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School #6 in Conesus NY

Photo courtesy of William and Betty White Greene.

School #6 in Conesus NY

Located on Marrowback road at Bishop road.

Livonia Gazette

4 July 1940

Edith Patterson Durkee

Three buildings at least have served District No. 6, Conesus, on the same site. This was known as the Webster district and the land was leased from a Webster farm. Four generations of Websters attended the school and two Webster girls taught there in the first school house, Olive and Susan. It was the schoolhouse of song and story with tall narrow desks, each seating two. They were hand made, shaped like a figure 7, and at knee height were wooden “pockets” for books.

In 1887, a new school house was built with modern but double desks. One of the recreations of the day was to go to Patterson’s, the nearest house, for water; and a reward for good behavior was a “Yes” from the teacher in answer to the question, “May I pass the water?” All drank from the same dipper, germs being very discriminating there. Teachers were always “Teacher”, and it carried all the respect Mr. and Miss do now, and a greater recognition of her position.

Text books included Saunders readers with each story pointing a moral on lesson in conduct or manners, and none of us resented its outstanding teaching. Children don’t; it is for adults to say that they do, and to protect them from such teachings. I can still remember “The Three Cornered Piece of Calico” and that the little girl wished for it so much that she took it at a neighbors house, and how it wouldn’t drown itself in a brook, but caught on every snag, to be seen by everyone. And the little girl who wanted a child to adopt, who was told by her mother that she had a little girl to bring up and train every day herself.

Then when we reached the Saunders Fourth-Reader for what would now be sixth or seventh grades, there were the fine selections we all loved. And we read aloud every day - big boys and girls. When the reader was finished, we could take turns choosing the pieces. My mother had taught us to sing, “I love thee, I love thee, pass under the rod”. That poem was in the reader; and, like some ministers today, I couldn’t read what I had learned to sing. The attempt to brought tears and so this piece was the favorite choice of the big boys. Since the piece was chosen the day before, it got so that I stayed home those days.

Nearly every night we “spelled down”, and what glory when we were old enough to reach the end of the speller and met such words as “incomprehensibility.”

In Mitchell’s Geography we learned that an “island is a body of land entirely surrounded by water,” and “a volcano is a mountain sending forth fire and lava”. Wrong pedagogy, but we learned how to define.

Wages were low, but the teacher did not “board round”. Most did not “board round”. Most of them boarded with Mrs. Clinton Patterson, who lived but a few minutes walk from the schoolhouse. There is extant an order to Lawrence Webster, Collector, to pay to Jessie Adams, who was later drowned in Conesus Lake, $25 as salary from April 18 to June 22, 1887.

Teachers changed every year. In fact we felt injured if they didn’t change, not that we didn’t like them but it was more exciting. And, as a teacher of long standing, looking back at the long procession, they were a conscientious lot of men and women, who did their work well.

These are names of most of the teachers; their pardon if any are omitted: Susan Webster, John Holmes, Sarah Sherwood, Lily Greene, Carrie Damon, Una Damon, Jessie Adams, Lettie Bearss, Ralph Bray, Charles Barber, Katherine McLeod, Jennie McCall, Alta Skinner, Lena Bearss, John Bearss, Charles Jewell, Dennis Ryan, Winifred Bergin, Daisia Durkee, Mina Partridge, Edith Partridge, Lizzie Albertson, Paul Knowles, Curtis Myers, Edith Agard, Mary Murphy, Isabelle Branch, Winifred Sharon, Edith Durkee, Mae Rathbun, Oliver Webster, Anna Bearss.

Attendance dwindled from sixty in the old schoolhouse down to two or three. About 1903, the second schoolhouse burned down in the middle of the night, and it was replaced by the small school building which stands on the site now.