To the Editor:
This past Saturday evening, Clete and I had the happy opportunity of attending the Nobleboro Historical Society’s pot luck supper and program about the town’s one-room schoolhouses. Did you know there were 12 such schools operating within the town back in 1857? I sure didn’t.
Most likely your town had such numerous little schools as well back then.
We learned the history behind their development in Nobleboro, as well as the various locations on the town map and how they gradually reduced in numbers down to the three which remained when I entered the one in the center in 1954 as a first-grader.
While I was only able to attend the sweet one-room for about three years until the new central school was built in 1957, we heard Saturday night many first hand memories from those who attended the little schools all the way through their undergraduate years prior to high school. The stories were wonderful and were videotaped should anyone want to contact the Nobleboro Historical Society to see them.
I listened to every word and went home with what seems like hundreds of memories swirling around in my mind.
Let me just say this, while I didn’t know it at the time, I now look back on those precious three years as a true gift to me. I look back at the now vacant ground on which that schoolhouse sat and I can still see it.
I can hear the children shouting, playing marbles, and dodgeball. We had very little then in material supplies, but we had it all when it came to our unlimited imaginations. In that respect, the sky was the limit.
Thanks, historical society, for the memories.
Carolyn Baltes
Nobleboro
