Gladys Clark
Interviewed on April 12, 1981
Age: 88
Concord Oral History Program
Renee Garrelick, Interviewer.
Click here for audio in .mp3 format
Education in Concord.
Originally our schools were based on the education to be found
in England. Our settlers were people who lived in an area of
England which had all the advantages of the education there. It
was natural that they wanted their children to continue that same
sort of life here in America. So a school was started in the very
early days which was called The English Latin Grammar School, in
the form of the old English Latin grammar schools. This was in the
early 1640s.
The original schoolhouse was situated on Lowell Road about
where the Masonic building stands and is now on Bedford Street,
that little old red house. It's much larger than the original
building as it stood on Lowell Road. In order to be admitted to
this school, a child must be able to read. The reading was taught
by the dame in the dame school. That was a group of women in
various parts of the town who would take the children of the
neighborhood into their home and it is exactly what was done in
England. Therefore, here in America the same procedure was
followed. A child must be seven years old and able to read in
order to start this English Latin Grammar School. Latin and
English were the subjects that were stressed and it was primarily
for the boys so that they would be able to continue with their
education at Harvard. But then it wasn't long before others were
admitted, those that would not be following in their higher
education, and girls finally were admitted.
In this school, morals and religion in the form of prayer was
taught. Every session began with a prayer and it ended with a
prayer. Morals were very very strongly accented. Of course,
Latin, grammar and Greek were the essential subjects. Mathematics
did not come into the schools until a child was fourteen, quite the
reverse of the way our education today is operated. Today
mathematics begin at the very beginning of the entrance into school
and it seems that English is taking a back seat. And Latin has
just been knocked out. That of course was the foundation of the
English language and was recognized so in the early days.
And morals and discipline, it's amazing that discipline had
such a strong bearing in the schools in those days because singularly it was very difficult even in the high school to keep a
teacher or to keep the principal of the school. And we have always
heard of all the difficulties encountered.
In 1687 it was decided that education should branch out and
more should be included and that town support should be given for
these schools. And so it was soon after that we find the Latin
Grammar schools located in three different places in Concord.
These schools were about where the town hall is, one on Lexington
Road, and I'm sure exactly the location of that but I think it was
about where the present place where they keep the cannons, the
guns, and another one where the library is. Well, that was about
1781 that we had those schools going.
One interesting thing was that the writing was done with a
quill. Steel pens were not available. The quills were sharpened
by the teacher. The child took his own quill to school and the
teacher sharpened the quill for use. That's how we got the word
"penknife", it was a knife that was used to sharpen a quill pen.
Latin and accent on grammar continued to be the essential things
that were taught along with Greek.
In 1799 it was decided that the education should expand beyond
the centers of town and so the district schools were started.
These were finally centered so that by 1817 there was a school in
each of the nine districts of the town. These districts were
operated entirely by the people of that district. The taxes were
paid directly to those schools, the people of the area in which the
school was centered had control, over the school. They had to pay
the salary of the person who was teaching, supply the materials
that were used, supply the wood and see that the building was kept
in order. The superintendent of schools of the town was quite
often the minister and supervised all of the schools but each
district was responsible for that particular school.
As far as the subjects went, it was agreed that practically
the same subjects were to be taught in all the schools but again it
was English, reading, writing and spelling. The teachers were paid
a very small salary but in those days, it seemed to be sufficient,
usually about $5 a week, then in high school it was $6 a week or
sometimes $7. The principal of the high school, I believe, was
paid about $800 a year.
The discipline continued to be the tragedy of all the schools.
Teachers refused to stay more than one year in most cases. They
were usually girls, practically always girls who lived in the area
in which they taught, so there again it wasn't the easiest thing
for the teachers or for the students to be so closely tied. But
they were all wonderful women who undertook this work. Some of
them remained until the later days even when I started school.
