Building Canterbury Elementary School
By David Tirrell-Wysocki, with help from Mark Stevens and “Staying Small in a Century of Growth” by Kathryn Grover.
Residents approved having a school built — then did it themselves!
Buses outside the new Canterbury Elementary School
In September 1956 – 70 years ago this month – Canterbury began a new chapter in educating its children when doors opened at Canterbury Elementary School. The landmark event came after townspeople took matters into their own hands – literally.
The opening followed decades of debate that pitted newcomers against long-time residents and included arguments about taxes, condemnation from the state, schools with outhouses and no running water and children riding to class in a hearse.
In the end, after considering multiple plans to reshuffle their five one-room schoolhouses and finding that construction bids for a new school were way too expensive, townspeople donated money, materials and muscle, and, in large part, built the school themselves.
When children first sat at mismatched desks in 1956, construction was still under way. The school was officially dedicated nearly a year later, in August 1957.
It had been a long road. In the 1930’s, the school superintendent suggested the town begin thinking about closing its five district schools and moving students to one central school. Nothing was done and children continued attending the Carter, Kezer, Center, Blanchard and Uplands Schools.
In 1942, Superintendent Donald Mattoon was disappointed when the town rejected a plan to transfer children from the Carter School to the Center School, which would have reduced the number of grades taught by each teacher from eight to four or fewer. One-room schoolhouses made it difficult to find teachers and offered less instructional time for each child, he lamented.
In 1949, a committee offered plans to move students to different schools, depending on their grade level. There is no record of a vote, according to Kathryn Grover’s “Staying Small in a Century of Growth.”
The following year, the frustrated school superintendent reported the district’s “greatest need” was a new, consolidated school.
At about the same time, the state condemned Canterbury schools as unsanitary. Two had outhouses. Three had chemical toilets. Only one had running water. Most kids sat at desks that were a century old. There were no formal lunchrooms, but local historian Mark Stevens said that during his research for a presentation on the school project, he learned there was a lunch program, of sorts.
Then-students told him a group of mothers grew veggies, cooked them and brought them to school.
“I interviewed old-timers who said they always served green string beans, which no one ate,” Mark said.
There was renewed discussion of selling the schools and borrowing to build a new school. But the School Board determined the sales would not bring in much money and, because of Canterbury’s small tax base, the town wouldn’t be able to borrow enough to make up the difference.
The 1954-55 school year began with kids jammed into overcrowded schools and some jammed into overloaded cars to get there.
In Kathryn Grover’s history, resident Robert Fife remembers that Ray Preve drove kids to class in a hearse.
“One day he pulls up, and lo and behold, here comes a big, long hearse, a 1937 LaSalle. It was black with blue velvet. We’d all rush to get in the front seat. There were some auxiliary seats in the back. It rode nicely,” Bob said.
Robert Maxfield recalled other parents driving kids to school.
“Mrs. Bruner would take all the little kids and put ’em in her ’54 Plymouth station wagon, get ’em inside, and she’d let a couple kids sit up on the fenders, and off she’d go…. Today, they’d arrest her. She’d get every kid in there she could get.”
And, decades later, former students told Mark Stevens about a wood-panel station wagon – a “woodie wagon.”
“When it rained, the wood swelled up and the doors wouldn’t open very well, so if you were in, you couldn’t get out. If you were out-in-the-rain, you couldn’t get in,” he said.
A 1954 committee again studied closing the five district schools and recommended building
a new central school.
All of this happened during major debates that included open letters to townspeople that centered on cost, taxes, newcomers vs. long-time residents and whether closing the traditional schools was prudent. One opponent worried the project was being ‘‘rammed down our throats” without all facts and potential ramifications presented. A supporter wrote that “our town trucks and fire engines are better housed than our children.”
Others proclaimed the one-room schoolhouses that were good enough for them should be good enough for the new generation of kids.
Eventually, in November 1955, voters approved the concept of building the school, but rejected the warrant article to borrow $59,000 for construction.
The bond issue ballot
After the vote, residents Alexander and Elizabeth Standish pledged $20,000 to the school building, Ralph and Margaret Graham pledged $500 and Anton Nelson, who ran an excavating and construction company, pledged his labor and bulldozer.
School? Yes. Money? No.
Again the debate raged about higher taxes hurting current residents and turning new ones away. Others argued that not building the school would turn away new families and reduce property values.
School supporters won the debate and residents voted in January 1956 to approve borrowing up to $59,000 to complement the pledged donations.
Then the construction bids came in. The lowest was nearly $24,000 over budget. All were rejected.
Resident Ralph Keeler suggested the town “resort to Canterbury ingenuity,” with the School Board serving as a general contractor to reduce the cost. He volunteered to provide electrical equipment, use fixtures from the other schools and install it all for free. Others had similar ideas, suggesting the town build what it could with volunteer labor and hire contractors for the rest.
The School Board asked Donald Booth, then managing construction for a Laconia company, to supervise the work for $100 a week. Many firms that had bid as subcontractors in the initial request submitted new bids, which were substantially lower than the ones included in the general contractors’ previous submission. Thirty-nine subcontractors were hired.
Townspeople prepared a topographical survey. Others cleared the lot, then roasted hotdogs from Giles’s store on the brush they burned. As promised, Anton Nelson donated two bulldozers and a crane and dug the foundation. Donald Booth and others erected forms and poured concrete on a Sunday because they knew people would be in town during the weekend to help.
