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Elmhurst third grade students prepared and asked oral history interview questions of four Portsmouth Historical Society members who volunteered to share their experiences in the early Portsmouth schools.
Questions from Mrs. Borden’s class to Mrs. Wilkey, May 2, 2005 at the Elmhurst Library:
 What school did you go to? What grades did it have?
At Newtown School the grades were 1 to 3.
How many days were in your school year?
(When did the school year start and end?) School was 180 days from September to June.
What were your vacations? Did you have a spring break?
They had Christmas and Easter, but no spring break.
How did you get to school?
She rode a bus for a while and then walked when she went to a new school.
Did you have any performances like holiday programs?
In the schools they did have plays.
What kinds of writing materials did you use?
Yes, they did have writing materials. They had quill pens and ink pens and pencils.
What grading system did you have? (A,B, C, or numbers)
They had ABC report card grades. They were graded on behavior.
Did you have kindergarten? How old were you when you started school?
She was six years old when she started school. They did not go to kindergarten.
What did the children wear? Did the girls all have dresses?
The girls wore dresses, skirts and blouses.
What was your school day like?
She started her school day at quarter to eight in the morning and got out at 3:30 in the afternoon.
What was lunch like?
You had to bring your lunch. There was an hour for lunch.
What was your worst memory?
There was no worst memory. She liked school.
What was your best memory of school?
Mrs. Wilkey liked school very much, but she didn’t have a “best” memory.
How many kids were in your class?
There were twenty kids in the class.
Did you have homework?
Yes, they had lots of homework like math, geography and science.
What was your favorite thing to do at school? (or What was your favorite subject?)
Mrs. Wilkey’s favorite subject was art. Her teacher was her husband’s aunt.
What was recess like? Did you have a playground? What did you play?
There was no playground equipment. There were one or two swings at Newtown School. They played hopscotch and jump rope.
What was your hardest subject?
Mathematics was her hardest subject and it still is.
Who was your favorite teacher and why?
The art teacher was her favorite because she liked art.
What did teachers do when you acted bad? Was there a principal?
Yes, there was a principal and she did not know what they did because she was never sent there.
Other facts we learned:
- They had an art teacher and a music teacher, but no library or physical education class.
- The oldest student could be sixteen years old.
- Ten or 12 students didn’t move on.
- Girls we not allowed to play team sports.
- There were no school pictures.
- They had spelling bees and Mrs. Wilkey did well.
- If students were bad, the principal would call the parents and they were in trouble at home.
- Newtown had 3 classrooms. Quaker Hill had 2 classrooms. Anthony School had 5 to 7 classrooms.
3D questions for Mrs. Schuur, Coggeshall School:
 How did you get to school?
They would ride a school bus or you would have to walk.
How long was your school day?
Their school day was longer than ours. It didn’t end until after 3 PM.
How many grades were in your school?
There were four grades in two rooms.
How many children were in your class?
There were about 20 children.
What did boys and girls wear to school in different seasons?
Girls wore snow suits and boys wore long socks and knickers that looked like rolled up pants.
Did you have field trips?
There were no field trips at their school. There were no buses to take them.
Did you like to go to school?
She liked to go to school in the beginning. At the end she was a bad student.
What were your teachers like?
The teachers were single and when they got married they weren’t teachers.
What was recess like? What games did you play?
They played dodge ball and baseball.
Do you have any funny stories about things that happened at school?
Her friend ate poison ivy and got it on her face.
What subjects did you have? Did you have special subjects like art, music, library and gym?
They had more music than we do. They had no library or gym. They had math, spelling, and language.
What were your lunches like?
They had to bring lunch to school. Usually they brought sandwiches. They had an hour at lunchtime.
What was your grading system?
They had a little card that also had behavior on it.
What kind of holidays did you have?
There was no spring break. There was a long Christmas and Easter break.
Did you have fire drills?
Yes, they did have fire drills.
What did your classroom look like? Did you have any computers?
They had no computers. They had two separate rooms in one building.
What did you like to do after school?
They played baseball and would listen to the radio.
What happened when you got into trouble?
If you got into trouble you would be whacked by a ruler in the hand.
What was it like to learn to read with primers?
