ATHENS — The question of the age of the former town schoolhouse came up early on in the discussion of what to do with the building and whether it had been built on its current site or moved from another location.
Sandi Capponcelli, who is spearheading the move to restore the building, has not reached a definitive answer, though she thinks the strongest evidence indicates it was built on site sometime around 1858.
Capponcelli has been trying to solve a mystery.
She scoured early documents and town maps, the oldest being McLellan's map of Windham County from 1856 and a map from the F.W. Beers Atlas of Windham County, Vermont, published in 1869.
Capponcelli discovered an 1858 deed from resident Lyman Alexander turning the land over to the town, under the condition that “if the said School Dist. No 2 do fail to build a school house on said premises or at any time after said house is built remove said house to any other location the said premises shall be and remain the estate from which is was taken.”
She has also has in her local history reference arsenal a hand-drawn map of “old abandoned cellar holes” in Athens from the 1970s drawn by Ray Bemis, and Laura Wyman's 1963 book History of Athens, Vermont with Genealogies 1779-1960.
Some of the dates and information about Schoolhouse No. 2 do not match.
The 1856 map does not identify a school at its current site, but the letters “SH” could indicate a school near the meeting house.
In the 1869 Beers map, School No. 2 appears on its current site.
According to Wyman's book, the “District No. 2 schoolhouse first stood between the Clayton Walker place and Neathawk place.” From having served as a lister, Capponcelli knows the site described is near the meeting house off Route 35.
In 1857, a year before the land was deeded for the school to the town by Lyman Alexander, “it was moved down the valley road to its present position near the White Church and is now called the North School,” Wyman writes.
The McLellan's map from 1856 clearly indicates that the land was owned by Alexander.
Capponcelli said that because the Alexander deed was dated in March 1858, given that Vermonters would have been busy with maple sugaring and the roads would have been soft in mud season, it doesn't make sense that the schoolhouse would have been moved then.
“If anything, they would have moved it during the winter when it would have been a lot easier,” she believes.
While it is certainly possible the building was moved to the site prior to the Alexander deed being signed, the use of the word “build” in its text makes her wonder if this were so.
With these questions still unanswered, Capponcelli plans to join another volunteer for a walk this spring, using Bemis's map to visit several promising cellar holes, with the permission of the current owner of the site near the Meeting House.
She hopes to either confirm or refute that the building was moved from that location.
“I know the dimensions of the building, so it will be easy to identify” a cellar hole where it might have stood, she said.
While the Preservation Trust of Vermont's assessment of the building's needs [see related story] was not commissioned with the motive of registering the former schoolhouse as a historic building, finding the answer to its origins could go further in proving its historic significance, should the town decide to go that route.
To Capponcelli, it already is significant.
In the meantime, solving the mystery of District No. 2's Schoolhouse origins is giving her an appreciation of her town's history and keeps her interested in seeing the building preserved.