Up and Down the Kennebec Valley: China schools (Continued into the 20th century)

by Mary Grow

As mentioned in previous articles about 19th-century Maine elementary schools, in 1894 the state legislature passed a law that began, “The school districts in all towns in this state are hereby abolished.”

The law further directed towns to take over “all school-houses, lands, apparatus and other property owed and used by the school districts hereby abolished.” The property thus taken was to be appraised and district taxpayers reimbursed.

No school was closed by the new law. But in the future, town meeting voters, on the superintending school committee’s recommendation, could close or relocate schools.

The law further required each town to provide at least 20 weeks of schooling a year, and to raise at least 80 cents per inhabitant in local school money, or lose its state funding.

Textbooks continued to be a town responsibility. If a student lost, destroyed or damaged a book, the parent or guardian was expected to recompense the town. If the parent or guardian did not comply, the cost would be added to his next tax bill.

The 1975 China bicentennial history says the main goal of the 1894 law was “to improve primary education by making possible larger consolidated schools which could readily be graded.” In addition to fewer school buildings with more students, other hoped-for effects were standardized school years and school sizes.

A side effect was the need to provide transportation for students who no longer had a schoolhouse within walking distance. The China history named the cost of transportation as a reason “voters were not particularly happy” with the new law.

The history says an immediate effect of the law was to close five schools, supposedly permanently (including China Neck Road with its dilapidated building, mentioned last week; your writer guesses those students went to nearby China Neck school), and six more for “part of the year.” The following sentence says in 1894 15 schools operated “at least part of the year,” only three fewer than in 1893.

The history also summarizes China’s 1894 education budget. The $3,502.39 for “school-houses and furniture” probably included paying districts for their buildings. Voters appropriated $128.80 for textbooks and $90.50 for repairs.

Another $2,604.86 to support schools included “$2,227.85 for teachers’ salaries, $237.80 for transportation, and $139.21 for ‘wood and incidentals.'”

In 1895, voters discontinued five more schools and ordered the selectmen to “dispose of” three of the buildings. They then reversed course and re-established one school whose building they’d just voted to get rid of, plus one discontinued in 1894. The result was 13 schools in 1895.

That year, teachers’ salaries cost $1,808.45, and transportation only $131.50. The history comments that school officials failed to explain to voters how they had reduced “both the number of schools and the transportation costs,” an achievement they were unable to repeat in future years.

Over the next two decades, the history describes repeated rearrangements, including building new school buildings. The result was a gradual reduction in the number of operating schools in town: 12 in 1903; between eight and 10 from 1910 through 1925, as some were closed and others reopened; seven in 1927; six in 1930; and five from 1936 to 1949.

These last five were the four village schools, in China Village, South China, Weeks Mills and Branch Mills, and the (Pigeon) Plains schoolhouse in southeastern China, on Dirigo Road north of Weeks Mills Village.

School consolidation was “difficult to achieve in China,” the history says. “Some of the small rural schools could not be closed without incurring high transportation costs and parental wrath.”

The Hanson District school, in the east-central part of town, was one example.

The history says this school was closed in 1894. At the March 1900 town meeting, voters authorized buying a lot and building a new schoolhouse, “at a cost of almost $400.” The building was not finished until October; school reopened on Oct. 29, and the so-called fall term ran until March 1901.

In 1906, “new seats were installed” – and attendance fell below eight students, the minimum prescribed by state law. For the next three years, 1907, 1908 and 1909, school officials recommended keeping the school open, and voters approved, because of the new building and the “great distance” to any other school.

The Hanson school apparently continued, with “a bare minimum attendance” through the spring of 1913, when it was finally closed, “and the students transported to Branch Mills,” the village in extreme eastern China shared with Palermo.

Not even the four village schools had consistent high enrollments. Branch Mills, especially, the history says, tended to attract few students. In 1901 and 1902, its average enrollment was 12, compared to around 45 in the China Village School at the north end of town.

By 1901, the history says, the China Village school was “divided into…a primary school and a grammar school,” the earliest example mentioned of a graded school. By 1915, all China schools were graded.

The history suggests that transferring school management from districts to the town did little to alleviate three other problems mentioned repeatedly in discussions of Maine education in the 19th and early 20th century: truancy, poorly maintained buildings and undertrained teachers.

The history quotes school superintendents’ complaints about truancy in 1913, when George Paine “calculated that out of the 145 day school year, the average attendance was only 47 days”; and in 1928, when Carl B. Lord’s annual report reminded parents that children aged from seven to 16 “must be in school, unless they are ill or excused from attendance by the State Department of Education.”

