One of Lincolnville’s old buildings (and we have several) sits a bit back from Beach Road, just up the hill from Atlantic Highway (Route One). You may have passed by for years and never noticed it. White clapboarded, two stories high, a bell is perched on the roof’s peak. This is the former Beach School, District 17 to be exact, the last of the seventeen schoolhouses built to accommodate the children of a growing town. This particular one was built in 1892, but there are photos of a building there that pre-date this one.

The classroom, one room for all eight grades, was upstairs. The bathrooms — an indoor outhouse, actually —- were downstairs, one side for girls and the other for boys. The rest of the downstairs was used occasionally as a classroom, but generally not. Like the other existing one-room school in town – the Center School, District 4 – the Beach School once had windows on both sides of the classroom. Some time in the 1920s educational specialists determined that light coming in from one side was beneficial to students’ working at their desks.

Since everyone was ideally right handed, the light was supposed to come over their right shoulder. (My husband still remembers being rapped with a ruler on his left hand when he did what came naturally. Now he’s right handed, but claims this early “training” really messed up his sense of direction.) So windows on one wall were removed and larger windows were added on the remaining window wall. All this was before the town was wired for electricity, so those windows provided the only light to the classroom.

Upstairs the landing opens to the classroom through one door and into a small ante-room through another. This was likely a coatroom, with a low built-in bench for taking off boots in winter. A rope dangles from a hole in the ceiling; pull hard on it and the bell atop the roof clangs, today a strange sound to be ringing over the Beach, but it must have hurried along children dawdling on the walk to school nearly seventy years ago.

The Beach School, along with Center, Miller, Youngtown and Wiley schools, the five remaining one-room schools, closed in 1947 when the new Lincolnville Consolidated School opened on Hope Road. LCS (now we call it Lincolnville Central School) had four rooms (just two grades to a teacher!), indoor plumbing, fluorescent lighting, a kitchen and lunchroom in the basement, and an office for the principal (teaching principal in those days). Four of the five last one-room schools are still standing: Youngtown, District 2 and Wiley, District 5 are homes now, Center has been transformed into the Lincolnville Community Library, and Beach is the home of the Lincolnville Historical Society’s Schoolhouse Museum as well as the Lincolnville Improvement Association, or L.I.A.

The L.I.A., originally called the Village Improvement Association, had probably used the Beach School in the summers throughout the 1900s. After the school closed for good, the group took over maintenance of the building in return for using it for their meetings, a practice that continues to this day. It’s still a town-owned building, but the L.I.A. pays the utilities, cleaning, and much of the upkeep, with a contribution from the town every year towards major issues such as roof, foundation, etc.

Now to the point of this story:

In the early 1990s the Historical Society was looking for a home, a place to display their growing collection, and most of all, a permanent repository for the photos and documents that were collecting in cardboard boxes in the homes of long-time LHS members. A couple of L.I.A. members had been doing some painting upstairs, trying to fix up the big empty room, and, in the process, uncovered the blackboards. We could even see where the old windows were plastered over.

Memories were fading by then, and there weren’t so many folks left who remembered going to school in that room. One memorable day a group including, if my own memory hasn’t failed, Robie Ames, Eddie Stephens, Albert Mathieson and others I have forgotten, returned the school bell to its rightful spot on the roof, and included a gold ball atop the flag pole that went up the front of the building. That gold ball, as Eddie Stephens gleefully pointed out to me that day, was Styrofoam, spray painted gold.

Not long after these improvements to the abandoned schoolroom were finished, the Lincolnville Historical Society moved in. Or at any rate, their cardboard boxes moved in. As sometimes happens when it’s time for a changing of the guard, or to be more blunt, when the ones who’ve been in charge get too old to continue running things, there’s a bit of conflict.  That happened over the cardboard boxes. The new guard — Peggy Bochkay and myself — would unpack those boxes and set things up around our new room. I think we were already calling it the Schoolhouse Museum, at least to each other. The next time we went in everything was back in the boxes. This happened a couple of times before everything settled down. The old guard relinquished the bank account, and Peggy and I went to work furnishing our new museum.

The Historical Society began to blossom in a different direction, in its wonderful new space, historical in its own right, with lots of light and a view of the Bay, thanks to those “educationally correct” windows. Within a few years and with a big boost from an MBNA grant, we’d built an office, a real office with heat and computers and shelves and an attic for storage, on  top of the downstairs kitchen. Peggy and her husband had moved away by that time, but I found a new partner in my neighbor, Connie Parker.

