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School #2 in Conesus NY in 1939.

Photo courtesy of William and Betty White Greene.

School #2 in Conesus NY

Located on Sliker Hill road in Conesus NY.

Livonia Gazette

4 July 1940

By Glenn C. McNinch

Write a history of the McMillan school district for your paper, Tom? But wait a moment. Where shall I go for my information, for after all, I am of the fourth generation since the organization of the school districts in the town of Conesus.

Whom, then, shall I ask? The older inhabitants of the town and district? Yes, but where are they? In my research I found just one living in the district who attended school in this old district before 1870, and so far as I can determine there is but this one living in the township who attended at that early date. There are still living, however, three others who attended there before 1870: Mrs. Lewis McNinch (Stella Gilbert) of Scottsburg, Miles Finigan of Batavia, and Mrs. Fred Kelly (Amelia Finigan) of Batavia. And there are living in the district today the immediate descendants of only four of those early families: Mrs. Edward Hawley (Hattie Clemons), Mrs. Wm. Harvey (Onnolee Chapin), and Lewis Snath. It is sad to note that much local history of much interest today has been lost forever by the passing of the older generations and the lack of interest of those who followed.

How many of us today know who were the commissioners of common schools, and their duties? The old rate bills, and how the early schools received their support? The first trustees or the first teachers?

In 1784, within six months after the British evacuated New York, the law establishing The Regents of the University of the State of New York was enacted, but no attention was given to elementary education or reading, writing and arithmetic until 1787 when this need was noted by the Regents. But little was done until 1893, when the State legislature appropriated 20,000 pounds for five years for maintaining schools in the several towns and cities of the state for the instruction in such branches of knowledge as are most necessary to complete a good English education. It provided that each town must raise a sum equal to that received from the State and that no school should receive more than enough to pay the master’s salary.

For the next few years various changes, from no State appropriation to that of $50,000 annually, were made until the year 1812. During Gov. Tompkins’ administration the foundation of the present system of district schools was laid by the passage of a law providing that the several towns in the State be divided into school districts by three commissioners elected by the legal voters of the towns at their town meetings; that three trustees be elected in each school district: thus the commissioners of common schools.

It was under this act that District No. 2, Conesus, was designated and its boundaries defined by lot lines on March 17, 1823, by Andrew Arnold, James King and B. C. Whitney, commissioners of common schools; such district to be known as District No. 2 of the town of Freeport, as Conesus was then called, the name being changed a few years later. These boundaries have been retained with but slight change through all these years. One change of note: The district did not go down the lake to Livonia town line as at present, District No. 1 cutting it off near the present Excelsior Springs Hotel.

The site was donated by Samuel Henderson, great grandfather of the present Colonel McMillan. Contrary to a great many of the early school buildings, this first building in No. 2 was of frame construction instead of logs, in fact the original frame constitutes the frame of the present building, though there have been many alterations on the interior.

I will describe it as it was described to me on this May 31st by one, if not the oldest, living pupil who attended this school. It was red. In the center was a large box stove for burning wood two feet or more in length; on either side of this stove were two rows of plank seats and desks, those on one side of the stove facing the north and those on the other facing the south. The girls occupied one set of seats and the boys the other. It was very bad form in those days, and even within the memory of my early school days, for the boys and girls to sit in the same part of the room; in fact, one of the forms of punishment inflicted upon the boy who was too much interested in the opposite side of the room was to go and sit with the girls. What an infliction and what a punishment that would be today.

The blackboard was on the east wall, two steps up. The next step lower had the two rows of boys’ seats on it, then down one more step and on the floor level were the two rows of girls’ seats. The teacher had his desk and chair in the west end of the building. Later, when the building was rebuilt, the several floor levels were taken out, blackboard and teacher put into the same end of the room, pupils all facing the same direction, west; but still the plank hand-made seats, with a build-in seat extending the whole distance around three sides of the room.

The old wooden blackboards have now been replaced by slate located at convenient heights from the floor to accommodate pupils of different ages; the old wood burner has been replaced by a room heater and ventilator, and electric lights have been added. In place of forty pupils, seated two in a seat and sometimes three, there is something like a dozen girls and boys, each with a single seat to occupy. What a different picture!

