WATERFORD – Twenty-five fifth-graders from Jim Thornton’s class at Waterford Memorial School got a local history lesson Thursday.

Working upstairs at the old Odd Fellows Hall in North Waterford, the students helped to catalog the contents of what is now one of the Waterford Historical Society’s three museums.

The class was chosen to participate in the Historical Society project because its focus is on American studies.

Eight Historical Society members were there to work with the students. Curator Mary Ann Holme said they hope to stimulate the students’ interest in history with this hands-on project, which was organized to have pairs of students with clipboards move around the different parts of the exhibit and write comments about each piece. Their comments, she said, will go into the Historical Society database, which is being compiled.

Comments students made on their papers varied from very brief – “black top hat” – to more extensive descriptions – “Archer brand barber chair made September 28, 1876, patented May 25, 1886. Donated by Flora Abbot.”

Items were grouped around the main room – long double-runner sleds and snowshoes of wood and rawhide with other outdoor equipment in one area; a child’s school desk with ink well, china dolls in a child’s wooden sleigh, and a wooden doll cradle in another; clothing, braided rugs and spinning wheels elsewhere.

The back room was filled with tools for farming and woods work – saws, axes, grub hoes, peaveys – and household goods – iron cooking pans, cheese presses, wash boilers, wringer washers, washtubs, washboards and wooden drying racks.

Historical Society members were at each location to help students understand what they were seeing.

Speaking for the Historical Society, Mary Ann Holme said she was happy with the project and the way students worked.

Marjorie Kimball expressed the hope that this building and its collection of artifacts will get more use.

One big hit with the class was a surprise artifact found by a student, a perfectly preserved mouse skeleton, complete with the tiny tail bones. Since it didn’t need to stay with the Historical Society collection, students took it back to school with them.

At the end of the work and learning session, their teacher discussed some of the things students had learned about the ways some things have changed and some haven’t. Thornton talked about the change from using the ink wells and ink pens in the past compared with the way students write now.

He picked up a “Modern School Geography,” 1863, by Colton and Fiche, and mentioned that it was written during the Civil War.

He asked students what they noticed about the flag hanging over the school desks and they responded that it has only 13 stars. That is an original, handmade flag of the colonies, he told them.