For a few brief weeks each spring, high school seniors become local celebrities. This was as true a hundred years ago as it is today. Community members have long looked forward to the end of the school year and the festivities designed to honor the graduates.

In the spring of 1904 Farmington girls eagerly browsed the clothing stores along Broadway, carefully choosing the right pair of white gloves in silk or kid, patiently selecting the perfect white fan to go with them. Mothers placed orders for fresh cut flowers, pinks if they were trying to be frugal, red roses for the more extravagant.

Around the turn of the last century, the Farmington High School graduation ceremony took place at the Music Hall downtown. It was a popular event, and tickets went on sale well in advance.

Leading up to commencement, seniors looked forward to their final high school dance. However, the day before this dance in 1904, tragedy struck. The gaiety of the season was quieted when sophomore Charles Staples drowned when swimming with friends in the Sandy River. Instead of looking forward to a dance, many Farmington High School students prepared instead to attend the funeral of their classmate.

The postponed dance took place the next Wednesday followed closely by graduation on Friday. Friends and family honored 19 students, 12 girls and seven boys, at the exercises.

The Music Hall was lavishly decorated for the occasion with evergreen bows and maidenhair ferns. Orange and black bunting, signifying the class colors, underlined the gallery while buttercups and daisies added charm.

At eight p.m. all of the high school students, led by the senior class, marched into the hall and took their seats in front of the stage.

Unlike graduations of today, the ceremony a hundred years ago included academic presentations from many of the students. Salutatorian Merle Graves read an essay he had written about the present-day South.

A generation after the Civil War, race issues still divided the country. Graves called for educational opportunities for both black girls and boys, better employment and equal voting opportunities for black men.

Valedictorian Helen King read an essay about the many legends connected with the Holy Grail, and Una Bangs read a poem in French. Clarence Partridge and Kenneth Rollins engaged in a debate over political issues in the Philippines. Margaret Mills gave a history of the class, and Isabelle White predicted the seniors’ future using “scientific horoscopes.”

To end the ceremony, the seniors sang their class ode, written by their own Maude Lovejoy.

No doubt the students thought of the emotional week just passed when they sang, “Where await us as in school days, times of pleasure, times of strife.”

When the formal ceremony was over, Wheeler’s Band played for the graduates and their friends and family. In the morning, the seniors would gather again for an outing to Varnum Pond.

Meanwhile, the night was theirs. Young men flirted with young women who wore white kid gloves, a white fan in one hand, a red rose in the other.

Luann Yetter has researched and written a history column for the Sun Journal for the past 10 years. She teaches writing at the University of Maine at Farmington.

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