Then came exhibition day. Instead of examination it was
called exhibition. Exhibition was an examination of what had been
accomplished during the year. This exhibition day came early in
the year. I'm going to tell what was presented at some of the
schools and this was March 16, 1861. This exhibition came early in
the year because as soon as spring had come and the ground was able
to be worked, the boys were always out on the farms and so school
did not keep too late in the spring. The exhibition of the high
school was an order of exercises, a remark by the chairman, and a
prayer by Grindall Reynolds. Then came remarks by the superintendent and I think at that time it may have been Mr. Alcott. The
high school sang a song, "All the bluebonnets are over the border;
March, March, mothers and grandmas; Come from each home which
stands in our border; March, March, fathers, and grandpas; Now
young America waits in good order; Here is a flower show grown
under winter snow; Ready for spring with her sunshining showers;
Here every blossom grows, shamrock, thistle, and rose; And fresh
from our hillsides the pilgrims mayflowers." This of course was
typical of the songs that were sung and especially at the time of
the war. It was just the beginning of the Civil War "All the
bluebonnets are over the border".
Now we have the intermediate school and here again for their
exhibition, they sang a song, "This is Our Yearly Jubilee", a
recitation "Then and Now" and they always had these sad sad
things, a recitation, "There is Areba who's name is death", they
always had to get something in like that. Then of course, there is
that "discipline do good" recitation. Then because the Irish had
come into Concord we had a recitation, "Shamus O'Brien" which of
course was very wonderful because it took in that element of our
town, then came an extract from "Walden".
At the east center primary school, we had Miss Jane Hosmer for
the teacher. Miss Jane and Miss Abby Hosmer lived on Lowell Road
in that house which is just over the bridge or near the bridge and
they were wonderful wonderful people. I think everybody who lived
in Concord or went to school in Concord even until the Hosmer girls
were in there late 80s finished their education with the Hosmer
girls, Miss Jane especially. She taught Latin and Greek right up
to the very end. They were just marvelous people.
Anyone in high school who was failing and could afford, of
course they didn't charge very much for their services, or anyone
who was going to college always went to the Hosmer girls to get
brushed up in their education. So back here in 1861, Jane Hosmer
was teaching at east center primary school. And she had this song
for her exhibition. "We are little flower buds; the little
classmates" and I can just see how Miss Jane was making those
people so happy. I knew her very well way back when it got to be
1915, 1916 or maybe into the '20s, and it was always a happy day
for me to visit there. It seems that my greatgrandmother and the
Hosmer girls mother were inseparable friends and I have the chair
which my greatgrandmother willed to Abby and Jane's mother and then
it went to my aunt and now I sit in it.
The north center primary school is where Miss Susan Goodall
taught. I don't happen to know anything about her. And here she
had a song, "Come and Join Us Dear Companions" and a recitation
"Contented Life". Oh, that they might have things like that today!
And then next was "Marion's Dream" then "Across the Rainbow" and a
recitation "We Are Seven" something which I have taught all my life
up until these very last years of my teaching even right here in
Concord, I used to read that poem "We Are Seven". It made such an
impression upon me when I learned here in school that I happened to
be wandering through a churchyard one Sunday afternoon in Conway,
Wales and went into the church and there was a baptismal service
and I couldn't understand anything that was being said in their
Welsh so I wandered out into the churchyard. And there was seven
little crosses and I said "Oh, We are seven!". Sure enough this
was where the little cottage was, where she sat and ate her
porridge up and here were the seven little graves. It made such an
impression upon me that when I was teaching I continued to read
that poem and show the children the picture of that graveyard and
the seven little crosses. And see how many years that has gone
through life from 1861 until 1980, goodness me.
And here is a very appropriate song they had "Cleanliness". I
don't know if we need to stress that today or not but I think there
were times in those days when they did have to. Then "Willie and
The Apple Tree" and of course, that was a fun poem "Willie and The
Apple Tree", the children should enjoy the apple tree more today.
Then "The Ants", and here comes nature again and then of course,
comes the religious part of their schooling, a recitation, "Jesus,
Tender Shepherd, Hear Me". I'm glad Miss Goodall carried out the
instructions of the early days to close things with a prayer.
