Welcome to installment 221 of Bidwell Lore! This week we conclude a 2-part series about schooling in 18th century Monterey. These articles were originally written by Rob Hoogs for the Monterey Historical Society and published in the Monterey News. We are very happy to be able to reproduce them here for all of you!
To read Part I of this article, click here.
In 1869, Monterey changed from the school district system to a system of town schools directed by an elected three-person school committee.
In the 1885 Town Report, the School Committee reported that there were 118 students between the ages of 5 and 15, 68 of whom were between 8 and 14. It appears that five schools operated that year: for the summer term, Corashire had 7 students and the “stone school house” had 12. Consideration was being given to merging these two schools. Harmon had only two students and was closed. Others in operation were Center, #4 (Stone?), and #8 (?). (We’re not positive of the names of #4 and #8. Even though the School District system had been replaced, they continued to use the old district numbers from the older chart below to describe the schools.)
In terms of expenses, then as today, education was the largest town expense, followed by highway. In the period 1877-1891, the average spending for schooling in Monterey was $1156 per year (43% of the total), and for highway, $754 (28%). The total annual town expenses averaged $2703. Interestingly, the third most expensive spending category was for support of the poor, averaging $456 (17%).
Now, a bit more about the numbers, names and locations of schools. Prior to 1847, Tyringham (including Monterey) had as many as fourteen school districts! Eight of these became Monterey schools with the incorporation of Monterey in 1847. A ninth school – the Harmon schoolhouse – was added when the north section of New Marlborough was annexed to Monterey.
The 1858 map (below) is annotated to show the locations of the nine schools referenced in the 1859- 60 table (also below). The table of schools gives more information about the schoolhouses. There’s a lot more to this story, left for another day.