Richard and Catherine Dickson fashioned aluminum sheets into ductwork in their cellar. Richard, Ollie Fifield and others installed it at night and on weekends, learning how to do it as they went.
Ralph Keeler wired the school, but apparently, at least two of the wires were crossed for a time.
Resident Tommy Cochrane told Mark that when the school opened, there were issues with the recess bell and fire alarm.
“The teacher or principal had to remember to push the fire alarm for recess and vice versa,” Mark said. “The kids all knew the mistake was coming whenever there was a substitute teacher.”
And, before the school had a formal playground, kids would play beneath half-buried rocks and stumps that were pushed aside to be dealt with later.
“They used to play in the ‘caves’ as they called it,” Mark said. “The teacher would come outside to find all the kids missing…hiding under the rocks.”
Jan Rollins Cote, who was five years old at the time, remembered “all of us walking … up the hill, and my dad and my brother were carrying a ladder, and my mother had buckets. I don’t know what was in them, maybe it was something for the brick.”
Judy (Ruggles) Carey told Mark of the Quart and Gallon Club. Residents pledged money to buy paint. Different pledges made them “a pint member, half-pint, half-gallon or gallon member,” she told him. “She remembered saving her weekly allowance to buy paint. When they had enough they walked up to school with a ladder and buckets and painted her classroom.”
The PTA held an auction to raise $1000 for floor tiles. It included “treasures from the attics of the nearby Shaker settlement,” according to one account. And, 12-year-old Sandy Cochrane, daughter of William and Ella Mae Cochrane, donated one of her puppies as an auction item.
Later, the Junior Red Cross provided books, the Canterbury Woman’s Club donated playground equipment and the Cooperative Extension group made curtains from theatrical gauze.
Under construction
Decades later
The school opened on September 19,1956, with unfinished ceilings, no furnace, no floor tiles — and women in town were still smoothing and painting the concrete block walls. There were five teachers and 121 students in grades one through eight. The town’s population was 650.
(With Canterbury’s population at 2,500, the 2026-27 school year began with 132 students in grades K-5, eight classroom teachers, a full-time nurse, full-time counselor, one administrator and various support staff and specialists.)
Until the furnace was installed, volunteers ran stove pipes through the windows and used stoves from the district schools. Mismatched desks and chairs came from the old schools.
New classroom with mismatched desks and bare walls
In October 1956, the board still needed about $10,000 to complete the work. Dorothy and Robert Burroughs donated $1,000 and suggested the building committee contact the Harriet M. Spaulding Charitable Trust for assistance. The committee asked the foundation for $4,696.55 to finish the school for winter use and listed other projects, including a playground with a picnic area, benches and an outdoor fireplace “in amongst the trees” for story-telling and nature lectures.
It also hoped to pave the driveway and parking area, complete landscaping, furnish a teachers’ room, install kitchen equipment, erect a flagpole and buy 106 desks and chairs. The Spaulding Trust awarded $7,500 and townspeople supplied some of the board’s wish-list items including loam and landscaping.
Raymond and Norma Glines gave a flagpole. Teacher Dorothy Pettengill left orders in her will to donate proceeds from selling her property to the School Board. The money was used to build the baseball field and add asphalt pads for basketball and volleyball.
A ‘Thank You’ card from the school’s first students. 1956
Little Jan Cote speaks with teacher Sarah Hill.
Early classroom
The same classroom in later years
The 1957 town report lists 141 volunteer builders – one of every five residents at the time.
After learning of the successful project, President Dwight Eisenhower sent a congratulatory note that was included in the August 1957 dedication program and 1957 Town Report.
“The splendid story of the Canterbury Elementary School has been brought to my attention. It is encouraging to learn of this demonstration of community spirit,” the president wrote.
“Please give my congratulations to the citizens of Canterbury. Their hard work and sacrifice will result in more than a fine school. Their example will stimulate a keener sense of responsibility among the younger generation, and their accomplishment will become known in communities throughout the Nation,” he wrote.
Dedication Day – August 18, 1957
In the last 70 years, there have been modifications and expansions. An addition was built in 1969 to accommodate growing enrollment. In 1990, the gym and library/media center were added, along with classroom renovations.
Erin Chubb, CES principal since 2020, said the community spirit that built Canterbury Elementary School left a legacy that continues to define it.
“Knowing that generations of Canterbury families literally built these walls reminds me that this school has always belonged to the community,” she said as she prepared for the current school year. “It inspires all of us who work here to honor that investment by creating a place where every child is known, supported, and encouraged to thrive.
“I see our partnership with families and the town, not as something new, but as a continuation of the same spirit that made this school possible in the first place, and it is truly an honor to be part of it,” Mrs. Chubb said.
A wonderful story and it should be required reading by every resident of the Town. We’d heard parts of the story since we arrived in 1980 but the writer of this vignette has transformed it into a true piece of Americana. Congratulations.
This was wonderful! Thank you for filling in the blanks to this long heard story and adding this written history for those to reference into the future. Jane Balshaw
Seems as if many Canterbury residents are contributing to our preparations for celebrating our 300th anniversary next year by filling in details about our history. Some of those efforts appear here, led by the Canterbury Historical Society. I encourage others to document even more of the efforts folks are taking to remember and illustrate our history.
Bill of Hackleboro
Trustee