History among us

 One of the things I love about living in New England is the presense of history.  It can be found in the architecture, in the stone walls,  the remnants of fencing and foundations found in the woods seemingly miles from civilization. 

 One room school houses are among my favorites, no longer in use but preserved for tours…
According to Wikipedia – The quality of facilities at one-room schools varied with local economic conditions, but generally, the number of children at each grade level would vary with local populations. * Teachers  in one-room schools were often former students themselves.  During the winter months they would get to the school early to get a fire started in the potbelly stove.  On many occasions they would prepare a hot, noon meal on top of the stove.

A typical school day was 9 a.m. to 4 p.m., with morning and afternoon recesses of 15 minutes and an hour for lunch.  The older students were given the responsibility of bringing in water, carrying in coal or wood for the stove. The younger students would be given responsibilities according to their size and gender such as cleaning the black board , taking the erasers outside for dusting plus other duties that they were capable of doing.

Transportation for children who lived too far to walk was often provided by horse-drawn  sulky, which could only travel a limited distance in a reasonable amount of time each morning and evening, or students might ride a horse, these being put out to pasture in an adjoining paddock during the day. In more recent times, students rode bicycles.

Imagine how many hands touched this doorknob over the years…

CK + RF?  hard to say….

 Another historical structure I come across sometimes when riding my horse through the woods are cairns…
These below happen to be right on the side of the road  where a subdivision was built, but the developer had to go around the cairns so as not to disturb them.

This one is a very large cairn, quite often they are much smaller.. sometimes just a small pile on top of a large rock in the middle of the woods… To give you an idea of it’s size… you could lay across the top of the one pictured below and not drape over the sides at all.

 Websters defines cairns as  “A pile of stones heaped up as a landmark.”  Cairns have served to memorialize people, locations or events.  They can be found throughout North America and appear to have originated here in the Northeast.   Cairns range in style from a few stones placed on top of a boulder, to enormous constructions containing hundreds of thousands of tons of stone. 

 Native americans used cairns as burial markers. When a fellow native american passed the marker, they would place a stone on the grave symbolizing their presence, paying respect to the dead.

Given the size of this particular cairn, I think it represents more than just a boundary marker.
I’m glad someone had the sense to preserve this bit of our native history.

15 thoughts on “History among us”

  2. Wow I love this post k ! I am a huge history buff when it comes to buildings ! Every time we go somewhere where There's old buildings Mandy makes fun of me looking under the structures at the foundations lol ! I love one room school houses ! The property our house is one was the original one room school house that now is up the road that the boys go to !! I still say that was the good ol days when life was more about simple living ! Have a great day and thanks for the history lession love it !

  3. Love this, Karen. I had never heard of cairns. Very interesting.

    Love the one room school house. My mother went to one, and her brother was her teacher. She often said he was harder on her than the others. 🙂 Oh, how I miss them, and hearing all the stories.

  4. Beautiful photos, Karen. As you know, I was once "show and tell" in a one room schoolhouse and loved it all…the black round bellied coal burning stove for heat, pumping the water to drink…great memories!
    In Hawaii, the cairn's are called heiau and are considered holy; not to be disturbed. I think I'm correct in saying, sometimes, they also serve the purpose of being a "headstone" for a grave…could be wrong there; been a long time since I lived in HI.

  6. I didn't know about cairns, except the terrier:-) I would love to walk through the woods back there and feel that sense of history you described. I can almost hear the leaves rustling and smell that "woods" smell.

  11. We had these all over the hills in PA…an Irish settlement where I grew up. One other reason they were formed is that they were deposit piles for rocks picked up in fields..to clean them so that the fields could be cultivated. They carried the stones to mark the boundaries of the farm-acting as cornerstones where one farm ended and another began- xo Diana Ours grew every years. xo Diana

  15. An excellent post! Isn't it great to live in a place that is surrounded by so much history!

    Thank you for sharing this with us!
    ~ Lynda

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