ONE ROOM SCHOOL

One Room School

Earliest Schooling

Mrs. Delia Moquin remembers hearing that when Orson and Phoebe Reynoldst first started the mill that Phoebe taught school to the few children that lived in the community in the same building that later became the company store. *

* From notes taken by RH. McGowan in August 1978 following interview with Mrs. Delia Moquin.

Only Institution in Reynoldston

The Reynoldston school was the most durable institution in the community, outlasting the mill by at least 15 years. That families remained in Reynoldston long after logging and milling had essentially ended may testify both to the importance of staying in familiar surroundings, and to the ability of even large families to scrape by on subsistence farming, roadwork, and hunting and fishing.

Not and Easy Place to Teach

Reynoldston had a tough reputation among teachers in northern New York and often attracted teachers that had personal or family relations within the community. Teachers in Reynoldston had to contend with as many as sixty students in one room. While one teacher found that not many students wanted to learn, another found that, if he played football with the boys at recess and lunchtime, burning their energy, classwork would go smoothly. Of course, those who couldn’t stand school could easily drop out in their early teens, and go to work in the woods, or at home, and in fact most youngsters seemed to have taken this route. Very few from Reynoldston went on to high school – they would have had to board all week in Malone or Brushton, and that cost money that was not available to them – and fewer still went to college.

Importance of the school

Yet, the role of school in Reynoldston life should not be minimized. School brought the mill owners’ children into daily contact with workers’ children; it held the only library in the community, and, by hosting Christmas exercises, may have provided the only organized entertainment from one year to the next.

Mrs. Frances (Spaulding) Ellis (Teacher)

Yes, it was very small and I had forty six kids. And the aisles were very narrow and very uncomfortable and there was a lot of windows broken and the Trustee talked to me about it and I said that they are not broken during school hours, but after I leave at night.The big boys going through. There was a cut off to go over to the store. They cut through the pasture and walked through the school yard. And they threw stones at the windows. And he did not replace them too much. I said, I am not the one that is suffering; it is the children, because some children were very poor, and in those day they didn’t run to the welfare for winter clothes. So a lot of the children were not well dressed. Because, well they just couldn’t afford it.

Mrs. Frances (Spaulding) Ellis oral history interviews 1970 tape 1 p.10

Clifford Berry (Teacher) We had Christmas entertainment…Well I can remember the staging. I remember the staging. We had… the Reynolds Lumber Company gave us the lumber to build a staging in school. We had stage at the front of the school, where we put on a Christmas entertainment. It was the only
entertainment that they had at Christmas up there. If I didn’t make something, they would have had nothing. We had a Christmas tree and we had presents…

Clifford Berry oral history interviews 1970 tape 1 side 2 p3

Haidee Rushlaw (Student)

I used to walk to school. I was timed five minutes to the school door… my aunt did it (Mrs. Orson Reynolds timed her). I could walk it in five minutes. (teachers) There were so many different ones. Well Dr. McCarthy was afterwards…he was my teacher at one time. And it has been so long…..Mary Taylor, she was a cousin of the Reynolds…she was a teacher there. We used to have a pail with dipper, and teacher would pass the water and different ones would pass the water, we’d all drink out of the same pail. Wasn’t that something…not too sanitary was it.

(Arbor day) We used to clean the school yard and go up in the woods…up towards Bombards go back in the woods and get little trees and put flowers. We loved that.

(Dunce Cap) Yes I was telling my grand daughter when we did
something…I don’t know what teacher it was, when we did something we shouldn’t,
had to stand up with a dunce cap on.

Haidee McGoon (Reynolds) Rushlaw oral history interviews 1970 tape 1 p.4

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