Hall Center Settlement & School House
By Grace Hall Pratt, Marion Historical Society, October 25, 1955, (Typed 3/3/75 by M.L. Erb, Historian
With the 400 acres which Joel Hall bought from Sir John Lowther Johnstone, as a sort of 'hub', there gradually grew up a settlement of more families from Cheshire, Connecticut and from other sources.
The obituary of Joel Hall states that when he first settled in his new home, his nearest neighbor lived two miles away, through the forest. Soon after, the family of Caleb Knapp, who came from Massachusetts, settled one mile south of the Halls. Their home was on the site of the home now owned by the Nier family. Later their grandson, Henry Knapp, lived on the Rice homestead down the hill just east, his grandfather's house, where the house burned recently. (Incidentally, he had married Ann Hall, sister of my grandfather, Warren Hall) The Knapp cemetery was on the knoll across the road from Ella Horton's home. The Knapp and Hall families made frequent visits back and forth, always finding their way by blazed path. Until the 1840's there was no 'S' curve south of the settlement, the road running straight through the valley and coming up to the present road just north of the cemetery.
When Joel and Ann had been here long enough to cut down some of the forest, sometime before 1812, his father, Amasa Hall and wife, Dinah Ives Hall came on from Cheshire and built a home near their son. Amasa, a Revolutionary War Veteran, was reputed to have been a man of great strength. He established for himself, a blacksmith shop in which he constructed all kinds of primitive farm machinery, as well as shoes and harness gear for the oxen.
Dora has mentioned that the Hall's were at Pultneyville when the British boat invaded the harbor. My grandfather used to tell me that at this time, the settlers were lined up on the shore, nervously watching the British boat. They had been instructed to hold their fire, but when one important looking British officer appeared on deck and began parading pompously about, giving orders, it was too much for one of the Yankees who forthwith shot in the general direction of the boat. Not long thereafter, the British pulled up anchor and withdrew. No one ever found out who fired the shot.
About this time, another Amasa Hall, brother of Joel, came to the settlement and took up his abode on what was later the Peter Billings property. Later, the Rice family came from Cheshire and built what is now the John Ford house on the Town Line Road south, on the comer north of the schoolhouse. This house, by the way, still has the central fireplace and large oven. Other Settlers from Cheshire were the Jedediah Morse family who built the frame house at the top of the hill west of the schoolhouse and on the south side of the road. This hill came to be called Morse or Moss Hill on the old maps.
It seems to bad that the road should not have retained the old name of Morse Hill Road, instead of Smith Hill Road after a much later comer. When Lydia Hall, Joel's second daughter married Emory Potter in the 1830's, they built the cobblestone house across the road from the Morse homestead, now the home of John Southwell. Later, they owned the farm now the home of Ivan Ameele. This house contains the carved mantelpiece in the front room, although the chimney, I think, has been removed.
At an early date, Jotham Tuttle, came from Cheshire and built the house which has just been rejuvenated - the pink house on the 'S' curve, just south of the settlement. Jotharn Tuttle became the father of Deloo Tuttle, Mrs. John Wake, Mrs. Shaw and others. North from here, the Ashdowns lived on the east side of the road, now the home of James Crossman. They were the grandparents of Ella Horton. According to tombstone information, a Thomas Mix must have lived in the neighborhood. He also, probably came from Cheshire Conn. Since in the History of Cheshire, he was listed as a Revolutionary soldier along with Amasa Hall, father of Joel.
North of the schoolhouse lived William Hall, an older son of Joel. He was killed before his thirtieth birthday in a rather unique accident, the details of which are described on his tombstone. He had married Nancy Ann Sanford a daughter of 'Squire Sanford' who seems to have taken care of the legal matters of the neighborhood. Around the corner from the cemetery lived Amasa another son of Joel Hall. After the death of his wife, Laura Delano Hall, and the tragic death of his brother, William, he married s the widow, Nancy Ann Sanford Hall. Their home were Donald Ameele now lives, is a very interesting house. It was built by the compass, facing squarely to the south. It retained for many years, the beautiful front hall and stairway. The library was in the southwest corner of the house and had beautiful hand carved woodwork around the fire place. I remember being intrigued as a child by the ponderous tomes of law books which lined the walls - relics I suppose of the time when Amasa served as State Assemblyman.
At one time, Hall Settlement boasted a store, a post office, blacksmith shop and a schoolhouse, which also doubled as a 'meeting hours'. Naturally agitation arose over the idea of forming a village here. But this was nipped in the bud by the settler who said that he had no idea of having his boys grow up in a town with the attendant temptations of the 'Devil and all his works'. Is juvenile delinquency so new?
The school-house seems to deserve special treatment since it has touched the lives of all the residents in one way or another. My grandfather, Warren Hall, once told me that he learned his "three R's" in a log school-house, on the site of the present cobblestone building. He probably started school about 1834, but as he was the youngest son of the family, his older brothers and sisters must have been in school by 1814, along with other children who were in the settlement at the time. The time of erection of this log building is a matter of conjecture.
