Cabot Schools
Cabot had 14 school districts in past years. We have no record of District 9; we list 15 districts, but found just 14. We numbered districts as they were commonly known. Numbers were assigned when needed, as the population of Cabot grew and relocated. Schools often were known by the name of a family who cared for the building. Names changed, but district numbers did not. A district with few children might close until needed. More links, students & teachers.
Schools needed available teachers and, in early years, a place to hold school. Records sometimes show schools in homes, but in time, buildings went up. Districts were spaced so children would not have to walk more than two miles. Parents were taxed, either paying cash or providing firewood, janitor service, wheat, or school supplies.
Teachers usually "boarded around," living with nearby families, while teaching. There were different arrangements to pay teachers - sometimes board was included, sometimes not. Female teachers had to be single and were paid only about half as much as males. Sometimes girls as young as 15 or 16 became teachers. One teacher taught all grades in one-room schools. They arrived early and fired up the potbelly stove before children arrived.
Schools might close in severe weather or mud season. Children worked on their parents' farms; during haying, sugaring, summer, and harvest, schools shut. During epidemics of flu, measles, whooping cough, or smallpox, schools closed and ill families were quarantined at home.
Cabot Plains School
Dist. 1, originally was on Sheperd's Hill. John Gunn taught there in the summer of 1792. The first school building, a log cabin, was opposite where the cemetery is today. It was moved to a pie-shaped piece of land at the intersection of Bayley-Hazen Road and the road now known as Cabot Plains Road. The school kept for only about three months each year due to the expense and weather. At one time there were some 50 scholars attending this school. Discipline was strict and unruly students were “regulated by the big ferrule” or a birch switch that had been toughened in the fire. Their lunch was usually barley cakes and potatoes roasted in the ashes of the big stone fireplace. Sometime between 1796 and 1799, after the town’s business was moved from the Plain to the Center of Town, a school building further east was built. The photo above is that
second building, now on an abandoned farm. A new school building (photo at left) was constructed in 1929 at the corner of Cabot Plains Road and Bolton Road, a short distance from the old one shown above, on land donated to the town for that purpose by Aaron Bolton. That school was closed in 1948 and and was sold in 1950 for $1,000 to Rev. Bedros Baharian, a retired minister who once served at the United Church of Cabot. There have been several owners since that time. It is now private seasonal residence.
Center of Town
Dist. 2 formed in 1793, at the geographic Center of Town. A log school was built circa 1796. It was later burned and replaced with a new building by the town. There were several schools over the short time it was Cabot’s hub of commerce and government. Vermont Historical Magazine, states there were up to 90 students. Perhaps there was more than one building, or some classes were in the meeting house or a home. By 1840, many families moved downhill to the "upper village," on the banks of the Winooski.
Lower Cabot
Dist. 3, in Lower Cabot, had an early school that was replaced about 1880 by the building that is presently the residence of Marc and Jaclyn Bromley. It was built by True Town, a local builder at the time. The school was closed by the Cabot School Directors in 1948, even though the townspeople had voted to keep it open. Charles and Barbara Carpenter bought the building in 1960 and held auctions there. Later Bill Scoville lived there and had a gunsmith shop.
This school was one of the first to have individual desks (maple mounted on cast iron legs), window shades, and a steeple with a bell. There were hard feelings over the outcome of the decision to build the new school, and having the steeple and bell added insult for some. The bell was stolen. It was found years later in a nearby mill pond and returned to the steeple. There were often as many as 42 children at one time in this school, and eventually only grades one through six when a junior high school was initiated in the Upper Village. There was an upstairs and a small hall and stage, but only one piano. It had to be carried up and down the stairs by the biggest boys.