Again with technical help from a Charlie Cawley employee, Connie and I learned PastPerfect, the museum software program. We catalogued thousands of items — letters, photos, deeds, books, and all the donated items from shaving gear to a handmade wooden ladder to somebody’s corset to agricultural tools to... you name it. That job will never be done as new items arrive all the time.

For the past 13 years Connie has also been the face of the Schoolhouse Museum, greeting visitors three afternoons a week, keeping the place tidy, and answering genealogical queries. She sends out reminders to members to send in their dues (still $5 a year!), compiles the Community Birthday Calendar, and is the LHS’ treasurer as well. I’ve been president of the LHS for the past decade or so, writing the newsletter, two books of Lincolnville history, analyzing old documents, and assorted other historical stuff.

And now Connie and I are the old guard, the old women who need to turn over our duties to new blood. Caring for the Schoolhouse Museum and for the extensive collection that makes up our town’s historical archive has been rewarding, interesting, and fun all at once. So who is out there who’d like to take it on? Put your own stamp on the Schoolhouse Museum? Ideally, we’ll find a number of people to work together on it.

First of all, the annual Town Report is available at Mike’s Align and Repair, Western Auto, Drake’s and the Town Office. Or you can see the electronic version on the town’s web site.

Tuesday, June 14 is Election Day with voting for town officials, the Primary elections, and school budget validation voting; the polls are open 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the school gym, 523 Hope Road. A couple of people have let it be known that they are willing to be write-in candidates for Budget Committee: Robyn Tarantino and John Williams. Also, the United Christian Church’s annual Election Day Bake Sale starts at 8 a.m., so come early for the best goodies.

One item we’ll be voting on is the decision of MSWC (MidCoast Solid Waste Disposal Corporation) to go with a 20 year contract with EcoMaine. An informed group of citizens from the four towns (Lincolnville, Hope, Camden, and Rockport) involved in MSWC strongly disagree with this decision. Check out this video on why should you should vote no to MSWC’s plan of another 20 years of burning our trash. There is a better option, say these citizens, and it's cheaper and better for the environment. These folks have also sent along this op-ed on why EcoMaine isn’t right for our communities. Finally, to be really informed on the issue, here’s an article laying out the background on the issue.

Congratulations to the following May Students of the Month: Kindergarten, Andy O’Brien and Tathum Corson; First Grade, Olivia Blake and Willa Yetman; Second Grade, Maggie O’Brien and Maddy St. Charles; Third Grade, Gwen Hustus; Fourth Grade, Kaden Wood, Gracie Jacobs and Jackson Strout; Fifth Grade, Tatum Freeman and David Pushaw; Sixth Grade, Joey LaChance and Miranda Geary; Seventh Grade, Leah Doolen and Skye Abaldo; and Eighth Grade, Lulu Lydon, Cameron Pendleton

and Hope Osgood.

There is still time to sign up for the library’s card making workshop this Wednesday, June 15 from 2:30 to 4:30 p.m. 

Edna Pendleton and Peggy DiGiovanni will show how to create different kinds of notecards using techniques such as embossing, stamping, die cutting and chalking. Edna also plans to demonstrate how she uses her special Big Shot machine to make thank-you, holiday, and other one-of-a-kind cards herself.  

I don’t want to talk about it….

The Lincolnville Center Indoor Flea Market will be held this Saturday, June 18, from 7:30 a.m. to 12:30 p.m. and will be held in the Community Building,18 Searsmont Road. There will be a wide selection of merchandise for sale including antiques and collectibles, household items, handcrafts, and value added farm products. 

Two adults or mature teens are needed to help with the children’s crafts from 10 a.m. to noon on Saturday, July 9 at the Strawberry Festival in Lincolnville Center. We also need 4 or 5 face painters! (Simple designs like strawberries, butterflies, lady bugs, flowers). The Strawberry Festival begins at 9, the parade begins from the library at 10. It’s the big fundraiser of the year for United Christian Church, to keep the heat on and the doors open (well, openable) at our Old Meeting House. Come join the fun!

Please call Julie Turkevich at 763-4850 or Susan Silverio at 763-4652.

LBB Pick of the Week

[From the woman with the nest of baby robins]

“Well they seem to be thriving despite our thinking they were dead. I am including a photo of them, dressed in feathers, being well fed. I'm trying to keep a red squirrel out of the shed now. Thanks for everyone's input on these babies.”

 [Reply] “You get the parent of the month award.”