From:School Article from the Heritage Committee
The state of schools and school teaching in Ontario’s early days has long been a favourite topic in oldtimers’ tales of life in the past century. Before the Canadian union of 1841 and for sometime after, ability to read and write and to do more than elementary calculation by numbers was beyond the reach of many citizens, both natives and immigrants, unless obtained by home training.
A grammar school or high school education was for the few, mainly a rare few with the opportunity and wish to prepare for a life in one of the learned professions. The widespread existence of tax-supported public schools in the province has a record extending back little more than a hundred years. Among the reforms of the 1840’s and 1850’s was a slowly growing common school system, fathered mainly by the native-born Rev. Dr. Egerton Ryerson, Methodist minister, first head of Victoria College, Cobourg, and from 1844 to 1876 Superintendent of Education for Ontario. Admission to a large share of the province’s public schools remained subject to payment of school rates or fees which not all parents were prepared to pay.
For the so-called Free Schools the part of operating costs not met from county and provincial taxes were raised by ordinary local property taxes instead of by rate-bill admission fees. Free schools increased in number only after overcoming strong opposition in many districts. Compulsory school attendance remained a remote idea.
#3 Beckwith – Cuckoo’s Nest School
Men with ideas ahead of their time, as James Poole showed in his Carleton Place newspaper of the early 1850’s could be friends of education and enemies of the free schools. Teachers Salaries Under $200 In Lanark County tax-supported schools had increased in number to 91 by 1850, and teachers to 102, thirteen of which were women teachers. Only five of the county’s schools were free schools. Teachers average yearly salaries including board were about $40 for men and $30 for women, and about $10 less excluding board.
Fourteen of the county’s schools were good or first class schools, as graded in inspections of 1850. The rest were equally divided between second class and inferior or third class schools. The schools of Lanark and Renfrew counties of this time are pictured by the Rev. James Padfield, rector of the Church of England at Franktown, in an 1848 report to the Bathurst District Council in his capacity of superintendent of common schools of the united counties. He found 120 schools in operation under the Common School Act in the two counties, all but a few of which had been inspected by him in the preceding fall and winter.
Teachers of schools selected by Mr. Padfield for commendation where Mr. Warren, then of McNab township, Mr. Hammond of Lanark township, Mr. McDougall of North Sherbrooke, Mr. Morrison of Perth, Mr. Heely of Carleton Place, James Poole and Mr. York of Ramsay, Mr. McDougall and Mr. Lindsay of Beckwith, and Thomas Poole of Pakenham. Log Schools Mr. Padfield provides an eye witness summary of the nature of this district’s pioneer schools: “The Schools in general are better attended from the middle of November to the end of April.
Among the pupils may often be found many young persons, both male and female, from 15 to 20 years of age and upwards. During the other six and a half months the older pupils are kept at home to assist their parents in agricultural employments. The Schools then are practically deserted, having frequently and in almost every township not more than ten or twelve scholars in regular attendance in a school, often fewer. This interferes in a most disastrous way with the education of the young.
The first schoolhouse was built in the 1820s at Gillies’ Corners on Lot 3 Con. 2 Beckwith. The union school, U.S.S. No. 4 Drummond & No.
“The School Houses throughout the District are for the most part built of logs, not more than twenty feet square and seldom eight feet high. Many are much smaller and less height. In each of these are crowded together during the winter months from twenty-five to forty children. The interior arrangements are often very defective. Many are quite unfit for schools. “Among the few good and tolerably commodious school houses in the District may be mentioned one on the south side of Perth and another under construction in Perth, both frame buildings. Another in Smiths Falls, built of stone, if finished would be the best in the District. But it is in a state and a high rent is paid for a miserable building in which the school is kept. There are also a few good log school houses in some of the townships, including two in Bathurst, three or four in Beckwith, a very good one at Westmeath and another at Pembroke. Of the rest many are too small an some few are ill built and worse finished, exhibiting loose and shattered floors, broken windows, ill-constructed desks, unsafe stoves and stove pipes and unplastered walls.