Next we come to the west center primary and Miss Sarah
Richardson and she continued even into my day, not as a teacher but
she continued to live very well and comfortably and honorably here
in Concord even into the 1920s, I'm sure it was 1920. And her song
"Vacation Days", "Boston Boys and General Howe", she brings in the
history which had transpired not too long before. Then the song
"Gentle Annie" and "The Pilgrim's Progress" a story from the "The
Pilgrim's Progress", a recitation "Minutes" which probably emphasized the importance of time. Then the next recitation "The Union"
and here again we get the history which she was stressing. And
finally ending with a song.
And next we have a recess and then we go to the east quarter
school. You see the minister and the chairman of the school board
or what trailed around to all these schools on exhibition day and
witnessed all of these exercises and so they had to have a little
recess.
Then we come to the east quarter and I hope you people all
know where these different quarters are. The east quarter is down
here in the Lexington Road area, way down. And here Miss Abby
Hubbard was the teacher and she begins with a declamation, an
extract from Washington's farewell address. We get the history.
Next you see because this is an older class is a children's
geographical exercise and I am wondering just what that geographical exercise might be because I understand that geography had to
wait until a later time before that was introduced. Then comes a
reading "In Rome" and here again the history and geography, and
next recitation is from "Evangeline" and again the geography and
history play a part. Then comes gymnastics, now that is quite
unusual in those days I presume to have gymnastics because of all
the exercise the kids had walking to school and doing the farm
chores, they certainly got plenty of exercise. But gymnastics I
suppose was deep breathing and correct posture and all the sorts of
things that would be necessary if they were going into the army
with war just around the corner.
When I was teaching and had little gymnastics exercises to
limber them up a little bit, I stressed very strongly to keep in
motion together because if you are not together you will be the
first man shot. You will be spotted immediately. So perhaps this
was why she was having gymnastics. And then we go on with a happy
little closing song.
The north quarter which was up where Middlesex School is, no
it was farther north than that. The north quarter was way up in
the Westford Road-Spencer Brook Road area. The teacher was Miss S.
A. Brown. Now the Browns lived where the Middlesex School now is
in that farmhouse there. Mr. Brown owned that whole great area
where the Middlesex School is or most of that area and it was
called a stock farm, so I suppose Miss S.A. Brown was the daughter
of the Browns who lived there. She had a recitation "The Crystal
Hunters" and the "Explanation of Cube Root". Now if anyone who
lived up in the north quarter ever had a use for cube root is a
question in my mind. They were farmers to the nth degree and back
country people. However, cube root might have been used for some
of their wood piles or manure piles or something like that but I
can't imagine, but anyway that is what she taught. That just
floored me whenever I found cube root up there! Evidently her
father was a very brilliant man and taught it to her so she was
passing on the knowledge.
Now we come to the Bateman's Pond School which was right at
the intersection of Lowell Road and Westford Road and Miss S.P.
Bean. The only Beans I knew lived downtown but she might have
boarded out there somewhere while she was teaching. And here we
see the "Pilgrim's Progress" which seemed to be acted. It was a
little portrayal of "Pilgrim's Progress"; it says "Scenes from
Pilgrim's Progress" so I would say it might have been a little
play. Then there was an exhibition of printing, the printing as
opposed to the cursive writing. Then "Dialogue of the
Mathematician" so you see the cube root and the mathematician are
centered out in the Lowell Road area. I just wonder how many of
the people who lived in that area made use of these instructions
they received. Next came writing on the board and again Miss Bean
apparently thought printing and writing were very essential so that
whatever they wrote could be recognized, and then a little
declamation "I Love Little Pussy". I can't see "Little Pussy"
going in with the mathematicians but still this is a one-room
school with everything from the first grade up through the eighth
grade so I suppose the "Little Pussy" recitation was for the first
grade where the mathematician was for the upper grade who would be
going into high school. So she had quite a bit to cover.
Then we come to the Barrett's Mill School and here we see Miss
M.E. Prescott. Now the Prescotts of course lived over on Monument
Street but whether at one time some of the family lived down on
Barrett's Mill Road, I'm not sure because I do know that Cyrus Cook
lived on Barrett's Mill Road where the Currys live now and Mrs.
