Chet in 4th or 5th grade
at Sanger school
MY GRANDFATHER came up on Walpole Street in 1863... My great grandfather was down here on Willow Street before that, in the house that burnt you know right near the dam.. across the road. the little bit of a house.. That's where.. my great grandfather Schumaker [was]. And he's buried right inside of the lower gate at the cemetery about two lots in... says Howard and Schumaker on the stone. . Course I never knew him.. ..His real name was Kochendorfer but they changed the name to Howard. And see my grandmother Gergler was a Schumacher. and Mrs. Kochendorfer was a Schumacher.
At that time the old mills were operating here in Charles River and I think that's what brought the folks out this way. They worked in the mills. We never knew too much about what the old folks did but ... we figured that's why they came - to get work in the mills..... That was quite a going place in those days. ...
I lived on Walpole Street 'fore I can even remember. My mother went to keep house for her father there at the corner of Taylor Lane... And from there my father and his.. brother-in-law, Frank Gergler, went in company and they hired the farm up on Smith Street where the Harvard Apparatus used to be... I lived in the house across the road that's standing there now, the first house on the left on Smith Street when you go in.
They'd only been there a short time..[and] grandfather died.. and the brother-in-law went back to the place on Walpole Street. Father went back to South Natick for a short time and then they bought this land here [on Claybrook Road] in 1900. In 1901 they built the barn and finished off three rooms upstairs and lived up in that seven or eight years.. They built the house here in 1910 and we moved into it in February.
My mother passed away that fall in October. So then we tried to keep house alone here for a little while but decided to go back to South Natick to live at my grandmother's house. And my father spent most of the rest of his life there. He lived til 1917. And I came back here and kept bachelor's hall for a couple of years. I was here alone. My sister used to come weekends and kind of tidy up the house and bring up some stuff ahead for me. See I was born in 1894 and that was about 1915 - 16 along in there .. so I'd have been just about twenty. ..
I worked in the Dennison..The commercial teacher got me the job right out of high school.. in 1912. I worked.. in the office.. After two years and a half I got laid off with the usual December layoff they had after the busy season. They wanted me to come back again in the spring. They called me but I had gone to work for Lowell and Leavitt the carpenter from Natick. I was livin' here then. My father was here off and on when he was able to be up out of bed and I carried along that way...
I worked for.. Leavitt and later for Frank Pulsifer, another carpenter from Natick.
At that time they were doing some of the building here in Dover. I worked on.. remodelling the house where Doc Prout lives now and I helped build the garage up on Farm Street where Mrs. Jonklass lives..... That's just about the time my father passed away. Then I started to go in for myself.. I bought a horse and a cow I guess and a few hens, started carrying on like that. Til 1919 I think I bought my first double team... bought it from Mike Comiskey. In 1920 I got married ..married a girl from Canton that was workin' here in Dover. And I've been here ever since.
Chet in 4th or 5th grade
at Sanger school
RV- Could you describe the old North School where you went...
As you came up to the front of it there was low steps leading onto a small platform like and two doors one on the left and one to the right. One for the boys and one for the girls, and either door you went in you got into a small entry which was used as a coat room for the students... That.. went across the whole building.. and then there were doors into the inner schoolroom.
[In the center] there was a little platform that the teacher's desk was on. And the stove that heated the whole thing set out in the middle of the room and the pipe went from there way to the back of the building into the chimney. The seats of course faced the teacher's desk. The back wall was a blank wall and that had blackboards on it. The windows [were] just on the two sides... The only entrance [doors] to the building was the front. Taint like nowdays. They wouldn't let you have a school with one exit. You had to get out the front door or jump out the windows.
The teacher [was] seated facing the entryway...facing the kids....The platform
wasn't.. a foot high just one step..
Plan view inside the Old North Schoolhouse
The woodshed that was there was bought by Mike Comiskey when he bought the building and had it moved across the road to make his boarding house. He put the woodshed down on Haven Street where Libertys live now... They burned wood and coal too in the winter. .. There was no plumbing of any kind in the building....One of the pupils would have to go over across the road to George Thompson's and get a pail of water and bring it back for the drinking water. It would have a long handled ladle.. you could use... It hung on the side of the pail. ...
RV- The history book photo shows they had a pump at the West school...
At the West there might have been.. [But] we had to lug water from up across the road...
The West school was up at the park at the corner of Glen and Wight and Farm Street that triangle in there. And that was bought and moved up to onto the Donnelly property by a Mr. Sweet that had owned it at that time. He made a house out of it for his foreman to live in. But it was so much changed over you'd never recognize it as ever having been.. a schoolhouse..
After the District Schools were closed up and they transported the kids to the center a group of the young folks used it as a clubhouse .. They called it the West End Community Club and we had a piano in there and we'd gather there once a week or so and have a few refreshments and dance and play games and what have you. That went on for quite a few years but as we all got older it kind of disbanded and fell by the way. ...
We used to go swimming down ..where the modernistic house is built .. the "Copper House" ...down over the bank there. We called that the swimmin' hole. And we'd go down in on Riverside Drive some too.. We used to have a swimmin' hole at Valley Farm there.. And I have been swimming.. in the pond back of Hoyt's there.. You'd go down the railroad tracks and go in. But 'twas all full of bloodsuckers.. You'd come out [covered with them] (Laughs) ..