I can find no record of the early trustees or teachers, nothing prior to about 1835.

School-meeting night was the time the male members of the neighborhood carried their personal quarrels to the schoolhouse, where each faction could oppose whatever the other faction wanted. But I am told that was not so in the McMillan district, everything being peaceful and serene.

Among the earlier trustees of whom I have record, was Alonzo Pickel and Frank McMillan, the latter holding the office for a number of years in succession. Josie Coller, great-grandfather of Mrs. Wm. Harvey, was collector for years.

The first teacher of whom I find a record was Ornaldo Morris, who was hired by Finnies Shafer in 1855. Attending school for the first time was a little girl who in after years became his wife. Mr. Morris graduated from Alfred Academy the first year it was made a college, hence he was one of the first graduates of Alfred College. His grandson, Donald Morris, now teaching in the high school at Webster, N. Y., is also a graduate of Alfred, now called Alfred University.

The next teacher of whom I can get any record was Alfred Sliker, who taught Miles Finigan, the oldest pupil now living, his first term of school in 1864. To Mr. Finigan I am indebted for much of my information.

This school and district have more than a passing interest to me as it was here that my father, Scott McNinch, taught his first term of school at the very mature age of 17, in 1869. He was hired by Lon Pickell to finish out the term of a Nora Durfy, she having to resign because the school was so rough to discipline. One of the pupils of that day said she always remembered the remarks which the teacher made the “last day of school,” as it was called, namely that he “had taken the school because it had a hard name, but he had found it with a good lot of pupils and an easy school to discipline.” Well, just the difference in attitude and method of handling.

My father taught several terms in this school at various times. He had several scholars as old, or nearly as old, as he, among them Frank Shafer, John Finigan, Hattie Hawley and Fay Clemons. He had a negro boy one term, Dickey Jones, an ex-slave, 22 years of age, learning his letters and to read. He finally went back south.

Some of the other early teachers were Theodore Gilbert, Charles Gray, Frank Shafer, and Jessie Morris. Mr. Sliker, I believe, received $2.50 per week and boarded around, that is, stayed a certain number of days with each family in the district who had children in school. Later, teachers’ wages were from $5 to $8 per week and board was from $1 to $2 per week. Some difference between then and now. During one term which Mr. Morris taught, several boys from the village district came down to McMillan’s to school to complete some subjects that were not being taught in Conesus No. 4 among them Eugene Trescott ad George Baker.

Let me say here that it was the custom of the better teachers - I might say those who were considered real teachers of the times - to organize classes in any subject in which several of the pupils expressed an interest and a desire to pursue. Thus, in this and other rural districts, under certain teachers were taught Bookkeeping, Ancient History, Geology, Astronomy, Physical Geography, Algebra, not to mention in some cases a foreign language, usually Latin.

I have heard some of these old teachers reminisce about how they had taught subjects which they themselves had never studied, by preparing each day’s lesson ahead of the class; doing all this to give the boys and girls an opportunity which they knew few of them would be able to get elsewhere.

How about it, you poor, overworked teachers of today, with one grade and all kinds of equipment at your command? Compared with having forty, fifty, sixty pupils in one room, teaching the elementary subjects, two or three of the above-mentioned subjects with no equipment; no library, and the most meager, and not to say, driest text books. I have heard these old teachers tell of having three classes in progress at the same time.

Teachers of more recent date were John McVicar, 1883 or ‘84, Marcia Orr; and in the present century, Maud Sliker, Helen Riley, Edith Sliker (granddaughter of one of the early teachers), while the last dispenser of knowledge in the old McMillan district, in old District No. 2, Conesus, as such, was Mrs. Florence Joy, for in 1938 the march of progress caught up with this old rural school and it was merged into the Livonia Central School system.

Thus passed into history, 115 years after its organization, one more of those little rural schools which had so much to do with shaping the destiny of this great nation of ours, for forth from its doors went young men and young women to take their several stations in all walks of life - Presidents, statesmen, doctors, lawyers, and captains of industry. All had the foundation of their education laid in these district schools by such teachers as some whom I have mentioned - which impresses upon us more and more that, after all, “a school is a log with a boy on one end and a teacher on the other.”