Lillian Elspeth (Glendenning) Weeks
Daughter of Elmer and Jane (Watling) Glendenning, born in Fairhaven, Connecticut, USA. At age 2, her family moved to Little Branch (near Chatham), NB.In the winter the Little Branch school was heated by a wood stove. Since the fire was not lit until eight o'clock, the school very often did not warm up until around eleven. When the school was cold, we had to leave on our coats and carry our benches closer to the stove.
One of the older students was hired by the School Board to start the wood stoves, as they were needed, from September to June. This student was paid $8.00 for the school year.
Each student had a slate. A good slate pencil cost one cent apiece; the cheaper ones were two for one cent. They would scratch and screech so bad that the teacher would be a nervous wreak. Each of us had a slate cloth to clean our slates. One day I dropped my slate cloth on the floor. Instead of picking it up, I used it to tie the leg of the girl in front of me to her desk leg. When the teacher called her to the front board, her desk and chair toppled over. Boy, was I in trouble! The slates with work on them were usually corrected by the teacher after the children had gone home.
The next morning, the children's first task was to clean their slates. Each child had a vanilla bottle full of water for that purpose. If we forgot to empty the bottle at night during the winter, the water would freeze and the bottle would burst. The same applied to the ink bottles.
During the cold winter days, the teacher and older girls made soup for the children who stayed at noon. Each child brought ingredients for the soup. Since my family lived close to the school, I usually went home for lunch. However, when it snowed very hard, Mother would send my lunch down with my brother. On stormy days when we couldn't play outside, the teacher would allow us to play in the entryway or in the woodshed. We would hang from the rafters by our feet, which was not very lady-like, singing "I went to the Animal Fair".
During the warm months, all the children who carried their lunch to school used to have a bottle of milk to drink at noon. They would tie a string to the bottle and put it in the brook to keep it cold. They were allowed to go down across the road to the brook below Grandma's house. I can still see the bottles of milk floating in the water current. There would be three or four bottles tied to the wire fence where the brook flowed under it.
The drinking water for the school was carried in a bucket from my home which was just up the road.
Since there were no snow plows, the roads to the school were opened by a horse and a flat sled. The horse would be unhitched from the sled and driven through the snow drifts first. It was then re-hitched to the flat sled which was carrying all the school children and onward they went. Sometimes the drifts were higher than the horse.
One year there were 53 students at the Little Branch School. The one teacher taught Grades one to eight.
On Examination Day, which was attended by our parents and the School Board, we were required to do our lessons on our slates. Our slates were then shown to the visitors. I guess we were always glad when Examination Day came because the School Board always brought us a candy treat.
Arbor Day was also a special day. All the children did their share, even in a small way, by cleaning the yard and the inside of the school.