Dean Shalhoup

Each year around this time, a significant portion of my fellow Nashua baby boomers had already cleared that first-day-of-school hurdle – the day pretty much all kids habitually dread for no good reason other than being told to switch to long pants, dresses and socks and sneakers – and were settling in for another year of pencils, books, and, well, an occasional teacher’s dirty looks.

To be fair, at least in this boomer’s experience, “dirty looks” were exceedingly rare, until, that is, a week or two or three into the year, when those of us predisposed to misbehavior began earning less-than-flattering glances from our dedicated teachers – you know, those women who had an almost mystical gift of being able to see and hear everything that went on in her room no matter what.

Once we boomers passed our first big life milestone – other than being born, of course – known as the first day of first grade, each step up to the next grade seemed to get easier and easier, and by the time sixth grade rolled around (Nashua used the 6-3-3 system back then) we’d earned the right (at least we thought we did) to flaunt our seniority by demanding respect from the “little kids” and “helping” their teachers keep them in line.

For me, it was by chance that I landed in one of Nashua’s earliest schoolhouses, which at the time impressed me not one iota. After all, what 6-year-old is the least bit interested in the history of his or her schoolhouse? When you’re that age, your priorities consist of making sure you don’t miss the bus, forget a book (or worse, forget your lunch), wonder if the new, dumb-looking big kid is a bully and might try to steal your milk money, worry that the girl chosen to correct your paper happens to be the teacher’s pet, or hope that the sickly kid doesn’t need the services of the janitor and his special powder that seemed to absorb anything and everything.

But 60ish years later, with those concerns relegated to a couple of fun chapters early in my proverbial book of life (which has plenty more chapters yet to be written, mind you), it’s the history of Mt. Pleasant Elementary School, my alma mater, that catches my attention and beckons me on a journey through history.

Indeed, the Mt. Pleasant school I knew seemed antiquated in many respects from the get-go, although the building – the third Mt. Pleasant school to occupy the square-shaped plot of land atop the idyllic rise bordered by Manchester, Mt. Pleasant, French and Abbott streets – was a relatively young 35 years of age.

“My” Mt. Pleasant was built in 1924-25, to replace the renovated version of the original Mt. Pleasant school. That original school was built in 1849 by the town of Nashville, which was incorporated in 1842 by well-to-do businessmen and powerful citizens angered over losing the vote to locate the new Town Hall north of the Nashua River, rather than south of the river.

So they essentially seceded, and named the “new town” Nashville.

Once completed, the original Mt. Pleasant housed the divided community’s first official high school on the second floor while a grammar school occupied the rooms on the first floor.

Two years later, the so-called “southsiders” living in Nashua built its own high school on West Pearl Street, which came to be known as the “Old Brick.” Once cooler heads prevailed and Nashua and Nashville reunited as the City of Nashua in 1853, a unified high school was erected on Main Street.

The very beginning of “formal” education in old Dunstable and Nashua is yet more fascinating: Way back in 1730, when the entire territory on both sides of the current New Hampshire-Massachusetts line was known as Dunstable, the 50 “householders” who inhabited the vast rural territory voted to raise 10 pounds “to provide a writing school.”

A few decades later, when the territory was divided into Dunstable, Massachusetts and Dunstable, New Hampshire, it was decided the latter needed to find a dwelling – what they called residences back then – in which to hold classes.

So the towns hired a “school master” who would split his or her time between the two towns. The home of John Searles, a large dwelling near Salmon Brook for which today’s Searles and New Searles roads are named, was selected to host classes for the Massachusetts kids, while a home near Reed’s Pond, in the area of Lake Naticook in South Merrimack, held classes for the New Hampshire kids.

Two more venues were added later in the 1700s. A teacher was hired for six months per year – splitting his or her time between the four schools that were divided into districts.

Imagine this today: When it came time for the teacher to move to the next location, a sled pulled by a team of oxen was brought in, and the boys went to work loading the sled with the long planks that served as bench seats during classes.

The boys then drove the team, with the school teacher and his belongings on board, to the next district, where they unloaded and set up the room for the teacher.

“School was again in full swing – but with a new set of pupils,” a Nashua Telegraph story quipped.

As the Civil War years approached, a recently-united Nashua boasted 9 school districts, each of which had its own one-room schoolhouse.

As for Mt. Pleasant, come 1875 the newly refurbished schoolhouse featured 10 rooms, an assembly hall and enough space to accommodate 80 high school, 72 grammar, and 80 elementary students.

An “invitation to bid” ad that ran in a June 1875 Telegraph shows that city officials were on board with keeping their schools, at least Mt. Pleasant, in good shape:

The ad called for “sealed bids … furnishing all materials and doing all the labor required to tear out … and furnish the schoolhouse with proper water closets and urinials.”

Dean Shalhoup’s column appears weekly in The Sunday Telegraph. He may be reached at 594-1256 or dshalhoup@nashuatelegraph.com.