Lawrence High School - Lawrencian Yearbook (Falmouth, MA)

Page 9 text:

Falmouth Town Hall Falmouth Community Center Hard ivork and large families were the order of the day for Falmouth, and learning out of a book in those days rarely went beyond the sixth grade, with only such individuals as selectmen and clerks continuing their education to assume the responsibility of putting quill to paper to record the happenings in the modest, little town. A small school house contained the extent of Falmouth education until the early 1880’ s when Shubael Lawrence, wealthy descendant of an old and respected Cape family, gave a parcel of land to the community , on which to build a school for students who wished to study beyond the sixth grade level. His only condition concerning this gift ivas that the new school be named after him. Thus, on March 7, 1885, Lawrence Academy was incorporated. Scarcely thirty students, and sometimes as few as ten, made up the student body of Lawrence Academy in the early years, presided over by a single teacher and principal. Under the direction of Mother or an older sister the flickering firelight was the setting for recitation of ABC’s from the hornbook, the Lord’s Prayer, hymns, and bible passages. Falmouth’s own Ichabod Crane arrived in 1 720 — a schoolmaster hired for the yearly salary of board, room, and meals. His material was basic, consisting of little more than an elaboration of the home-spun education which had flourished before his coming. L.H.S. across Shiverick’s Pond 5

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“This is Falmouth Town Book. Six shillings cost,” proclaimed the large scroll letters of the introduction to Falmouth’s first history, compiled over 200 years ago by an unknown clerk. At that time, Falmouth already had a century of history; records of births, marriages, and deaths since the first settler arrived in 1660. The fountain at the village green The early settlers realized the value of training minds as well as hands to work in this new, rough, sandy-soiled land. Public records, like those which had been kept in the old days in Europe, had to be made, and each At Nobska Point Falmouth grew in size yearly with the arrival of new families with children whose education had to be determined. The Katharine Lee Bates’ house Falmouth Harbor year, town meetings sat for proceedings which had to be set doivn on paper. Manual labor wrested a living from sea and shore, and mental labor recorded it — a silent witness to the works of man in Falmouth, Massachusetts Bay Colony. A roaring fire, Bibles, and hornbooks were the educational surroundings of the first Falmouth students. 4

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Ho iv ever, Mr. Lawrence realized that Falmouth’s commercial life was destined for constant growth, which occurred so rapidly that Lawrence Academy acquired a superintendent , another teacher, new quarters, and a new name. Lawrence High School was built in a toivn which saw its boys abandoning farm and sea for trade and storekeeping and its girls looking beyond cradles and stoves to toivn life and ivork. The Teaticket School The Margaret A. Mullen School The Henry Ward Hall School The Woods Hole School Immigrants arrived from other states, as ivell as from across the sea washing the shores of Cape Cod. Massachusetts laiv made education compulsory up to sixteen years of age, and even Lawrence High School became too small for the ever-increasing number of Falmouth scholars it rang to classes every day with its old bell. Both name and student body ivere again inherited — this time in 1952 by a neiv brick building across Shiverick’s Pond, a long, high structure built in old colonial style, with a cupola, and a golden clipper ship for a weather-vane. The Class of 1963, largest class to graduate from Lawrence High School, is a chronology in itself, as closely united with the Town as was the school its members attended. This student saga began in the basement and on the first floors of the Village, Woods Hole, Teaticket, and East Falmouth schools, and progressed to entrance into the fifth grade when Teaticket and East Falmouth schools terminated their part in the education of the Class of ’63. 6