The morning was dark and cold as Amon crawled out of his warm bed to go down across the snowy field to the schoolhouse. He grabbed a cold biscuit from the sideboard and donned his winter jacket and mittens, going out the door on the run.

He had made the mittens from a pattern as his grandmother had showed him how to do. He drew around his hand on a piece of brown paper, making a pattern, which he held onto a section of an old woolen coat. He then cut out two pieces of material and did a blanket stitch around them. They were warm on the cold morning.

Amon had polio as a child, causing him to be crippled. Gram was a nurse, and believed that he could walk again. She would have his older brothers and cousins, Clarence, Everett and Charlie hold him under his arms and walk him. The older boys enjoyed it, as Amon would beg to sit down. They kept up the therapy, and he did walk, at first wobbly, but as his strength grew, he would do everything on the run.

Amon was a janitor at the Greer’s Corner School. It was 1916, the schoolhouse was eight years old, having been built by Edmund Brewster, a local carpenter, town clerk, farmer and master of the Grange, among other positions. A local newspaper wrote of Brewster in 1908: “The new schoolhouse at Greer’s Corner is up and boarded. Edmund Brewster, who has charge of the work, is reckoned as second to none in carpentering.”

Amon’s father, John Morse, had attended school across the dirt road on the other corner. The former school had been built many years before. It was in a ramshackle condition, causing concern to some of the parents. Around 1907, they voted to build a new school. The students started school in the new building in the fall of 1908.

Amon had banked the fire before he left the schoolhouse the day before. The days were short, and by the time that school was dismissed in the afternoon, it was nearly dark. Amon stirred up the coals, putting in some kindling wood. The fire started up. He then lugged in a few armfuls of wood to keep the fire going throughout the day.

His older brothers had been janitors before him. Percy Tower, on whose land the schoolhouse had been built, had given Amon his first heifer calf, which he had raised to become a fine cow.

There were several schoolhouses in the town of Belmont, among which were at Hall’s Corner, White School, on what was later called Fenwick Road, the school at the top of the hill at Belmont Corner, and now the new school at Greer’s Corner. At one time there had been a schoolhouse farther down the Lincolnville Road, called the Pease School.

 

In the new schoolhouse, the students held fund-raisers to purchase a large bell for the roof. They had dances down the road at Mystic Grange, and they held box socials, where the girls would bring lunch in a fancy box. The boys would bid on the boxes, and ate lunch with the girl who had brought the lunch that they won by the bidding.

Sometimes the bidding didn't go as planned, and the girl that they had wanted to share lunch with would be eating with someone else. It was all in good fun.

The new school bell was raised to the roof behind the flag pole. The boys took turns pulling the rope that rang the bell to call the students to class. Horace Coomb’s father, Charles, who summered at Belmont, hosting Sunday classes and social events at their cottage at Tilden Pond, donated an Astro-Glide, a type of Maypole, for the school playground.

One day a contraption called an automobile drove by the schoolhouse. The teacher was very aware that it was a highpoint in history, as she’d never seen an automobile before either. She allowed the students to gather at the window to watch the auto pass by. The older boys went outside to see it. Some of the students had heard that Mr. Horace Morton of Chicago, who had married Ada Cammett of Belmont, had a new auto named ‘Stanley Steamer’.
 

Amon and his siblings, Susie, Hazel, Bertha, Clarence, Everett and his younger brother, Lester, had many neighborhood friends attending school with them, among whom were his cousin, Colby Howard, who lived next door, Merrill Hartshorn, Herman and Pearl Fowles, the Towers, Marjorie, Mildred and their brother, Keith, Edgar Simmons, their Marriner cousins, and other Morses who were not related.

It was a close-knit neighborhood. Amon attended school until around 1916, finishing up the sixth grade. It was then that he was on his own to make a living. Amon, the Jackson boy, Marjorie and Mildred Tower joined Mystic Grange, taking their degrees on Saturday night, the thirty-first of January 1920.
 

Once when Susie couldn’t find young Wilbur, she traced his tracks down across the snowy field to the Schoolhouse. Upon entering the school, Wilbur sitting on the double desk clinging to his uncle, Amon. Wilbur cried as he didn’t want to leave ‘Amie‘.
 

The Greer’s Corner Schoolhouse stood tall and straight at the four corners, with two or three more generations attending. Around 1950, the student population had grown so that the townspeople were again discussing building a school. By 1954, two sessions a day were held with two teachers, Lydia Lloyd and Athena Dutton Mossman. Clarence Morse hauled students to school in the morning, bringing students for the second session at midday and returning the first group to their homes.

The town of Belmont set about to build a two-room schoolhouse on land donated by Wilbur Buck, who had attended the old school, as did his mother and his daughters. In December 1954, the students were let out for Christmas vacation. Whey they returned to school in January 1955, it was to the new Belmont Elementary school.

The old Greer’s Corner Schoolhouse was used for a time as a town office. It was used for clothing sales at times, and subject to much vandalism. In 1972, the school bell was stolen from the roof, never to be returned. The Astro-Glide was stolen from the schoolyard. The windows were boarded up, as the glass had been broken from them.

Amon had often driven by the schoolhouse, fondly remembering his early school days there. In 1989, the Greene Plantation Historical Society was organized in Belmont, but Amon didn’t live to share his memories to the historically minded group. He passed away that year, in his 80s.

Amon had instilled a love of history in his family. He would have been pleased to have known that two years after his death, his old school friend, Marjorie (Tower) Redman and her daughter, Yvonne, gave the schoolhouse in trust, to be kept as a one-room schoolhouse to the Historical Society.

The Historical Society was enthusiastic about restoring the building for the community. They replaced the broken windows with new ones in 1991. They have gone through some ups and downs, with vandals again taking a toll on the old schoolhouse.

Recently, with enthusiasm from some younger members picking up the torch, Greer’s Corner Schoolhouse is once again receiving a face lift.

The Historical Society would like to extend an invitation to the community, especially to the former students and descendants of students to join the Historical Society, and to make Greer’s Corner Schoolhouse a beacon to a younger generation of students to see how school was kept in the past, in a much slower pace of living.

I would like to think that Amon, my father, would be pleased to see the schoolhouse come to life again.