This school produced more than the usual number of well-known individuals: Burnham Coburn, who became a wealthy New York businessman; Walter Smith, who graduated from Dartmouth and became a successful lawyer in Minnesota; his brother, Seldon who also graduated from Dartmouth and became a prominent citizen of Oakland and San Francisco, California (a partner of Ginn & Co. Publishing); a sister, M. Pansy, worked in that firm; Prof. George McDaniel who graduated from Harvard with highest honors; Prof. Wilfred E. Davison, Dean of English at Middlebury College; Prof. Archie W. Stone, principal of Derby Academy, and superintendent of schools in Essex Co., VT and published poet and artist; Dr. Carl Fisher, veterinarian and professor at the University of California at Berkley; his brother Dean who became an officer and director of General Ice Cream Co.; Dr. Carl Harvey, eminent surgeon in Middletown, Connecticut; Prof. Abbie Smith Babitt, graduated from BU and earned a PhD from Columbia; Royce Pitkin who became Pres. of Goddard College; Carleton and Gerald Haines, who both became surgeons; Rev. and later Prof. Wesley Atkins; and Rev. Fred Blodgett.
West Hill School -
Kimball School, also called Hopkins School, Dist. 4 was among the oldest in town. In 1870, a town map called it "the old school house in District 4." There was no mention of it in town reports after 1886. It was demolished or burned by the town.
The new school, built in 1854, about a mile away, near the four corners at West Hill Pond, was called West Hill School. The children who attended Kimball School went there when population shifted. West Hill School closed in 1918; the building was used for storage by the town. Later, it was leased to Chris Barberi, head of the Vermont Chamber of Commerce. In 1976, Charles and Barbara Carpenter convinced Mr. Barberi to give up his lease. Then the building was sold to Cabot Historical Society for $1.00, by the Town of Cabot.
Dedicated members of Cabot Historical Society repaired the foundation, flooring, and windows. They tried to replicate how the school looked, before it closed. David Book and his Heritage Class, at Cabot School, continued restoration for several years, starting about 1996. They turned it into a learning resource center, maintained by Cabot Historical Society. West Hill Schoolhouse preservation At right, the West Hill School as it looks today. Photo by Will Walters.
Merritt School, or South Walden (or Rogers’, later Smith’s)
Dist. 5. Located about three miles from the village, on the S. Walden Road. Some of the Amadon family lived in the old school after it was replaced by a new building which was across the road near Payson Churchill's home. Electricity was installed in this school in 1940, it was closed in 1943, and the building was sold in 1947 for $500.
Read School (also known as Boyle's)
Dist. 6 had an early school building that fell into disrepair; a new building was constructed around 1885.In 1918, the new building burned. It was not rebuilt. After the fire, classes were in the nearby Smith home. There were only a few youngsters going there, from two families - Smith and Gamblin. Next year they went to the village school. Read School (at right), was on land owned by Velma Urban Smith; she erected a sign there. The school was a few rods from Danville Hill Road, on what is now Urban Road. East Cabot
Dist. 7 - The East Cabot School was built around 1886 and it is similar in design to the other early schools built in mid-1800's. Walter Abbott was school director at age 17, and oversaw the construction of this school. It closed in 1948 and was sold in 1949 at auction to Frank O’Conner for $1,025. It now is a private residence, owned by Herbert and Annette Little.
Village School
Dist. 8. The first school in the village was held in the building which is now the Cabot Historical Society museum on Main Street.In 1978, the Cabot Historical Society bought the building, which had also housed the IOGT hall, was later a tenement and eventually a plumbing shop, from the town before the new, two story school was built in 1863. (See picture at right.) This building was torn down to make room for the present school’s main building in 1938, pictured below .
Cabot began a two-year high school in 1909. The first four-year high school class graduated from the Village School in 1920. Previous to that, students who wished to have further education were tuitioned to other schools such as Montpelier Seminary, Goddard Seminary i
exemplary” after a nation-wide survey. It had a library, stage, and kitchen. The PTA installed a Delco generator at the school; in 1940 it was “electrified” by REA (Rural Electrification Authority). This building was sold in 1958 for $1,300 to Helen Keene and turned into a residence. It is located across the brook on the "old Rt. 2," which has now been bypassed by new highway. After the school in East Cabot closed in 1948, children from that district were transported to South Cabot by a high school student in his car. Only a few of the children who attended this school went on to high school, probably because they were somewhat isolated from the Village.
