Southold Old Bayview Schoolhouse

BY DANNY McCARTHY

Let’s take a look back at the Southold Bay View Schoolhouse. Southold Town was divided into school districts at the home of John Wells on Monday, December 6, 1813. Less than 10 years after, School District No. 6 was in need of a schoolhouse where Bay View Road and Jacobs Lane meet. Joseph Hallock leased to the town the triangle of land at Jacobs Lane and Bayview Road for the building of what came to be known as the Old Bay View Schoolhouse. It was built at the dawning of the Greek revival style. The flag that flew there had 24 stars the year it was built.

Hand-made desks where the children sat two-by-two and a wood stove set in a tray of sand in which ink bottles were buried to keep the ink from freezing were a part of the furnishings. The child who forgot to bring in the required stick of wood had to sit in a chilly corner far from the stove. They didn’t forget too often, you bet! Around 10 a.m. a little girl would make cocoa on the wood stove and that helped to warm her classmates. During recess in the balmy weather, the boys and girls romped under the maple trees that shaded the schoolhouse from the sun. They played jacks, baseball, skipped rope, and enjoyed dominoes.

The teachers were paid a good salary. Every effort was made to attract the best teachers. Gertrude Koke was the last one to teach there. In only a few years, there were so many children in School District No. 6 that the district decided to build a new, larger school about a quarter of a mile away. It was a sad day when the children left in 1925 and Miss Koke closed the door for the last time.

One day around 1946, Chester and Parker Dickerson and a couple of other men walked from the nearby farm that then belonged to Miss Mary L. Dayton. They moved the building through the fields and onto their farm property on Jacobs Lane, set it down near a pretty stable with a cupola, made the front door bigger, built a ramp outside, connected it to electricity, where it was used as a machine shop and for storage. Miss Koke’s attendance book from 1925 and the official District No. 6 seal used to emboss diplomas had been found by Mahlon Dickerson. He kept them safe in his home. In 1989, his sons presented these artifacts to the Southold Historical Society. The artifacts were in their father’s possession since the days when he served on the Bayview School Board. In 1989, Mahlon Dickerson’s sons, Chester and Parker, presented these artifacts to the Southold Historical Society. When the Dickerson brothers were approached about making the Old Bay View Schoolhouse a memorial, they agreed and signed it over to the town.

The Southold Town Board adopted a resolution on June 6, 1989 that reads: “RESOLVED that the Town Board of Southold hereby accepts, with sincere thanks and appreciation, the generous donation of The Old Bay View Schoolhouse by Parker and Chester Dickerson, at a cost of one (1) peppercorn, payable annually to the Dickersons.”

The Town Board was being faithful to the story that says when Joseph Hallock leased to the town the triangle of land at Jacobs Lane and Bayview Road for the building of what came to be known as the Old Bay View School, the compensation was recorded as being a peppercorn.

According to Aurelie Stack in the July 1, 1989 edition of the Peconic Bay Shopper, a roll book from teacher Gertrude Koke lists the names of 38 boys and girls who attended the school the year the school closed on July 31, 1925.

Of the 38, 22 had been invited to a reunion given by the Southold Historical Society held on July 1, 1990. Gertrude Koke Bunce lived in Greenport at the time of the reunion.

A “Schoolhouse” Quilt was raffled to help defray the cost of building the foundation and relocating the schoolhouse as a memorial. The quilt was planned by Mattituck resident Aurelie Dwyer Stack who also pieced and appliquéd the central motif, a fabric portrait of the Schoolhouse. The design of the quilt was adapted from the book, Pieces of the Past, by Nancy J. Martin. Members of the North Fork Quilters and their friends assembled various parts of the quilt and included Lillian Baglivi, Doris Bayles, Edna Bechtold, Dorothy Bloom, Alice Doroski, Caroline Fraser, Ethel Grigonis, Jane Hardy, Marie Helinski, JoAnn Hinchliffe, Susan Hockett, Caroline Hunka, Betty King, Jackie Mazzaferro, Jean Peters, Rajean Salmon, Jeanne Tuthill, and Betsy Widirstky. Some fabric for the raffle quilt was donated from a store named By the Yard of Mattituck. Linda Denner of Garden City was the adviser for the Old Bay View Schoolhouse portrait.

Also assisting on the quilt raffle project by selling chancebooks were Dorothy Bloom and other quiltmakers plus Elizabeth Geyer, Kathryn McCourt, Betsey and Parker Dickerson, Lauren Dickerson Sisson, Joanne Davis-Slotkin, Elizabeth Willse, and members of the Southold Historical Society.

The quilt was won by Dr. Ethel Wortis of Southold. The second prize was a Schoolhouse wall hanging made by Florence Hughes of Albuquerque, NM, formerly of Laurel, and was won by Nancy Gessner of Southold. The third prize, a Schoolhouse pillow, made by Mrs. Salmon, was won by Ray Dean of East Marion. A small Schoolhouse hooked rug was the fourth prize that was made by Marion Bottjer of Eastchester and Southold. It was won by Elizabeth Morton (not Horton) of Demarest, NJ. Mrs. Morton is a descendant of Barnabas Horton.

In April 1990, the Old Bay View Schoolhouse was in preparation for its move from Jacobs Lane in Southold to its new location after a complete restoration. In 1990, the building was restored as a memorial for the Southold Town 350th Anniversary and placed on the Southold Historical Society museum grounds. It’s true that their ancestor, Philemon Dickerson, who came to Southold only a few years after the Founding Fathers, would have been proud of them.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/7593672/phileman-dickerson

Southold Historical Society opens the one-room schoolhouse as a classroom for hands-on history lessons to the children of Southold Town every October with a Step Back in History Week Program.

Our own Southolder, Peggy Murphy, provided children’s education seminars in the Old Bay View Schoolhouse during October. Let me tell you, it’s so much to her credit and she is highly appreciated!