Historic leaves, volume 7, April, 1908 - January, 1909

[26] supposition that it was somewhere on the Peninsula, for we know that the schoolhouses there were both destroyed in the general conflagration of June 17, 1775, and school affairs were at a standstill for some time thereafter. But the more I think of it, the more inclined I am to believe that, being a relic of earlier days, this ‘block house’ would naturally be located in the outskirts of such a community as we imagine this one was. Another thing which seems to favor the theory that it may have stood on Somerville soil is the fact that some of the committee for making the necessary repairs were men who lived in this part of Charlestown. Is it not possible that this ancient edifice stood on the cemetery lot? How did the town obtain its title to that corner of this lot where later schoolhouses stood?

The local name for the school which we are considering, almost from first to last, was, doubtless, ‘the Milk Row School,’ but officially it was designated by various titles. After 1790 it was known as school No. 2. Sometime after 1801 and before 1812 (the records for those years are lost) it was known as No. 3, the new one at the Neck being designated No. 2. In 1829 it was called No. 5 (that at the Neck being No. 3 and the new one on lower Winter Hill Road, No. 4). The sections of the town where these schools stood were known in early times not as districts, but ‘wards.’ In 1839 our old school was known as Primary No. 20, and last of all, after 1846, and when a Somerville school, as the Milk Street Primary.

One of the earliest acts of the incorporated body of trustees was to vote, March 6, 1795, to build a schoolhouse on Milk Row. This act, no doubt, met with favor, for now and then the records are not silent to the fact that some jealousy existed, as this section of the town felt that it was not getting its proportional share of the school money. The sum voted for the new building was £ 100, or $500. Three years after, or May 14, 1798, when the trustees exhibited the building account, we learn that the cost was not far from $750. For the maintenance of this school for the year 1801-2, the town appropriated $287.

From the trustees' report of May 8, 1812, we learn that there were 133 school children, between the ages of four and