some of the local mills. The extensive journals that Charles left behind provide a rare glimpse into what life was like for a working class teenage boy growing up in rural 19th-century Vermont.
As for the school that Charles attended… eventually this school and other schools throughout the hamlets of Woodstock were closed. The students from West Woodstock, South Woodstock, Taftsville, and Prosper began attending the school in the village of Woodstock. One of the benefits of this centralization process is that it afforded more uniform access to educational resources. It eliminated the issue to which Charles Cobb, correctly or incorrectly, referred that some of the schools in the outlying hamlets were inferior or had less experienced teachers. However, at the same time, it also sounded the death knell to the sense of community that comes with a neighborhood school.
Above: Just a few of the many articles from the Vermont Standard advertising community events being held at the West Woodstock school. The schools in West Woodstock, along with the Grange, were the nucleus of the community.