Sally Pollak

Free Press Staff Writer

An 1823 schoolhouse will be returned to its original site Monday when 40 oxen pull the Orleans County Grammar School one-third of a mile down Hinman Settler Road in Brownington. The journey by oxen will take the school from Brownington village to a neighborhood of historic and educational significance.

The school will return to its place near the Old Stone House Museum, a four-story building that was constructed in 1836 to be the school dormitory. The granite dormitory, called Athenian Hall, was built by Alexander Twilight, who served as the school’s headmaster from 1829 until a stroke in 1855. Twilight died two years later.

Twilight, who was black, grew up in Corinth and graduated from Middlebury College in 1823. He was the first African American person to graduate from a college or university in this country, according to Middlebury and other sources.

“Alexander Twilight actually imagined that this was going to become a big center of learning,” said Peggy Day Gibson, director of the Old Stone House Museum. “When he built the Old Stone House as a dorm in 1836, I think he envisioned that this was the first big building. He felt that a central school, a really good institution in every county, was the way to go.”

The school fell into disuse after the Civil War, the school’s account book indicates. It appears the school did not operate from 1865 until 1870, Gibson said. By then, it had moved from its location at Prospect Hill into the village center, Gibson said.

"It was more convenient" to have the school in the village, Gibson said. The relocation was in keeping with a trend to de-centralize education, a movement that was opposed by Twilight when he served in the Vermont Statehouse, according to Gibson.

Twilight's election to the Vermont Legislature in 1836, representing Brownington, made him the nation's first black elected official.

“Alexander Twilight thought education is better served if you have a very high quality central school,” she said.

But local towns, including Barton, Craftsbury, Derby and Glover, began to establish their own schools. “One by one these towns got their own schools,” Gibson said. “They took back their kids and their tax money.”

Students from Brownington and beyond

In Twilight’s life, Orleans County Grammar School educated students from Brownington, surrounding farm towns, and Quebec. The dormitory housed 50 students, boys and girls. Twilight and his wife, Mercy Twilight, housed 11 female students on the top floor of their house across the way.

Students moved to the grammar school after attending one room schoolhouses in their villages through eighth grade. Under Twilight’s direction, Orleans County Grammar School taught students from grades nine through the first two years of college. The school offered classes in Greek, Latin, trigonometry, physics, chemistry and other subjects, Gibson said.

As its curriculum expanded, Twilight saw the need for a dormitory — a building that bears a striking resemblance to Painter Hall at Twilight's alma mater. The building, which opened as a museum in 1925, has Twilight's signature on the back of a fourth-floor door.

Twilight was a teaching principal who also served as minister of the Brownington Congregational Church. Services were held on the second floor of the school before a church was built in 1841. The church and the school (in its original site) were on either side of the town green.

Moving the school back to this place will enable the historical society to tell the story of a region more fully and accurately, Gibson said.

“There has always been this desire of the Orleans County Historical Society – which owns and manages the museum – to try to get the neighborhood back to its (original) configuration,” Gibson said. “To tell the story, the history, it will be great to have the school back here.”

The enclave of historic buildings in Brownington includes the former home of Samuel Read Hall, a colleague of Twilight’s at Orleans County Grammar School. Hall taught at the school and was, according to Gibson, the country’s first teacher-educator.

Hall founded the first teacher training school, which was in Concord. He was the author of the first training manual for teachers published in this country, “Lectures on School Keeping,” Gibson said. Hall succeeded Twilight as headmaster.

(The museum purchased Hall’s house in 2005, and restored it in 2008. It is used for a variety of events, including on Monday a barbecue for the oxen teamsters.)

“This was a really happening, intellectual vibrant neighborhood, all built during the 1820s and 1830s,” Gibson said. “It was a center of progressive education in New England. This was the main road, the stage route, between Boston and Montreal, and this is what was happening.”

Town gives school to historical society

Last year at Town Meeting, the people of Brownington voted to give the grammar school to the Orleans County Historical Society, according to Gibson and the town clerk.

Terms of the gift include the building’s continued function as a community gathering place. The Brownington Grange, for example, has met on the second floor of the building since 1874, and will continue to do so at the new site, Gibson said.

With the addition of the school, Orleans County Historical Society now owns seven historic buildings in Prospect Hill, built from 1823 to 1841. The Brownington neighborhood is on the National Register of Historic Places.

The 40 animals that will move the school come from 4-H groups in Randolph and North Haverhill, New Hampshire, and from local residents, Gibson said.

Messier House Moving from East Montpelier will move the building onto the road. The oxen will get hitched to the old school, and start walking.

“If the oxen can pull it up the road, it will be smooth as silk,” she said. “This is performance art.”

Show time is 9 a.m. Aug. 8.

Contact Sally Pollak at spollak@burlingtonfreepress.com or 660-1859.

If you go

What: Old Stone House Museum

Where: 109 Old Stone House Road, Brownington

When: 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Wednesday through Sunday through Oct. 15

Special event 10 a.m. Aug. 7: Gathering of oxen, exhibit on history of oxen, making yokes in woodshop, forging yoke hardware in blacksmith shop, chaining teams of oxen, animals practice walking together.

Moving day: 9 a.m. Aug. 8 in Brownington

Information: www.oldstonehousemuseum.org