Cabot Village School

Cabot Village School

Cabot, Vermont

Photo Credit; "The Shield "- Cabot H.S. Yearbook - 1965

District # 8 - The Village School

[Note: This district is near and dear to my heart because it was MY school, from first grade through my high school graduation. BSD]

The first elementary school in the village was in what is now the Historical Building. It was not built originally as a school, but the first floor was used as a school. Jennie DONALDSON'S grandmother went there. A large, two story school was built around 1863, approximately where the high school is now located. There were three small buildings near this school; the hearse house, the fire house, and the school woodshed.

"My first teacher was Alice HUDSON. . .She was a wonderful teacher. She taught first, second and third grades. Then we went into the next room for some of our classes and the teacher was Flora CARPENTER; but when I went for my fourth grade, Marion CRAIG was the teacher. She was a wonderful teacher. . ." -- Bessie BEAN

"My first teacher was Miss HUDSON from Plainfield, Alice HUDSON. I had Flora CARPENTER while I was in -- must have been the fourth and fifth and sixth grades. When I started out there was George PAINE and Irene TALBERT. . .Helen WHEELER. . .I graduated with Elmer MENARD and Blanche LABREE and Blanche MOREY, Freda HAWES, Hazel WHEELER and John LAMBERTON and Harry FOSTER. . .I played basketball and we put on plays." -- Jessie DAVIS

"The old school was an old, old building. You went in the front of it and the seventh and eighth grade rooms were on that floor, then you went up a set of stairs and the high school was upstairs.

"Mrs. Hartwell STONE was teaching down in [the village]. She was strict, she made us mind. You had to learn or you got your hands cracked with the ruler. Them days they didn't spare the rod, they taught them with the rod." -- Elliot HOUGHTON

The School Directors, S. E. HOUGHTON, A.J. SMITH, and F.E. CURRIER, reported to the town on the year ending January 31, 1916:

"The Junior High was a new and untried creation at the beginning of the school year, but after careful investigation and consideration with the best school authorities in the state, we decided with five other towns to adopt this new-born and ill-favored child of our last Legislature, conceived and born in great anguish and pain out of the Educational womb of that Great Legislative body in the rather obscure and mystical closing hours of that session. . .We sincerely believe if allowed to grow and develop naturally, [it] will in proper time become the most practicle [sic] and ideal system of instruction for our rural young people."

"We had a new building and we were called 'junior high'. My mother (Eva Clough JOYAL) and Beatrice PERRY and some other people decided that a lot of people didn't graduate from high school and so they should have a nice graduation, so they started this eighth grade banquet that they have now. I believe we were the first ones to graduate [with] that banquet. Probably it was 1941." -- Margaret JOYAL STEVENS PARENT

"Wonderful Miss Daisy ISHAM, my first grade teacher, who not only taught me the three R's, but things like integrity, loyalty, and the importance of values. Miss ISHAM, later Mrs. Kenneth ROGERS, always wished I could write like Kenneth BARNETT, and that he could read like me." -- Pearl SOMAINI-dwyer (Alumni Notes)

Max BARROWS, Superintendent of Schools, wrote in his report in 1929: "Reading is absolutely essential before the child can accomplish any tangible results in any of the other school subjects. It is very apparent then that every possible advantage should be given to the beginning child in order not to hinder his progress in later years." Later in his report he said the Upper Village primary room pupils did not have "adequate foundation," and that "Miss ISHAM has done splendidly in improving this situation."

"I used to freeze to death walking from the Center of Town down to school. Then after school walking back home. I can remember that. That's all I can remember is how cold it was. . .[By the] time you walked from Center of Town down. . .[your sandwiches] would freeze and you set them on the floor in the furnace room, and when you went down and got your dinner pail at noon [you'd have to] take the hammer and break your sandwiches up that were froze solid, they wouldn't thaw out. It wasn't exactly a hot lunch!" -- Harry THOMPSON

At one time, the village school had three wood-burning hot-air furnaces. Harold LANPHEAR provided wood for this school and Lower Cabot school.

