The Memory Of ''Abbie White's Primary School" At The Corner Of Washington Street And Railroad Avenue Is Now Getting Dim.
By WIN EVERETT
Just to mention an old school house, particularly in a country town, is like moving a magnet under a paper of loose pins.
Maybe it is because the school house is the first place where the average child feels the premier flick of the lash of the law. This, plus old associations, friendships, hates and scrapes. So when someone mentioned "Abbie White's Primary School" at the northeast corner of Railroad Avenue and Washington Street, the writer pricked up his ancient ears. He had not realized a public school was there from Sept. 1873 until July 1878. As I gathered the following few facts with considerable difficulty, it came to me that this is one of Norwood's early schools which is rapidly being forgotten. So let us peg down as much of its history as possible. If any reader has additional facts they will be gratefully received. This goes, too, for any of these sketches. Which, from their nature, must be incomplete and sometimes erroneous.
North-End Tots Get School
The long, angular and ungainly building, pictures herewith from a valuable photograph owned by Miss Clara Capen of Vernon street, was probably erected as shown in 1856. I have not been able to find out who owned it first. Alfred Atwood's guess is that it was one of the Rhoads family, as their land bounds it on the north and east. He has a deed showing that Willard Battelle of Taunton, Mass, and his wife Lavinia, sold the property to Alfred's uncle, Ebenezer Fisher Talbot in 1870 and that he held it until 1877, when it was sold to George B. Talbot. It is also safe to guess that Tyler Thayer was the master builder who erected it. For three-quarters of a century the building had a varied career, being razed in 1929 to make way for a more sightly Standard Oil gas station.
Rented to Town in 1873
In the fall of 1873 the lower front floor, the part with the piazza around it, was rented to the new Town of Norwood by E. F. Talbot for a primary school. The town found that the Balch and Everett schools, which it inherited from Dedham, could only take care of the primary grades in the south and center sections. The rapidly growing sections in North Washington Street and Nahatan Streets, and on Railroad Avenue, had to have a primary school. Hence, Mr. Talbot got a tenant and Miss Abbie A. White a teaching job. She was transferred from the Everett school. Later, the new North School on Railroad avenue relieved the situation and Mr. Talbot lost a tenant. Miss White became Mrs. Edgar Bigelow on Dec. 19, 1878 and Miss Lucy Guy had taken her place. The school was abolished in July 1878, so Miss Guy was also out-of-luck. She taught in this school for 20 weeks.
Outstanding Norwood Teachers
There is but a small group of people still remaining in Norwood who "went to" Abbie White. But, after hearing their memories, it is easy to see that Abbie was a well-loved teacher. She evidently had that same genius for winning small hearts which was so much a part of later teachers like Lizzie Tucker, Florence Hill, Martha Parker, Martha Guild, Annie and Florence White, Mrs. Callahan, Mary Mahoney, Mrs. F. O. Winslow, Ida Everett, Miss Parks, Mrs. Charles Morse, Grace Train Everett, Hannah Guild and a number of others whom it is not fair to omit mentioning. Miss Chamberlain and Miss Stockbridge, who proceeded Miss White, also in the same category of natural teachers. I hope, when Dr. Ralph Fogg prints his forthcoming opus on the early Norwood school system, he will do them all full justice. One should know a teacher before trying to sketch character.
Note Scalloped Apron!
If you will look at the picture of Abbie White's school, you will see a big door in the left-hand, front end. This was later the door of the George E Sanborn Hardware Co., hardware store. When the lower floor was a school, this door was not used. Abbie had her teacher's desk right in front of it, on a platform. The kids entered the school through the middle door of the main building. This gave onto a cloak-room and this, in turn, onto the school room. There were two classes in this primary grade, small children and those a little bigger. The picture gives a good idea of the general size. The little girl on the extreme left-end is Miss Clara Cap-n. She knows it is, because of the scalloped apron, which, believe it or not, she still has! She cannot identify another child in the group. The lenses of those pioneer school photographers were terrible. Which is a pity. This picture was taken by the Rev. Warren "Shout" Talbot, our famous ministerorator - promdogist - daguerreotypist-photographer. I plan to print a piece some time entitled "Picture-Makers of Tiot." If you know any good stories about Mr. Talbot, or have any of his pictures or history in any form I should be glad to know about it. He was a remarkable man.
Who Attended School?
