A Little Bit About the Schoolhouse

In 1846 the town of Merrimack authorized the purchase of a plot of land in the southeast section of town belonging to John and Isaac Parker. The land was to be used for as building site for a schoolhouse for District #12. The town paid the Parker's $6.25 for the property. 

David Lund was commissioned to construct the schoolhouse. A one-room schoolhouse in the Vernacular Greek Revival style was built. The clapboard structure rests on a granite foundation and has a low pitched gable front facing the road. Granite steps lead to the front door. Mr. Lund was paid $272.88 for the construction, to be raised from a tax in District 12. 

The schoolhouse was finished in time for the winter session of 1847. The first teacher was the Reverend S. Dodge. He taught thirty pupils for a total of 8 weeks and received $15.00 for his services. In the annual report of the Superintendent of Schools, #12 schoolhouse was described as follows:

"In the new district No. 12, they have erected a very neat and substantial school house the past year. The house is large and the interior construction is tasteful and convenient. The facilities for warming and ventilating are such as we should be glad to see in every school house. They had their first school the past winter, which numbered 30 scholars."

The following year, 1848, a summer session of 8 1/2 weeks with 17 students and a winter session of 8 1/2 weeks with 25 students were held. Miss Catherine Carter and Miss Lucy D. Toleman were the teachers for the two sessions. In the 1840s, female teachers were paid $5.00 per session and male teachers were paid $10.00. By 1853 this payment had doubled. Teachers often received room and board at one or more of the homes in the district.

School was not held in the spring or fall because the children were needed to help with the planting and harvesting on the farms. Merrimack was still a farming community at this time. Most of the pupils were girls and few were over the age of fourteen years. The school day started with one of the older boys starting a fire in the wood stove and filling the water jug.

The wood stove was situated at the front of the building and the stove pipe ran across the length of the building to the chimney in the back. This was done to provide heat from the pipe as well as from the stove. There was no indoor plumbing until the year 2000. Electricity was not installed until 1931.

Reading writing and arithmetic were taught to grades one through eight by one teacher with the older children often helping the younger ones. In the 1860s geography was added to the curriculum and a set of Fowle's maps were purchased.

There was no library and no reference books. The students bought their own books, and the teachers sometimes purchased extra teaching materials. Common books used for teaching were: Towne's and Holebrook's Progressive Readers, Greenleaf's National Arithmetic, Well's Grammar, Town's Speller and Definer and of course the Bible. District #12 schoolhouse did have a blackboard.

History was later added to the list of subjects with Goodrich's History being added to the list of books. Music was not added until 1947.

There were few extra books, little blackboard space and no repairs done to the schoolhouse in the 1850s and 1860s. The average class consisted of twenty pupils. Teacher salaries were between $8.00 and $20.00, depending on the length of the term. Parents of the students provided wood for the stove and the older boys did the janitorial work.

With declining enrollment and the schoolhouse in some disrepair, the #12 schoolhouse was closed in 1906 and students attended Schoolhouse #5 until 1910.