"I must have started in the old building, and then we went over to the -- what was the gym. It was the Methodist Church. At that time they had the fourth, fifth, and sixth grades over there. We were in a little back room I had Daisy ISHAM ROGERS, and the next one we had was Miss ENGLAND, and she was really strict. But she was a good teacher. Then we had Doris HARVEY for the sixth grade. Mr. VACHON was the principal." -- Margaret JOYAL STEVENS PARENT

- Cabot High School -

The first year high school was mentioned in the Cabot Town Report was in 1909. It had been operating for one year at a cost to the town of $4,950. Previous to that, students who wished to continue their schooling were tuitioned to other schools. Will, Annie, & Marion WALDER, and Bennie & Ella BARRETT went to St. Johnsbury Academy; Gladys BLAKE to Goddard Seminary; Alice HARVEY, Judith HAINES, Christine CURRIER, Margerie LAWSON, Eula PUTNAM, Agnes WARREN, George CURRIER, Glenn CARPENTER, Perley & Alland GLIDDEN to Montpelier Seminary; Austin BEATON and Zelphia PORTER to Northampton School (apparently a school for the deaf); and George HILL to Hardwick Academy.

"We had a buggy in summer and in the winter we had a sleigh . . .We had to put the horse up in a barn which was near the school. Then we had to go over at noon and feed the horse. It was really quite a chore, but we didn't mind it. We thought that was the way we were supposed to live, I guess." -- Helen Wheeler SMITH

"The Town of Woodbury paid for me to go to Cabot High School because there was no high school [in Woodbury] then. . .I drove my horse, Binjetta, the four miles to high school when the weather was good, starting from age 14 until I was 16. . . . I boarded with the Clem and Myrtie VOODRY family. They owned a store there and he was postmaster . . .also the Reverend HILL family in the Methodist Parsonage, and the last two years I stayed with Florence and Alfred PECK . . ." -- Louise STAPLES

"In 1921 Mr. RISEN was principal. We had Miss MAURICE, Mrs. SAXBY . . .and Miss FIELDS taught French. A BADGER girl went to school with me, 'Dutch' BADGER, Dorothey BADGER. [Then later], Lee EMERSON taught at Cabot. Stayed out of school one year and taught at Cabot, then went back to law school -- I think it was 1923. I remember Miss BROOKS, and Miss WESTOVER taught home economics, Lee EMERSON taught history. I think he was related to one of the girls . . . Uncle Emmie, we called him. He was an awful good teacher." -- Ruth WHEELER BURBANK

"When I went to High School, Wynn TAPLIN was principal . . . I was in school with Dude THOMPSON and George CARPENTER, and Mark HILL, the minister's son. He was valedictorian of the class. Very smart fellow." -- Helen TALBERT

"I joined Principal Roy LEBARON and teachers Virginia BROWN and Agnes SHAW of Cabot Junior-Senior High School in September, 1930, at age 20. I was selected to replace LEBARON as principal [when he left the position] the following year. I remained in that position for nine years, for a total tenure of ten years in Cabot. I resigned my position in Cabot in 1940 [to go to Gould Academy in Maine]." -- Edmond J. VACHON (letter)

"Athalene EWEN and I went together [to high school from the Plains]. . . We were in the class of '36. Joyce GARDNER and Paul HOUSTON were in that class." -- Freda STONE

"Mr. LAWSON was one of the principals; Olive MALMQUIST was one of my teachers. She was born and brought up there in Cabot, up where David SMITH lives. She was David's aunt, I think. Then I had a Miss URIE who came from Craftsbury . . ." -- Helen WHEELER SMITH

Arecca (GAMBLIN) URBAN played on the first Cabot girls' basketball team. "That was when I was in the eighth grade, be 1921 . . . Used to play Groton. We used to go on the train. They'd take us to the train and we'd go on that to Greensboro, Hardwick, Danville, and Groton . . . Angus SMITH, that was Jennie's father, used to take his team and we went to Greensboro. He had some nice driving horses -- just right you know. He'd take his sled, it was a big sled, a big long sled. We had blankets and everything and we'd go to Greensboro by team . . .There was Jennie DONALDSON, Dot MIDDLETON, Bernice MCCARTY, Laurene HAWES . . .There were six or seven or eight of us." --Arecca URBAN

"The spring of '37 we -- all of us in the high school -- went to the town meeting. They were arguing about the new school. And in '39 the new school was built, but the school they [had been] arguing about was not what they came up with. One of the things they were arguing about was they had a brick gymnasium [in the plans], and it was nice. We used to play our basketball up in the town hall, which was terrible . . .and one farmer I remember in particular kept arguing about 'that wart.' He called the brick gym a wart; he said we didn't need it . . .They voted to build a new school, but . . . the whole thing was changed." -- Elliot HOUGHTON

The new building, built in 1938, housed grades one through twelve. The old Methodist Church building was remodeled to serve as a gymnasium. There were separate rooms in the new school for the home economics department and agriculture classes. The home-ec room served as lunch room.