Cook was a Prescott. So there was evidently some tie in there that
the Prescotts would have lived on Monument Street or whether they
did live for a time down there on Barrett's Mill but she was
teaching at the Barrett's Mill School. A dialogue "What is Most
Beautiful?" then we have a geographical chart and there again shows
a more advanced use of the school facilities, and then a dialogue
"Metaphysics". My father went to this Barrett's Mill School and my
aunt went there and my uncle, and my father became an engineer and
his sister became a very expert typist and secretary and my uncle
was just a wonderful, well educated, all around man and a very
understanding person. So metaphysics or not, they certainly got a
good education there.
Next we come to Miss Whitney at the Factory Village school in
West Concord. You know there is a brook over there and that was
just called the Factory Village where that brook is. And here she
had a song "Little Canoe" which of course with Warner's Pond and
the Lake there, "Little Canoe" would be quite appropriate. Then
the song "Happy Land".
The Nine Acre Corner school had a Miss Stearns. And here we
have a dramatization and a song "The Seasons" then spelling comes
into play and this is the first school where we have found that
spelling played an important part in the exercises. Then a
dialogue "The Four Wishes", the song "The Echo" and a dialogue "The
Ladder". There is nothing here that shows anything to do with
mathematics or geography or history, spelling was the one thing so
everybody at Nine Acre Corner should certainly be an expert
speller.
At the high school we had a Mr. Shepherd, and there we have a
speech by Mr. Bowers and remarks by Mr. Shepherd then a song
"Farewell Ye Friends". Evidently the high school which closed the
session didn't play much of a part to entertain folks. It was the
end of the day and I guess they were glad to see it finish. Mr.
Emerson closed the day with remarks and then the song "Auld Lang
Syne". And that takes a great deal of listening to.
The high school was on Hubbard Street where the Hunt Gymnasium
now stands. Mr. Eaton was the teacher and the principal when the
high school was established and he finished his career my first
year in high school which was 1906. He passed away at that time,
and he established a very fine feeling among the students and the
teachers all over town. When we had the centralized grammar school
which was called the Emerson School, the high school had been built
and the older high school on Hubbard Street was used for
kindergarten downstairs and first grade upstairs. Again we had
local people as teachers. Miss Worthly who lived on Lowell Road
was the kindergarten teacher and Harriet Clark who had been
teaching from the district school days was the first grade teacher.
Harriet Clark in what was the old high school and called the
Ripley School, was my father's cousin. I said the Clarks have all
been teachers right down through my generation. My nephews, my
nieces are all teachers, I guess we don't know anything else to do
but teach, but you know the word Clark means one who can read or
write, a clerk is one who can read or write and I guess we followed
that right down through the generations. In fact my first ancestor
to America who was Samuel Clark I find that in the archives in the
State House in Boston, his will when probated in the early 1600s
contained his Latin books and Bibles, so you see it's just sort of
a continuation through the lines. You can't change the breed from
reading and teaching.
Well, anyway Harriet Clark later was the third grade teacher
and she was really an inspiration to every child in Concord. Later
on I found that men who had gone to school to her as a child have
said "Harriet Clark, oh, she was my teacher. She always dressed so
nicely with a pretty pink ribbon in her hair." A little pink bow
or a yellow bow or a blue bow in her hair. She just made herself
attractive for the children so that they would be happy. And she
was very musical and taught music. She just impressed every child
that went to her and when they became adults and if they knew that
I was related they were extra good to me. The classes were large,
she always had 50 children but every child meant something to her.
Well, by the time that I went to school I got through the
Emerson School in 1906 so it took about six years for me to get
there, and so I went to the second grade in the high school. You
see the high school at that time, that building is now torn down
you know, it's a parking lot, had plenty of empty rooms and so a
second grade was downstairs in the high school on the side nearest
the library. And I was there for a month which I think was long
enough because the one thing that I learned was a poem "The day is
dark and cold and dreary, and the wind is ever weary, and the
lingering vines to the walls still cling, and the day is dark and
cold and dreary." Well, I guess I was pretty happy to leave that
dreary atmosphere and go upstairs to the third grade, and I
remember that teacher's name, she was Miss Chadwick and she really
brought a bright array into my life but that bright array was
arithmetic which I wasn't especially found of but we had pages and
pages and pages of adding, subtracting, multiplying and I guess we
started a little dividing. But by that time I began to have
whooping cough and rheumatic fever and everything else and I really
never had a chance to learn to read because I skipped all those
phonics and everything through one thing after another so that I
finally landed in the fourth grade which was in the Emerson School
and that was downstairs on the west side. There I had a wonderful
teacher, Miss Whiting. She was young and very attractive and she
never scolded and we read or I tried to read, I guess the others
read and if we couldn't read why she would read the poem to us or
the story to us. Black Beauty stood out in my mind and fairy
stories and things went along very smoothly.