However, I have in my possession a book inscribed as "Account book for the School District No. 15, Walworth and Marion." The first entry was made in 1846 - the last in 1909. The first payment to a teacher was listed "Cash paid to N.P. Lord for teaching four months March 19, 1845 at $11.50 per month - $46. On Dec. 19 of the same year they paid "Mary A. Clark $30 for teaching six months." One wonders if school had kept all summer! Probably the discrepancy between wages paid to the man and those paid to the lady was due to the fact that the man who taught winters, had all the neighborhood's big boys to handle, while the lady, teaching in spring and fall, had the teaching of the smaller children.
There was "school money" about $44 and "library money" about $8 received from both Marion and Walworth. The whole sum of $6 was raised by taxes! The rest of the money used that year was "received on rate bill." Was this public money? The budget for this year amounted to about $148. Among the items bought were: 1 broom - $.13 and postage on school district Journal $.25. Another interesting item was a bill for $.75 for firelogs, indicating that the log school house was heated by a fireplace.
Among the early teachers were: Daniel C. Powers, Miss Seely, Isaac Vosburg, Irene Crandall, Miss Tuttle (later to become Mrs. Libbie Wake of Williamson). Then there were Miss Seaman, Luther Harkness, J. Mason. (Pictured here is the class of teacher Frank Cook, of Marion. His children included Erving Cook, Sanford Cook, Blossom Cook Davis and Arbor Cook. The school is at the north side, east end of Smith Hill Rd., Walworth.)
In 1847 the "new' school-house was built. An item of expense appears - "by cash paid for deed to lot and recording at Canandaigua - $2.60."
Beginning in 1847 the town of Walworth paid the district $4.20 annually for "encroaching on property" - which turned out to be using a road crossing the school lot. The entire cost of the cobblestone school-house was about $370, which included $320 paid to W.B. Buckley for labor, and about $12 for the "fence and railing to hitch horses to," to quote the item. In 1848 they paid to "F. Lakey for addition to the school-house lot - $11.75." This was probably the Captain Lakey who built the Jonathan Wake cobblestone house on Ridge Chapel Rd. S., now owned by Peter Boerman.
By 1859 the price of a broom had advanced to $.25 and four cords of wood cost $5. About once a year a "tin cup and pail" was bought for about $.50. There was also a new broom each year, a wash dish, a box of chalk, and paint for the blackboard. A very common item of expense was for window panes. Probably the deep windows were so crowded with dinner pails, coats, and apples for the teacher that panes were frequently smashed. It couldn't be, could it, that sometimes a fighting match between two big boys caused the loss of some window panes. I can remember that at the turn of the century there were benches at the front of the room for the reciting classes, and coats hung on pegs, while dinner pails (old lard pails) and extra coats were crammed in the window seats.
To get back to 1865 - there was an item "Paid $15 for 5 cords of wood." By 1869 wood was $4.50 per cord, a broom cost $.55 and a box of chalk $.13. In 1871-72 they began heating the school-house with coal. $11.80 was the total bill for coal and $8.50 for wood. In that year, too, they bought a new stove for $15. By 1875 egg coal was $6.50 a ton, and they used 2 1/2 tons. That same year my father received $6.66 2/3 a week for teaching the winter term. By 1879 they were paying $158 for a whole year of teaching.
Some of the trustees wrote legibly, some illegibly; sometimes accounts were balanced, more often not. Some trustees did their figuring with lead pencil in the book. The spelling and capitalization leave something to be desired, but on the whole, the old book gives a pretty good glimpse into the matter of running the old district school.
As I have noted before, the school-house was also used for religious services. I have the old Methodist class book for the years 1857-1870. The inscription on the front page reads; "Rochester District, J.C. Gulick, President Elder, Walworth and Macedon Charge. Rev. C.L. Brown, Pastor, Hall's Settlement Society, Class #2, Warren P. Hall, Leader." The class list includes the families: Rice, Hall, Potter, Newell, Buttolph, Wake, Bodine - 23 members altogether. The next year the list adds the names of Grandin, Sherman, Roberts, Truax, Buckley & Sanford, Franklin & Caroline Dean, Libbie, Ellen & J. Smith Crane; Levi, Amy & Maurice Everett. Among new names appear members of the Wheeler, Rumsey, King, Cogswell, Miller and Eisentrager families. Also Ashdown, Purdy, Hogaboom. The last entry was made in 1870. However, I remember preaching services, S.S., and mid-week prayer meeting as late as 1915. I also remember that the "preacher" was generally entertained in our home, probably keeping up the tradition started by Joel Hall, whose obituary states that his home was the "home away from home" of the itinerant minister. But with the coming of the automobile the practice was discontinued and now the building has been sold and converted into a very comfortable home.
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