Ticonderoga High School - Carillon Yearbook (Ticonderoga, NY)

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FRAMES IN TIME by Amy Butler When was the first schoolhouse built in Ticonderoga? What subjects did pupils study? How long ago was our high school built? Why is our yearbook called the Carillon? Questions like these will probably not be answered in a guidebook to Ticonderoga, but they are questions worth asking. Ticonderoga, far from having only a military history, possesses a long and vivid educational history as well. Early settlers decided to start a school in Ticonderoga in 1791. They built a log schoolhouse near the present day entrance to Fort Ticonderoga, originally Fort Carillon, French for the La Chute River’s “chime of bells.’’ Twenty-nine students attended this first school, learning the basics of reading and spelling. The teacher kept his rifle handy, for bears and wolves roamed nearby. By the early 1800’s Ticonderoga had been organized into six districts, each with its own schoolhouse. School ran during winter and mid-summer to work around the farming schedule. Each family contributed wood for the school stove and took a turn boarding the teacher. In addition to this room and board, the teacher earned a dollar a week for instructing pupils in the 3R’s. Further education could be obtained at one of several local academies. In 1858 Joseph Cook established the Ticonderoga Academy, the town’s first private high school. The Universalist Church donated a bell to call school to order. The three year course offered at the Academy included Greek, Latin, Mathematics, History, Music, Chemistry, and Philosophy. Union Free School District was formed in 1871 and took over the Academy. Education from grade school to high school was now public, although it did not become compulsory until 1896. In the intervening time, Regents exams were begun in Ticonderoga, with the first one being held in February of .1888. A new Central School, the present-day Civic Center, opened in 1907. The bell that had called students to the Academy continued to ring in the new building. A smallpox scare did close school for a month in 1912, silencing the bell, but such emergencies rarely occured. The flaming youth of the Twenties looked forward to the Senior play, the Junior Prom, and football and basketball games. Baseball, track, and tennis also had their followings. The first Carillon yearbook, published in 1927, recorded items concerning the rivalry with Silver Bay Prep School, the notes in study hall, and school romances, as well as commemorating special events. In 1928 a proposal for a new high school on Calkins Place was approved, and the new building became another topic of interest. Students began attending the new high school in the fall of 1930. A fire devastated the building in 1933, but the school was soon repaired. High schoolers have attended classes in this school for fifty-five years, a school far different than the first log one built almost two centuries ago. It was not easy to build a school in the wilderness. Later challenges did not seem any simpler, yet education has always occupied an important position in Ticonderoga. The history of schooling in the town may not receive as much publicity as Ticonderoga’s military history, but it is just as interesting.