Warwick — Schools

Extracted from "History of the Connecticut Valley in Massachusetts, Volume II," by Louis H. Everts, 1879.


      When the tract now Warwick was first granted to the original owners, in 1735, one of the sixty-three equal shares of land was ordered set apart for schools, but the first move made by the town toward supporting education was in 1768, when £10 were appropriated for that purpose, and it was further decided to have a moving school, and to have a master in the winter and a mistress in the summer. In this year Mrs. Hannah Rawson was employed to teach the summer school, at 4s. 6d. per week.
      In 1773 the town was divided into school districts, and in 1774 educational interests had so far improved that £24 were appropriated for schools. In 1785 the school districts numbered nine, and in this year a committee reported that 291 acres of school land had been sold for £128, and the income of this fund, it may be remarked, has ever since been devoted to the support of schools, each of the nine districts receiving about $3 from the fund.
      In 1850 the school districts were surveyed by the selectmen, and the boundaries at each corner marked by a stone monument bearing the number of the district. Six years later, in 1856, the school-house now standing opposite the Unitarian Church was erected. In 1878 the town devoted $1000 to the support of schools.
      Among the college graduates who were natives of Warwick were John Gouldsbury, ______ Gould, Stillman Barber, H. H. Barber, Nathan Ball, Levi Wheaton, C. C. Wheaton. A town library, now containing 1500 volumes, was founded in 1870 upon a town appropriation of $100, and since that the enterprise has been supported by town and individual subscriptions.



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