Somewhere there may be musty records of all who attended Abbie White's school. They are not in the town reports. But to give you a partial list, which we do not offer as perfect, a number of good-natured people have kindly scratched their brains for me, including Miss Clara Capen (who scratched hardest), Miss Florence Hill, Selectman Eugene Murphy, Miss Annie Parker, Mrs. Isabel Walker, Mrs. Walter Metcalf, Mrs. Bertha Hoar, Mrs. Nettie Thayer Smith, Mrs. Jennie Aiken, Mrs. Julia Donovan Sheehan, Mrs. Emma B. ButDr, Miss Ida Courtney and Byron Mylod.
Calling the Roll
Misss Abbie White is speaking; "Herbert Barnett, Isabel Roby, Isabel Tucker, Nettie Thayer, Nettie Fisher, Herbert Fairbanks (son of Jarvis), Maragaret Leyden, Annie Parker, Grace Hili. Archie Tisdale (who was a classmate of Eugene L. Murphy), Gene's Mioiner, Michael Murphy, Minnie Brooks, Delia Folan, sister of James M. Folan, (she was the mother of Mr. Edward A. Flaherty), James McManus, (brother of Joseph M.), Byron Mylod, William Apel, Patrick and John Nugent, Geo. Edward Sanborn, James Pendergast, Frank Ellis, Ida Rhoads, Mary Clapp, Tracey Cleary, Carrie Whitney, Dora Shumway, Carrie Shap-leigh, Elzura Chandler, Fanny Perry, Annie and Margaret Cronin, Mary Neville, Mary Storm, Julia Donovan, Jerry Reardon, Hannah Fahy, Ray Hartshorne, Agnes Davenport, Will Nelson, Emma Beyer, Ida Courtney Millie Dodge, Lilly Brooks, Arthur Purcell, Stella Holmes, Walter Ellis."
The Overhead Expense
They set up Abbie White's school in the fall of 1873. It cost $569.78 to run it for the school year:
Paid:
Abbie W. White for teaching.. $304.50
W. G. Shattuck for furniture… 115.2
C C. W. Hartshorn for coal 10.50
Willard Gay for wood 3.00
George W. Gay for cutting wood 1.00
Tyler Thayer for fitting up school 75.78
James Engles for stoves and labor 59.30
$569.78
The next year, 1874, they raised Abbie to $420 salary and paid E. F. Talbot $100.00 for rent. Later they paid him $150. There was no rent itemized in the '73 expenses. All these figures from the town reports. There are no books charged because the kids furnished their own. Also slates and pencils.
Few Relics Remain
The only vestige of this little old school remaining, as far as the writer can discover, is some "reward of merit" cards owned and cherished by Miss Clara Capen. There are nine of these small, brightly lithographed cards, each with a different picture, reading: "Reward of Merit presented to Clara from A. A. White." Also eight similar cards signed by Lucy Guy, and a much larger one which was earned by the eight small ones—a gay picture which would delight any little girl of the '70's.
Where's the Silver Service?
Somewhere, perhaps, there is another relic—a "silver service" consisting, mayhap, of a tea or coffee pot with cream pitcher and sugar bowl. Abbie White became engaged to Edgar Bigelow, son of L. W. Bigelow, the dry-goods merchant, and quit her job about Thanksgiving time in 1877 to get married. Her last day at her teacher's desk was a sad one for her and many small urchins of both sexes. But the latter rose to the occasion nobly in a "surprise party to teacher." The affair was arranged by Carrie Shapleigh, who stood up at her desk after Abbie had tearfully rang the bell for the last time and said goodbye to her children. Miss Shapleigh had a large bundle which she had been concealing in her desk all afternoon with great difficulty (plus the gracious oversight of Abbie, no doubt). Advancing to the rostrum, with her package, she made a speech of farewell and handed Abbie the silver service. Then there Was much eating of home-made cake and sandwiches and great giggling over how surprised "Teacher" had been.
Building Antedates Village Hall
Fisher Gay had built the Fisher Gay store in the early '50's at the corner of Washington Street and Cottage Street, where he and L. W. Bigelow had gone into partnership in 1853 under the style of Gay & Bigelow, selling groceries and dry-goods. This Fisher Gay building has become known as the Wheelock Block, after Gay sold the grocery end to Mr. Wheelock and Bigelow in 1860, went in for himself in the new Village Hall. "The Hook of Tiot" was beginning to grow! So it is not strange that someone, around 1856, had an idea that a store building at Washington and Railroad Avenue would pay. Perhaps the building of Lyman Smith & Sons' tannery in 1853 had something to do with it. In a copy of "The South Dedham News" of 1856 we read this advertisement: "NEW STORE! CHARLES BUMPUS would inform the citizens of South Dedham and vicinity that he has a very large stock of desirable goods, both Staple and Fancy, which are offered to the public at low prices, for cash. Also, a large assortment of Groceries, Boots and Shoes, Crockery, Glass Ware etc., etc. NEW STORE! Corner of Centre street and Railroad avenue."
