In the Ridgefield Historical Society’s vault is a small notebook that tells us a lot about how Ridgefield district schools operated and what kind of work was expected of the schoolteacher.
I was particularly excited to see this little journal (six by four inches), because the author, David Whitney Olmsted, had once lived in the house on Olmstead Lane that my family has occupied for more than 50 years.
David Olmsted (he later took the modern spelling of Olmstead), only 20 years old, was engaged to be the winter session schoolmaster, from the fall of 1820 to the end of spring, 1821, at the West Lane District School for a salary of $10 a month. In addition to instilling knowledge in his young scholars, he kept meticulous records of attendance, not so much out of concern for truancy, but to keep track of what each child’s family owed the district for his education. Mr. Olmsted also recorded the payments that district families made for their school tax obligations, giving credit against the bill for firewood brought to heat the school.
While most of the journal is devoted to record keeping, Mr. Olmsted dropped in occasional observations of town events, severe weather, and even a mention of Training Day: June 4 was “Training Day in York State, clear and pleasant, very warm.”
The son of Matthew and Sarah Whitney Olmsted (probably of what’s now 75 Olmstead Lane), David Whitney Olmsted married Emily Grumman and by 1840 they lived at 91 Olmstead Lane. Their son, another David, died at 17; we have a scrap of his copybook (probably from the West Lane school) in which he practiced penmanship. David Whitney Olmstead died in 1877 and Emily Grumman Olmstead died in 1899; the house remained in the Olmstead family until about 1920.
After his time as a schoolmaster, David Whitney Olmstead became a shoemaker like his father; this was a burgeoning cottage industry in Ridgefield in the mid-19th Century. The little house on Olmstead Lane, remained much as it had been, its owners lacking the resources to expand or do much to “improve” it.
The Olmsteads did leave traces of themselves, including the journal that’s in the historical society collection.
