Newfoundland schoolhouse during the 19th and early 20th centuries. Allison Andrews (born 1916) was my grandmother Rachel Charlotte Andrews' first cousin. He was the son of my grandmother's 'Uncle Ebbie,' or Ebenezer Andrews. Ebbie married Elizabeth Florence Kelland, and had several children: Minnie, Allison, Margaret, Raymond, Lillian, Harold, & Robert. In the following account, Allison talks about his early schooling during the 'old' days in Newfoundland.
Part 1: School:
"I will always remember the first day I went to school because I had a piece of slate, a piece of pencil, and a bookbag to carry it in. When I got to school I had to sit on a stool with no back on it and if you leaned back you would end up in someone's lap. My little feet were just swinging off the floor. I had a bookbag that my mother made out of calico which is the same kind of material an apron was made out of. My mother never had enough calico to make the strap so she made it out of a different material. The strap was so long that one day the bookbag hit off my leg and broke my slate.
"The first thing you had to do in the morning was take a junk of wood to school with you for the stove. You weren't allowed to take a dry junk so you had a soggy one. You were expecting to warm yourself with a wet junk down in school. You would go up to your house for recess at eleven o'clock and you might get a bit of bread and you might not. If you had two slices for your breakfast you wouldn't get any for recess. There was nothing on the bread, only lassie (molasses).
"While going to school, I got as far as grade three."
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