The Race Is On!
Bumpus having begun to bump Gay & Bigelow, the race for commercial supremacy up and down the Washington street "Hook" was started—and it is running. From then on, this old North End building of the Talbot's was an important trading center, although Village Square and "The Hook" finally beat it out. It passed through the hands of several owners—E. F. Talbot, Geo. B. Talbot and Ernest H. Grant among others. The east end of the building and the second floor over the school were turned into tenements and used by many families. In the lower floor, where Abbie taught, several firms did more or less business at various times, the piazza having been built and glassed in to increase store space. The most successful concern was the George E. Sanborn Hardware store, for which this extension was made, which was Norwood's first large, modern hardware company and did the largest business of this kind until George E. and Harry Sanborn sold out the business to Albin Parker and it was moved to the location of the present Norwood Hardware Company on Washington street.
Exit "Debbie's" Stock
David B. "Debbie" Farrington had never endeared himself to the even that part which traded at his dry. goods and notion store. He was an estimable gentleman of an old South Dedham family residing at Ellis. But he had a sharp tongue, a caustic wit and a perpetual grouch. I can still remember him chasing me away from the watering trough in front of his shop, which would be just south of the Folan Block.
So-o-o-o- after "Debbie" was gathered to his fathers in 1887, and Jim-Folan-the-Shoe-Man bought his store building, Jim moved his shoe business away from this Talbot building at Railroad Avenue, where he had started it, and George B. Talbot bought the Farrington stock and moved it up to the old school room for a grand sale. And grand it was! I can hear my mother and her sister, Maria Gay, laughing their heads off at the funny things which were unearthed in this ancient truck which "Debbie' 'had been, hoarding and haggling over for half a century. The fabrics and gadgets which they giggled at then would bring high prices today as antiques. Anyway, the ladies had a Debbie Farrington Field Day and, for once, could paw over his stock to their heart's content in a place which was light enough to see it. After George B. had skimmed the cream off the stock, a nephew of his named Forbes came down from Charlton City in 1888 with another bunch of stock and carried on the Great Clearance Sale of the D. B. Farrington Store, having purchased the remnants from his uncle. And who do you think assisted him in this work? None other than Ernest H. Grant, our popular chopist and steakist. He, too, had just come to town and this was his first appearance behind a Norwood counter.
Tenants Come and Go
Some of the other tenants of the building were Leonard Boyd, who ran a tin shop; Mrs. Otis Clapp who afterwards married George A. P. Buckman of Flax Pond pumping station fame, had a millinery shop in the school room; C. F. Whitney ran a dry goods store there, in conjunction with a Mrs. Tait's millinery emporium. After the hardware store vacated the premises, the Norwood Laundry occupied them until it moved to its present location. George L. Maker had a tin and stove shop in the building in 1890. William Foreman had a tin and plumbing business in the same place previously.
"Messenger" Born Upstairs
Just to keep the record as nearly complete as possible, we remember Alec Ambrose and his two brothers found shelter for their baby newspaper upstairs over the old school room, when they came to Norwood from Newbury, Mass. Aside from Abbie's school, this was the most glamorous tenant the ancient building ever had. The "Messenger" was born in an odor of learning, even if its source had long since given place to a hardware store full of bags of fertilizer.
'Gene Knew About That!
One day, when our Selectman Eugene Murphy was managing the gas station at the corner of Washington Street and Railroad Avenue, he was sitting at his desk at a spot which was almost exactly the same as the site of his desk, fifty years before, from which he had thrown spit-balls in Abbie White's school. An automobile drove up and 'Gene went out to service it. He noticed a West Virginia number plate on it. As the driver paid him, he remarked, "I went to school at this spot just about fifty years ago. What do you know about that?"
'Gene squinted at him carefully, and remarked dryly, "I know plenty about that, Walter Ellis. For I, too, went to school at this spot fifty years ago. And you were in my class!"
As I was saying—you only have to mention an old school building.
You can read the entire series here: Win Everett's Tales of Tyot
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