They just used normal books and they didn’t have a library. They did have a wall of books in their classroom.
3P questions for Miss Fay and Mrs. Powers – About Bristol Ferry School and Anne Hutchinson School
 How did you get to school?
They did take buses.
When did school begin and end?
School started at about 8:30 AM and it ended at 3 PM.
What games did you play at recess? How much time did you have to play?
They played hopscotch, jump rope, and jacks. They had a morning recess which was fifteen minutes and afternoon recess which was fifteen minutes and a recess after lunch which was an hour long.
How many kids were in your class?
There were about 20 kids in a class.
How many grades at your school?
They had grade one to eight.
Did you have homework? If you did – what was it like?
There was very little homework, but when there was it was what they studied that day.
Who was your favorite teacher? Why did you like them?
All of the teachers were good. They never had a favorite.
Did you go on any field trips?
Field trips were not possible because they did not have the transportation.
How were you graded?
You were graded 100% if you were good. You got number grades on your report card.
What did you wear to school?
Girls wore dresses and cotton stockings. Boys wore pants or knickers.
Did you have library books? What kind of books did you read?
They had no library in the school, but they read primers.
What was the discipline when people got in trouble?
If you got in trouble you would get sent out of the room, sent to the principal’s office or had to sit in the corner. The first thing they would do was have you sit in front.
What were your lunches like?
They had milk and graham crackers at recess. They brought lunches and they would eat outside on the playground.
Did you have special subjects like art, music, physical fitness, library?
Art and music were once a week. Sometimes they had physical fitness in class. They had no library. There was sewing class.
What did you like best about school?
They like the friendships at school. Friendship was very important back then.
Did you have any bullies at school?
You had some bullies but they didn’t disrupt class and you didn’t worry about them.
What were the bathrooms like?
There was one outhouse.
Were your teachers strict?
They were strict in a way because they stopped everything that the students shouldn’t be doing at once. They did not let you sit normally, you couldn’t talk and you couldn’t move around.
What subjects did you study?
They studied math (like plus and minus.) They studied reading, spelling, American history, and language.
Interview questions for Douglas Wilkey, Mr. Weaver’s class – May 6th, 2005, Anne Hutchinson School, Quaker Hill School
 How did you get to school? How long did it take you to get to school?
He walked and it took him 10 minutes unless he took a shortcut and then it took him 7 minutes.
When did a school day begin and end?
Mr. Wilkey’s school started at 8 AM and ended at 3:15 PM.
What did you wear?
They wore knickers that went right under the knee and socks that pulled up and folded at the end.
How many days a year did you go to school?
The school year was 180 days.
How many students were in a class?
There were 32 children and sometimes 35 or 36 in a class.
How many classrooms were in your school?
There were three classrooms at Newtown School. There were two rooms at Quaker Hill School. Anthony School had ten rooms. Coggeshall had four classrooms. Anne Hutchinson had four.
How long was recess? What did you play?
He had seesaws and swings at his school. They could play 20 or 30 minutes of baseball.
What was your playground like?
They had no playground.
What was your favorite part of school?
He liked recess, just like any other kid.
What did your school look like?
The schools were made out of wood or bricks.
What was your lunch box like and what did you eat for lunch?
He had a construction workers lunchbox and usually had peanut butter and jelly with milkshakes.
Was school boring or fun? Why?
No it wasn’t boring. You always had something to do like learning math or reading or history.
What were your classmates like?
Lots of the kids were poor and some were not poor.
How were kids punished? Did you get whacked with a ruler if you misbehaved?
They were whacked with rulers.
Did you have special events like class plays or field trips?
Most learning in first to sixth grade went on in the classroom. In 7th and 8th grade they went on a field trip to the Red Sox game. There were no field trips during World War II.
What type of books did you get to read?
He had workbooks. The school supplied the books. The books were all hardcover and most were about people traveling.
What were your teachers like?
There were only women teachers because men did not get into the school district yet. The teachers were strict.
Did you celebrate holidays?
He celebrated Washington’s Birthday, Able Lincoln’s Birthday, Thanksgiving, Christmas, Easter and Memorial Day.
What is your funniest story about school?
He was watching his uncle mow the law and the teacher told him to come back in class. His uncle could mow without him.
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