But there I learned how important it was for a teacher to wear
pretty clothes. My teachers have always been well dressed but you
know the same dress every day day after day and you know just how
the teacher's going to look every day but this teacher on Friday
went home to visit. Apparently she had a boy friend because on
Friday afternoon she came dressed in a very lovely suit. In summer
it was a green suit with a lavender hat and in winter it was a
purple suit with a green hat and I always looked forward to Friday
afternoon to see that pretty vision coming into the room and
staying with me all the afternoon.
Well, by the time I got through fourth grade I didn't know
much about reading and I don't know that I knew much about anything
else but I went into the fifth grade which was upstairs and there I
had Miss Hurd. She was the inspiration of my life really. She
lived with Miss Legate at the Emerson house with Miss Ellen Emerson
and she brought all the Emerson inspiration that I loved right next
door to me. And she just knew that I hadn't learned all that I
should have learned in the past and she just very gently let me
know that I should be more careful with my arithmetic and that I
should really concentrate on my reading and my spelling and she
just made me realize that I must work hard. So although I wasn't
too proficient when I went into the fifth grade by the end of the
year, I was really where I belonged. And I had her again in the
sixth grade and there I really learned what life was. She just
inspired me so with stories of the Greeks and the Romans and just
everything that was really worthwhile in literature. And of course
that just inspired me to do everything else better because I felt I
was getting a grasp of the things that really meant a lot to me in
life. So that year just stood right out in my life and continued
from then on to have given me a focus on that to which I must
aspire and so then I went on to the seventh grade.
That grade didn't matter much and then came the eighth grade
with Miss Legate and no one who was ever in Miss Legate's room
could ever forget that room. Scared to death of her! She was the
principal and it was always a happy day when she was going into the
office and the assistant had full swing. Well, I survived but many
didn't and it was in the eighth grade that one after the other of
the people who had gone with me through other grades dropped back,
stayed back, stayed back. And the big boys, I think they all left
school about then and I saw them around town later, I guess most of
them have died by this time, and I thought well, you know, they
weren't so bad after all, they should have kept right on going, but
oh, she was going to make perfection out of everybody so a few of
us went on into high school. So through high school we continued
and it was really wonderful to graduate in 1910 with people with
whom I had started and gone through all the grades. There might
have been ten of us who had gone through all the years together.
Then when we had our fiftieth reunion in 1960 we still had so many
personal wonderful things to remember.
So our Concord schools have been wonderful wonderful schools.
The education here had made everybody realize that they have lived
in a town that has given them the best. When I went to Normal
School, I don't really know why I went to Normal School I hadn't
really thought about being a teacher but I just heard that
everybody who went there, Fitchburg Normal, had a wonderful time
and that's what I wanted to have in life at that moment. But I
found that I really liked teaching after I got into the swing of it
and you know class after class I would say to myself why is it that
these girls don't know this and don't know that, and they would say
to me "How did you know this?" and I'd say "I had it in school."
And so one thing after the other I just assimilated my work there
at Normal School very very naturally because it was only carrying
on the education that had been started in Concord, the facts that I
had learned in school here were really above the average because I
had no difficulty in just going on and finding that I knew things
that the others didn't know because it had all been taught to me
here.
Webmaster's comment: This oral history is based on a talk Miss Clark gave to the Concord Woman's Club in 1980. The collection includes an audio cassette of this talk; but unfortunately, it was recorded under poor conditions and is completely inaudible. RCWH.