By the 20th century, superintendents complained less often about unsafe and drafty buildings and more about inadequate flooring, furnishings, lighting and sanitary facilities. Despite annual expenditures on buildings running around $500, “there was always more work than money.”

In 1912, for instance, the history says every classroom still had double desks, “although the teachers thought single desks would be more conducive to quiet study.”

And, a footnote says, “At least, there were desks; in 1906 superintendent [Gustavus] Nelson had reported that some of the students in the China Village primary school had been sitting on dry goods boxes.”

In 1922, the Weeks Mills schoolhouse got “new desks purchased by the community” – whether double or single, the history does not say. That same year, three schools “were screened by the efforts of the teachers and pupils.”

The Vassalboro bicentennial history cites a 1922 state law that required schools to eliminate “those little buildings out back:” privies. China apparently complied gradually. The history mentions (but fails to describe) “approved toilets” added in South China in 1924. In 1926, Superintendent Lord said the Lakeside and Chadwick Hill schools needed toilets connected.

Electricity was added in China’s five remaining schoolhouses in 1937 and 1938. In 1938, Superintendent Lord wrote that three of the five had lighting that was nearly up to state standards, three had “satisfactory school desks,” one had running water and “none has sanitary toilets.”

State laws required increased teacher training, and China teachers’ qualifications increased accordingly. So did salaries, though the history comments that “school superintendents seldom thought them high enough.” Until at least the early 1930s, teachers were paid only for the weeks they actually spent in a schoolroom.

As mentioned above, transporting students became increasingly expensive as the number of schools decreased. In 1899, the China history says, the legislature required towns to provide transportation, authorizing each town’s school committee “to decide which students should be transported.”

This unfunded mandate – to use a modern term – meant that in 1899, “China spent $328.80 for transportation and therefore could afford to provide only twenty-four weeks of school.” The history quotes the school committee’s report: committee members tried to balance transportation and schooling, and “We have not responded to all the calls for transportation; we could not.”

Transportation contracts went to the lowest bidders, the history says, and “drivers supplied their own vehicles.” The earliest conveyances were open pungs (one-horse sleighs). In 1904, China’s school committee required “all permanent transportation supported by the town” to use covered vehicles.

In the 1920s, “cars or converted trucks” began to replace horses.

The China history gives Superintendent Lord credit for starting the movement toward a single consolidated China Elementary School in 1931, when he recommended starting a building fund. The Depression postponed his plan, but he continued to argue for it from 1936 on.

Voters rejected the idea for years. Not until March 1946 did they make the first appropriation, against the town budget committee’s advice.

China Elementary School on Lakeview Drive opened in April 1949, and the remaining five primary schools were closed.

Carl Burton Lord

Carl Burton Lord served as school superintendent in China from 1924 to 1953 (according to the China bicentennial history) and in Vassalboro from 1924 to 1955 (according to the Vassalboro bicentennial history). The Carl B. Lord Elementary School, in North Vassalboro, which opened in 1962, was named in his honor.

(Your writer does not know why the two towns shared a superintendent for almost three decades. The Vassalboro history says by 1935, Vassalboro, China and Winslow had formed a school union; Wikipedia says School Union #52 was dissolved in 2009, when the legislature mandated a statewide reorganization.)

Despite Lord’s importance in these two towns, on-line information is scarce. Sources say he was born May 13, 1894, in either Liberty or Kennebunk. His parents were William A. Lord (1867 – 1945) and Sarah Jane or Sadie J. (Weagle) Lord (1871 – 1936). They died in Vassalboro and are buried in Nichols Cemetery.

Carl Lord was the oldest of William and Sadie’s three children. He graduated from Colby College, Class of 1915.

He married Mildred Bessie Clarke, of Washington, D. C., on Tuesday, June 10, 1919. She was born in June, 1899, in Washington and died May 22, 1992, in Waterville.

Carl and Mildred had two children, Bernice Mae (or May) (Lord) Peterson, born May 9, 1920, and died Aug. 15, 2021, and John William Lord, born in 1922, Colby Class of 1948, died Oct. 4, 2006.

Carl Burton Lord died in North Vassalboro in July 1969. He is buried in the North Vassalboro Village Cemetery, as are his widow, his younger brother Maurice and members of Maurice’s family.

Main sources

Grow, Mary M., China Maine Bicentennial History including 1984 revisions (1984)
Robbins, Alma Pierce, History of Vassalborough Maine 1771 1971 n.d. (1971)

Websites, miscellaneous.