“A greater uniformity in textbooks is beginning to prevail. I recollect visiting one School last winter at which fifteen children were present, no two of whom had books of the same kind. The quarterly examinations have been almost a dead letter. In many instances not a single person has been present to show the least interest in the advancement made by the scholars, except perhaps a solitary Trustee.
S . S . 2 , FRANKTOWN , LOT 11 , CONC . 3
On the whole in spite of these various hinderences our Common Schools are undoubtedly improving (signed) J. Padfield, S.C.S. Bathurst District, 2 October, 1848.” Of ten new school houses completed in the district in the following six months, as noted in Mr. Padfield’s next inspection report, one in Perth was ‘a commodious frame building divided into two apartments, one for boys and the other for girls,” three were log schools in Montague, one a 22 foot square log school in No. 18 Drummond, and one in Beckwith at Franktown, described as a substantial stone building. It appears the latter building is still standing at Franktown, though not in school use.
At Franktown and No. 14 Montague the previous schools had been destroyed by fire. Teachers Convention, 1842 School teachers meeting at Perth and Carleton Place in 1842 were the first general conventions of this District held following enactment of the Canadian school statute.
At Perth the superintendent of Education for Canada West, Mr. Murray, had recommended to an August gathering of teachers of the two counties that they select a committee to suggest improvements to the new Common School Bill. The committee, consisting of one teacher, from each of the townships of Bathurst, Beckwith, Burgess, Drummond, Horton, McNab, Pakenham and Ramsay, met at John McEwen’s inn at Carleton Place a month later. Its recommendations, compiled by a subcommittee of three teachers (Thomas Ferguson of the Derry School, Beckwith, J. Fowler of Bathurst and Mr. Kerr of Ramsay), favoured “a union of Townships for the proper forming of School Districts, and that the Commissioner in whose Township the school is located manage the same.” Other recommendations were that no teachers lacking specified qualifications be employed, and that teachers salaries be not less than $50 per year, payable half yearly.
Beckwith One Room Schools List:
School Section #1 Lot 3 Concession 2 Gillie’s Corners
S.S. #2 Lot 11 Concession 3 Franktown
S.S. #3 Lot 15 Concession 3 Cuckoo’s Nest
S.S. #4 Lot 24 Concession 4 Prospect
S.S. #5 Lot 9 Concession 7 7th Line Beckwith East
Union School S.S. #5 Beckwith Township Lot 1 Concession 7 Tennyson
Union School S.S. #10 Drummond Township Lot 1 Concession 7 Tennyson
S.S. #6 Lot 22 Concession 6 Derry
S.S. #7 Lot 11 Concession 9 9th Line Beckwith West
S.S. #8 Lot 19 Concession 8 9th Line Beckwith East
S.S. #9 Lot 22 Concession 10 11th Line Beckwith East
Union School S.S.#10 Beckwith Township Lot 2 Concession 10 Scotch Corners
Union School S.S. #14 Drummond Township Lot 2 Concession 10 Scotch Corners
Union School S.S. #12 Beckwith Township School located in Ashton
Union School S.S. #11 Goulbourn Township School located in Carleton Cty
Union School S.S. #13 Beckwith Township Lot 1 Concession 10 Montague Twp
Union School S.S. #10 Montague Township Lot 1 Concession 10 Montague Twp
Union School S.S. #15 Marlborough Lot 1 Concession 10 Montague Twp
S.S. #14 Lot 14 Concession 11
Come and visit the Lanark County Genealogical Society Facebook page– what’s there? Cool old photos–and lots of things interesting to read. Also check out The Tales of Carleton Place.
Information where you can buy all Linda Seccaspina’s books-You can also read Linda in The Townships Sun and Screamin’ Mamas (USA)
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