Historic leaves, volume 5, April, 1906 - January, 1907

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[22] female school on Austin street, as noticed at the end of the previous year's report, we find from the warrant for town meeting, to be held March 5, 1827, that measures were taken for a new school building. The site afterwards chosen was on the Training field, and the building committee, consisting of Thomas Hooper, Josiah Harris, and Lot Pool, made their final report in the following December. We learn that the building was fifty-six by thirty-two feet, and stood on a piece of land with ninety-one feet frontage (other dimensions given), and that in the yard was a good well of water with a pump. The entire cost was $5,859.92, which left a deficit of $1,359.92 above the $4,500 appropriated. In the school report for this year we find that $300 had also been appropriated for building a primary schoolhouse in the yard of the female school. The records state that on the completion of the Training field school the female school in Austin street removed thither, and Mr. Holroyd, having resigned, Lemuel Gulliver was chosen his successor.

Mr. Aaron Sargent, who lately addressed the alumni of the Bunker Hill school (January 30, 1906), and whose address was subsequently printed in the Somerville Journal, thinks the new building above referred to was probably the forerunner of the Bunker Hill school, and was located near the present one of that name. He was doubtless led to this opinion because he interpreted the wording of the original warrant, ‘within the Neck,’ to mean ‘at the Neck.’ I have shown in previous articles that other careful historians, even Frothingham and Wyman, were led astray in some of their references to a school at the Neck. If anyone will take the trouble to re-read the previous articles in this series, I think he will find, substantially, all that can be known about the Neck school up to the time which we are considering. In 1827 there was a brick schoolhouse there of several years' standing, and, as Mr. Sargent says, in May, 1830, the town voted to repair this building at an expense of $300. The records of the school board are so explicit that the new building of this year can be no other than the one at the Training field.

The Bunker Hill Aurora, Vol. 1, under date of December