Stained glass provided the backdrop for the Leedsville school chorus. The students are (from left, back row): Peggy Okenden, James Farley, Mary Duffy. Middle row: Helen Farley, Alice Duffy, Joe Duffy, Margaret Duffy, Josephine Farley. Front row: Alice Farley, Frankie Farley, Suzanne Farley
The two high points of the year for youngsters going to the rural common schoolhouses in Eastern Dutchess County in the 19th and early 20th centuries were the last day of the school year and Christmas.
The celebration of Christmas took many forms, limited only by the imagination and ingenuity of the young teachers who had limited materials and resources. Art supplies were almost non-existent unless the pupils and teacher could find materials they could reuse from home or find in the nearby fields and forests. Some children found pine cones to paint for decorations, some strung popcorn at home to bring to school for the tree.
Kay (Humphrey) Kane, who taught at the Leedsville one-room School for almost 10 years until it closed in 1944, recalled how planning for the various holiday activities was worked into the December school days leading up to Christmas.
“We still had our daily routine in the ‘three R’s” but we were always able to fit in getting ready for the school’s holiday observance. I remember one year I had the pupils save their better school papers - compositions, spelling tests and colored maps – and put them together in a booklet with a Christmas cover as a present for their parents. I think both the kids and the mothers and fathers were pretty tickled.”
Margaret Duffy Erskine Quinn, one of the six Duffy children who went to the Leedsville School, remembers the Christmas Kay Humphrey had the pupils build a “cathedral window” as the backdrop for their pageant singing. Gerald Juckett, father of the family with whom Miss Humphrey boarded, put together a frame of wooden lath and then the students used colored cellophane to make what they thought was a beautiful stained glass window.
Mrs. Quinn recalls that it was the same year Miss Humphrey had the students as members of the Junior Red Cross, put together packages of wrapping paper, candy and cookies for the old folks at the Dutchess County Infirmary. They distributed their little gifts after the young chorus sang Christmas carols to an appreciative audience.
Starting early in December, Katherine Turnbull, the Amenia schools’ itinerant music teacher would start the pupils practicing the songs that would be part of each school’s Christmas observance.
The late Leland Hulst, who attended Willow Brook school on Sinpatch Road in the 1920’s, tells that their annual Christmas play brought out the whole neighborhood:
“Ella Staunton, our teacher, would have our Christmas celebration in the evening and that was the only time the kerosene lamp that hung from the center of the ceiling would be lighted. “
It may be nostalgia for the simple, homemade Christmas past that gives these recollections the warm and peaceful glow of the season. It’s there though, and it’s good.
From the column published December 21, 2000 in the Millerton News called “Memories from a Country Schoolhouse”. It was written and researched by John Quinn, trustee of the Indian Rock Schoolhouse Association. Edited by Janet Nickson.
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