No District 13 - Was it considered an unlucky number?
Whittier Hill
Dist. 14. An early school, built before 1895 and closed around 1908. The building was used for storage by the town and then either burned or was torn down. There is no evidence of it now; we have no photographs. It was on Whittier Hill Road, on the west side of the road, not far from Wheeler Road (between Wheeler Road and McKinstry Rd.). The town was still repairing the building in 1930, and spent $67.43 for roofing. In 1948, it was listed in the town inventory, valued at $50.
Petersville
District 15, was formed in 1858. Peter Lyford was a selectman at the time and was sent to organize the district (thus the name “Petersville”) for the community which at the time consisted of four dwellings, a sawmill, and the school house. This school operated until 1910. Children from that district went then to So. Cabot and by that time "district" was no longer a useful term as the town's one-room schools were considered part of the overall school system of the town. The school was set on land that the power company negotiated for around 1923-25. We aren't sure if the school building was removed, burned, or relocated, but the area was flooded and is now the Molly's Falls Reservoir.
NB: There are details and personal recollections of these schools in the 1999 publication of the Cabot Oral History Committee, Cabot, Vermont, A Collection of Memories From The Century Past, $20.
For quotes, from the book and other sources, visit Bonnie Dannenberg's web site.
in 1926 voted to sell the building, but it wasn't until 1972 that it was sold for $50 to Richard Spaulding, a descendent of the Walbridge family who had a large farm in that district. Mr. Spaulding renovated the building and moved it to his property on Cabot Plain, directly across the road from where the first school in town was located, on the Bayley Hazen Road. He and his family used it for a seasonal cottage for a number of years. It is now often open for visitors during Fall Foliage or other tours. South Cabot Schools
Dist. 12, South Cabot, or “Hookerville” has two school buildings still in existence. The older school, pictured below, was not used after 1929-30 when the new building was completed a short distance away, but the town still owned the old building and in the 1940’s, dances were held there by the local Parent Teacher Association (PTA) to help support the new school. This building sits very close to busy Rt. 2, just past Last Road and is now a seasonal camp, sold by the town in 1959 for $260,
The new school (below) was built a short distance down the road by Bud Bruce in 1930, and was in operation until 1954. There were 33 students enrolled there in 1933. It was the last of the one-room schools in Cabot to close. Soon after completion, this school was judged “
n Barre, or to St. Johnsbury or Peacham Academy. A Junior High School was begun in the school year ending in 1916; however, graduation wasn't celebrated with the traditional banquet until about 1941.
The former Methodist Church was turned into a gymnasium for the school in the 1940’s and was extensively remodeled in 1953 to include classrooms. The new school building was remodeled in 1950 to include unexcavated space in the basement, then in 1971 there was more expansion when four “satellite buildings” were built in back of the school to accommodate elementary students, and a separate industrial arts building and new gymnasium were built. In 2008-9, a new Performing Arts Building was constructed on campus.
A history of the Old Village School was written by Leonard Spencer in 1978.
We have not located a District 9 school.
Southwest Hill
Dist. 10. Sometimes referred to as “Burnap” School on Southwest Hill, usually had about a dozen students a year. Children were from the Wheeler, Lynde, Tebbetts, Carpenter, Lyford, Hopkins, Powers and Dwinell families. It closed in 1914. The building sold to Charles Carpenter, who razed it. There may be remnants of the foundation at the corner of Tebbetts and Ducharme Roads. This photo was probably about 1914.
Walbridge School
Dist. 11. This school was located on what is now Rt. 215, also known as the Walden Road. It was one of the early schools, shown on an 1870 map, and was in use for at least 50 years, closing in 1916. The children were then transported to the Village School, and the building was then used for storage.
The town
School district map from F. W. Beers Atlas of Washington County Vermont, 1873. Click to enlarge.
