YAPHANK
SCHOOL
from: Yaphank As It Is and Was
by
Beecher Homan
1875
Photo from the Longwood Public Library, Thomas R.Bayles
Collection.
OUR DIMINUTIVE
YALE
THE YAPHANK DISTRICT SCHOOL AND ITS HISTORY-THE SCHOOL-
HOUSE-PAST AND PRESENT
THE SCHOOL HOUSE
This neat little octagonal building, with its pretty
observatory as an apex, stands lonely and unadorned in an
open, unenclosed lot, opposite the residence of Doc.
James I. Baker.
Around and
within it are the indelible marks of the ruthless
propensities of Young America.
The village
school- house! How meagre and unsensational seems the
name of those thousands of isolated repositories of
learning that sparkle in the quiet valleys, on the wooded
hill-sides, and on the plains of our boundless Home of
the Free! How many shouts of genuine happiness, and peals
of healthy laughter, have echoed form those cabins of
youthful struggles.
How fondly we
all- but boys and girls of larger growth- cherish the
memories of our school days! How the heart is stirred
when the recollections of those pleasant hours bring back
to us the merry voices of playmates who now are sleeping
the long, long sleep; and whose paths of pleasure, an
school-book torn and defaced, are forever forgotten in
that golden Mansion of harps and sweet rewards!
How the
unbidden tears trickle down our cheeks as we stand, the
memory, by the little grave of fear playmate, who laid
down his books to die! And how silently the tears are
vanished by the recollections of the many boyish battles
of those pugnacious followers of the
"elementary" Webster!
How we smile as
we again " stand at the head of the class," or
sullenly walk down the narrow aisle, and shudder at the
stern command to "hold out your hand, sir!"
How clearly the
roguish faces we saw on the "last day of
school" are transformed into a panorama of
intermingled joy and sorrow! And how distinctly we saw in
the boy and girl the coming man and women.
Why should one
speak on scornful depreciation of a country schoolhouse?
Do we ever stop to think, in these times of costly
colleges and institutions of classical refinement, that
men whose appellations are written in letters of living
fire, and whose names will never be forgotten, once
carved with traditional jack-knife the rude outlines of
those self-same names upon rough walls of a log
school-house?
Do we ever stop
to consider, in these days of Yale honors and Harvard
laurels, whether the edifice makes the man or the college
course the true gentleman?
Will my friends
in Yaphank accept the flattery, when I assure them, that
the noble father of their country---Gen. General
Washington-never threw spit-balls within as" grand a
room," or stole kisses from the attending belles of
as "nice" a school as we have in Yaphank?
It is a false
conception the lads and lassies of modern times,
maintain, when they believe that architectural grandeur
is the favored producer of superior intellect; and as
everything-ever so humble may it be-has a history, I
shall endeavor to give the one coherent with the
YAPHANK
DISTRICT SCHOOL- HOUSE-PAST AND PRESENT
For many, many years, the young ideas of the past
generations struggled to master the rustic classics in a
little, red-painted, boxed-up shanty, bearing the half
admissible name of a school-house, that stood alone in an
old field in the almost extreme upper part of Upper
Yaphank.
There old
"Squire Mordecai Homan once "ruled up" the
aggravating delinquencies of his home-spun pupils, and
there William C. Booth and Brewster Saxton explained the
mysteries of the half-explored globe. There William J.
Weeks left the head-lights of his boyish propensities.
There J. P. Mills, the acknowledged Governor and pompous
potentate, engraved the transplendent star of his
dry-goods and hardware fame, in the outlines of the din
one his father carved before him. There Richard S. Homan
and Noah T. Sweezy, the former now dead, but both once
prominent New York merchants jumped the whirling rope and
kissed the village belles. Indeed, nearly every old
gentleman now living in Yaphank, and many that have gone
down in the sunset-way, and many that have made bright
names in the world, took their initiatory step in
education in that old school house.
Generations
grew up, and the advance of railroads and science
advanced the tastes of the people. In 1856 the dear old
ship that had borne so many minds out of the breakers of
ignorance into the sea knowledge was abandoned as a
landmark of old times, and a new and very convenient
building was erected in Central Yaphank.
A prime mover
in its erection was William J. Weeks, Esq., who, although
he suffered much opposition in the movement, at last
achieved his praiseworthy object. The busts of
Washington, Franklin, Webster and Clay embellish the
walls of the school -room, and were presented by Mr.
Weeks.
Mr. Weeks has
in his possession a vast amount of manuscript matter
pertaining to the district affairs, written and complied
during the school war of 1854,'55 and '56. The children
were getting education under difficulties. Mr.Weeks took
more interest in their welfare than did their parents. He
suffered abuse because he wished the district to abandon
the old shell of a house that stood " conveniently
out of the way," and build the neat and attractive
one that hard work, and plenty of it on his part, at last
erected for them. Who thanks him?
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