FARMINGTON — When Lawrence Yeaton attended the Little Red Schoolhouse on the Wilton Road, elementary students were schooled together, water was toted from the Yeaton family well and wood heated the one-room school.

Preserving those memories is the intent of alumnus and volunteers who have put the finishing touches on to the Little Red Schoolhouse Museum, which is now on the Farmington Fairgrounds.

“The Red School House is completed,” Susan McCleery Small of South Portland, volunteer director of the museum, said last week. She, Jean Mitchell and volunteers keep the museum open for fair-goers. “People love it and are so happy to have it here.”

The school was moved to preserve the history of the small, neighborhood schools of the past.

Since the move, a new chimney, glazed windows, coats of paint, a handicap ramp and new brick steps have been added, she said.

With a donation from former student David McCluskey, funds raised by Don DesRoches through yard sales and support from the Fair Association, the improvements have been made. 

Stephen Mitchell and his students from the Maine School of Masonry completed the steps while blacksmith Gene Fahn designed, built and installed the handrail. Fahn demonstrates blacksmithing next to the museum on the fairgrounds.

The school, built in 1852, was closed as a public school in 1958. It was operated as a museum after the Nissen Baking Co. bought the property and deeded the school to the Farmington and Wilton historical societies.  The building was moved to the fairgrounds with the Fair Association footing the bill.

McCleery has started a photo display of teachers who taught at the school,  including locals such as Gwilym Roberts, Frances Hardy and Beryl Stanley. Many students did their student teaching there, she said.  She is collecting photos to add to the collection.

The school is similar to the one Yeaton, 80, attended but the walls and ceiling were thin, natural pieces of wood, the stove is different and the seats were positioned differently, he said.

The youngest of nine children, Yeaton, like his seven brothers and one sister, attended the school where his mother did the janitor work, he said. Their home was on a knoll behind the present Pizza Hut.

When he was 6 or 7, he helped with the work and carried water into the school that served the surrounding area along Routes 2 and 4 almost down to Chesterville and east to the McCleery farm on the Wilton Road.

He attended the Little Red Schoolhouse for eight years before going on to Farmington High School, he said.

A favorite memory of the school was the May baskets played on the teachers, he said. The students would bring in a few pennies or a nickel, someone would buy the candy and another make the basket. 

Yeaton remembers a jaunt taken by the older students down the less-busy Routes 2 and 4 to the railroad tracks behind the present Farmington Ford. It meant school was over for the day because the teacher couldn’t catch them but it also meant they missed out on the candy in the basket, he said.

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