Last Students Of School Section #7
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- Photographs
- Description
- “The original school was a log building just below Derry Road on the southeast corner on the 6th line. S.S. #7 was built in 1870. When the one room school was built Pheobe Rosella Cottrell was the first teacher. The kids moved from the old school to the new one on the noon hour.
When they moved into the new school building for S.S. #7 they didn’t have slate blackboards, just boards painted black. The kids didn’t have workbooks. Everybody had a slate, and when work was done, you wiped it off, and there was no way of going back. Little kids had small slates, and there were bigger slates for the older ones. Everyone had slate cloths in their desks for cleaning the slate.
When they got slate blackboards the teacher wrote the lessons with chalk that really screeched if the didn’t get good chalk, and every night it was someone’s job to wash the blackboards. A lot of kids carried their lunch in honey pails or they used bread wrappers or newspaper. It was a while before there was waxed paper. The teacher boarded at Will Chisholm’s on the northwest corner of the sixth line, and went home for lunch, leaving the kids. The kids didn’t wreck things, and knew to behave. When Amy Hows was the teacher she brought her lunch, because it was too far for her to walk home.
At one time there was no partition in the entry. They didn’t put in the partitions until they took the privies down. Once they got the toilets inside, they separated the girls from the boys. Before that when it was bad weather that’s where the boys and girls had their recreation at recess, or noon hour because it was a good long space.
The woodshed was full of wood and the pupils put it in too. When the woodshed got empty, someone would draw in a load of wood, and the boys and the girls as well would throw it in and pile it. There was cordwood stacked outside in rows, as well, and that’s where the wars were held with snowballs, and ordinary wars without snowballs.”
-From the memories of Frank Chisholm 1994 from tapes recorded by Irene Saunders
Percy W. Merry was a school trustee, and for many years he voiced his sentiments that we were “twenty years behind the times”. And in 1958, SS#7 along with other small one room schools in the north part of Trafalgar were closed, and pupils were bussed to a newly constructed school at Drumquin. P.W. Merry school accommodated pupils from kindergarten to grade 8. Rural one room schools became a thing of the past. Over the years the enrolment varied from as few as 8 pupils to as many as 30. Some grades only had one pupil. The biggest class in 1957-58 was 8 in grade one. The last pupils to attend S.S. #7 Trafalgar, which closed in 1958 are shown in the school picture.
Back Row: Myrna Marchment, Marguerite Peacock, Diane Anuzis, Carolyn Pewtress, Miss Jennie R. Sheriff, Herbert ?, Howard Speck, Surkhard Nowak, Donald Peacock.
Third row: Alan Bousfield, David Peacock, Raymond St John, Leslie Peacock, Roy May, David Bousfield, John Saunders, Howard Bradley.
2nd Row: Myrna Campbell, Valda Royce, Eileen Bradley, Carol Howden, Agnes Peacock, Brenda Bradley, Cheryl Bradley, Anne Bradley.
Front Row: Donald Featherston, Kenny Howden, Bill Marchment, Larry ?, Charlie Speck - Notes
- S.S. #7 was on Sixth Line just below Derry and called the Sixth Line School.
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- TTOIIMS0009
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Ontario, Canada
Latitude: 43.50011 Longitude: -79.78293
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- Contact
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Trafalgar Township Historical Society Sponsor: Jeff Knoll, Local & Regional Councillor for Oakville Ward 5 – Town of Oakville/Regional Municipality of Halton