"When I went to Cabot High School, the first year I went, I was green as grass. I hadn't spent, probably in all my life I hadn't spent three hours in Cabot Village." -- Phil PIKE

"Mr. BORIGHT was our principal, and Mr. STROUT was our math teacher. Miss PERKINS taught us home-ec . . .We didn't have a lot of teachers. . .We started high school in September, 1941, and graduated on June 7, 1945 . . .There were two boys and four girls in our class. We had Walt BOTHFIELD and Roberta PERRY . . .we had Jimmy CARLETON, and Betty COLOMBE . . .and Loris HARRINGTON. Loris was valedictorian . . ." -- Margaret JOYAL STEVENS PARENT

". . . My class of '49 was very small. We had about nine, and yet that was one of the larger classes. Velma URBAN, Olive SMITH, Isobel SMITH, Lorraine BERGERON, Mary BLODGETT, Alice LAWSON, Franny WALBRIDGE, and me . . .We had a very good teacher from Middlebury College, Miss FOSTER, who was good in languages . . .Many of the girls in my class became teachers . . . Velma SMITH and Leatrice PERRY and I did, and one or two others, I think. Up until then mostly people stayed right in town and there wasn't too much opportunity . . . So my class was one of the first that really went off to college and left town a little bit and then some came back." -- Ann LEWIS ORTON

- 1949 to the Present -

In 1949, the Plains and Lower Cabot schools were closed. This meant further crowding in the new building, neccessitating reorganization of the available space. In 1950, a lunch room was made available in "unexcavated" space, but space was still needed. High School graduating classes were becoming smaller, so the school board decided to take one of the high school rooms in order to allow two instead of three elementary grades per room.

A renovated gymnasium was completed in the old church in 1953. Cost per pupil for elementary students was $163.52; for high school students, $598.22. Superintendent C. D. SAWYER recommended suspending agriculture for the 1954 - 55 school year in order to replace "with a competent social studies teacher, thereby enriching our below - average social studies curriculum."

Briefly, in 1956, the school board considered reopening Lower Cabot and sending grades one and two there, but the following year it was decided to add two rooms to the existing building to replace space taken earlier from the high school. A committee was formed to explore cost - effective measures to alleviate crowding.

In the late 1960's, new State mandates brought up the controversy of whether or not to enter into a union district. It was finally decided joining the union district was "not in the best interests of school/students/town." Instead, it was proposed to build several satellite buildings for use as classrooms.

"I was very active in the school when the new buildings were built. The choice at that time was whether to go union district with Marshfield or whether to keep a high school in town. I was in favor of the latter course, and served on several committees, and it was nip and tuck. But in the end we kept the school here, which I don't regret now. I don't think there are many people that do regret it." -- Barbara CARPENTER

[NOTE: Amen to Barbara Carpenter's comments! It would have been a HUGE mistake for Cabot to join the union school, with Marshfield\Plainfield, that was proposed in the 60's. As of 2001, Cabot not only still has its community school, it ranks among the top in the state academically. The best education is provided. Still, there's something very special, yet difficult to describe, about Cabot School. Like Pearl SOMAINI-dwyer, I learned more than academics there. I learned the importance of integrity, loyalty, honesty and values in my years at Cabot School. I'm humbled to offer these web pages as a small thank you to Cabot and its school. BSD]

 

Quotes - Source "Cabot, Vermont A Collection of Memories From The Century Past" A Publication of the Cabot Oral History Committee - 1999 Excerpts from pp - 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113 & 114.

Book available. $20.00. To order, e-mail President Dannenberg of the Cabot Historical Society:

[email protected]

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