Phil Averill welcomes Bristol Consolidated School fifth-graders to the Rock Schoolhouse, the oldest surviving schoolhouse in Bristol, during the 2016 history tour organized by the Old Bristol Historical Society in conjunction with other historical groups and historically significant businesses.
The Old Bristol area is fortunate, compared to many, to have preserved a number of its old schoolhouses. Local historian Phil Averill will discuss the history of Pemaquid Peninsula schools at a meeting of the Old Bristol Historical Society at 7 p.m. on Sunday, July 23 at the restored Washington Schoolhouse at 1426 Route 32, opposite the Brown Church in the center of Round Pond village.
Averill’s talk will cover one-room schoolhouses that are still town- or nonprofit-owned, as well as “hidden” schoolhouses that have been repurposed as cottages or for businesses, or incorporated into residences. In some cases, the school buildings were moved to new locations, which was a common practice in the past. Averill will also recount the circumstances under which other old schools were lost.
Averill is the author of “Woodstoves & Backhouses: Schoolhouses of Bristol, Maine, 1800-2000,” a 40-page booklet published in 2001. The booklet is out of print, but is available in digital form on the Old Bristol Historical Society website, oldbristolhistoricalsociety.wordpress.com. It grew out of his daughter Erica’s eighth-grade research project at Bristol Consolidated School in 2000. She located and photographed the old schoolhouses of Bristol and compared the photos to those taken years ago when the schoolhouses were in use.
Averill continued the research to document as much information about each schoolhouse as possible, with assistance from Mimi Aldrich, and added material on the schoolhouses of South Bristol and Bremen.
Averill was a history major at Bates College in Lewiston. Before retirement, he was a marine educator, providing enrichment programs in the classroom and guiding school field trips to the Pemaquid area. He is currently sexton at the Congregational Church of Bristol Mills.
He founded the Pemaquid Peninsula Heritage Group, a consortium of historical organizations, and was the author of the group’s history tour map covering historic sites in Bristol, South Bristol, and Bremen. The free map is available at the Bristol Welcome Center in Bristol Mills, and at museums listed on the map. He is also president of the Harrington Cemetery, a member of the Bristol Dam Improvement Committee, and vice president of the 101-year-old Bristol Village Improvement Society.
Averill is a past member of the Bristol Fish Committee and Keeper of the Locks, and a past member of the Bristol Planning Board. He is active in planning fundraising events at the Bristol Mills church.
Before the talk, the society will hold its annual meeting at 6:15 p.m., to elect officers and three directors, and hear reports from officers and committee chairpersons about accomplishments during the past year. Refreshments will be served in the interim between the annual meeting and the lecture.
