Collection	Hawley, Brooks
Date of photo	1926-1926
Description	Sumpter. School. Brooks Hawley notes: There was just a one room school down by the river on Granite Street before this building was made. Roof was on by November 1897 (front part). The inside upstairs was finished in Sept. 1899. The back part was made in the summer of 1902. The first teachers in the new school house in 1897 were Professor W. L. Saling and my Aunt Rachel Cochran, and they had 84 pupils. The year before in the old one room school with Mrs. Symmonds there were 30 pupils. By 1899 there were four teachers and 230 pupils. The first high school was in 1902. By 1904 there were still 225 pupils, but perhaps less after that, although high school reached its peak a few years later, and was well thought of until the fire of 1917. I started high school there the next month after the fire, two teachers in high school, J. W. L. Kaufman and Mrs. Lottie Dimmick. Consider salaries and pupils in a room. Prof. Saling taught 57 pupils in 1898, Mrs. J. P. Holland had 45 1st grade pupils in 1901. From 1906 to 1917 the principal's salary was around $133 1/3, or $125 a month. Why $133 1/3? Evidently $1200 a years. Grade teachers were paid $65 - $80. How proudly hospital, school, and church, side by side, used to show on the brow of the hill overlooking town when first coming out of the hills on the Granite road, as the lone survivor, the lodge hall does today, the worse for years! How needless it was to tear the old building down in 1954. Ethel Love wrote a poem in protest. After the east end was torn down for material for the new one room school, the main part was sold for about $300 to someone in Idaho and was torn down. I kick myself we didn't buy it to save it. It was as solid as when it was built and had a fine metal roof brand new about 2 years before. Glad I did do better with the McEwen school. Did save many old library books that were still there, under loose boards and fallen plaster, books abandoned because they were old--Shakespeare, Scott, Irving--books I had loved when going two years to high school there, sitting in the window reading Knickerbocker's History of New York or John L. Stoddard's Lectures, rather than go out at recess or noon.
Object ID	1992.1.722
Place	Sumpter

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Last modified on: December 09, 2017