Metuchen Edison History Features

Recollections of

Boyhood Days

In Old Metuchen

By

David Trumbull Marshall

Published by The Case Publishing Co., Flushing NY 1930

(Second Edition)- (c) 1930

Jimmy Clarkson's Overcoat.

In 1878 my father had a private school.

We lived at the Presbyterian Parsonage.

The schoolroom was at the west end of the house.

This schoolroom has since been removed from the house.

The attendance roll, which I have before me for September, 1878, comprised about thirty names, four of which were members of our family.

One day while some one was gazing out of the window instead of at one of his books he saw a young man pass the window and for some reason suspected that the stranger had entered the lobby of the school where the coats and hats of the scholars were hung.

The school room was on the west side of the house. There was a lobby on the north side and a door on the north side of the school room leading into the lobby.

The boy who was looking out of the window made some excuse to go out and immediately returned and announced that some one had stolen Jim Clarkson's overcoat and was running toward the railroad.

The Pennsylvania Railroad ran through a cut about 200 feet north of the parsonage.

The whole school turned out.

Hartley Grove, who lived in Menlo Park up near the J. B. Smith place, came in a buckboard with his sister every day and tied his horse under the Presbyterian church sheds.

Hartley and Charley and Frank Pattison and Arthur Payne ran down to Main street and got the redoubtable Jack Keenan, who was the Town Constable.

Pretty soon, as Hartley and Keenan and as many of the boys who could hang onto the buckboard were going full speed up Woodbridge Avenue they overhauled the thief near the Dark Lane crossing of the railroad. The coat was recovered.

This tremendously successful exploit made a great hero of Jack Keenan and was the topic of conversation among the school children for many months after that.

I have before me the roll-book of my father's school, together with the attendance and scholarship memoranda for the years 1877 to 1879.

The list of pupils was pitifully small.

My father was a very plain, kindly man and a good teacher, if perhaps a poor disciplinarian.

He used to say that he loved to teach pupils who wished to learn.

He had, like most teachers, to teach some who evidently did not wish to learn.

It is interesting after fifty years to compare the careers of those pupils with their marks in scholarship in that old roll book.

Many alas! would not answer to their names if the roll were called now.

I know that many of the boys and girls of Metuchen have to thank my good father for influencing them to acquire an education.

Many owe to him their decision to attend college and taste the delights of a higher education.

Four of his own boys went to Rutgers and one girl, my sister Nina, graduated from Wellesley.

My father sent Nina to Rutgers College to enter knowing well that being a girl, she would be refused
entrance.

Rutgers College would have gained for itself great credit if they had admitted her, for she did Wellesley lasting honor.

I noticed from the School Record book that she was the only scholar my father had whose marks in many subjects were uniformly perfect, though there were several who ran her a good second.

It may interest the children and grandchildren of some of the pupils to read over the list of the pupils from the old roll book. I won't give the records of scholarship. Most of these records are good. Some are very good.

There were several boys and girls in Metuchen who went to my father's school for years and only left to enter college or business or matrimony.

ROLL FOR SEPTEMBER 2, 1878.
Essie Vail.
Rettie Gove.
Jennie Williams.
Julia Marshall.
Nellie Acken.
Fannie Hall.
Jennie Freeman.
Gussie Lindsley.
LiIlie Hill
Nellie Freeman.
Annie Dean.
Florence Ayers.
Ella Ayers.
Cassie Robins.
Charley Pattison.
John Martin.
James Clarkson.
Edward Dana.
John Hill.
Harry Dana.
Eugene Moss.
David Marshall.
Ed. Rowland.
Frank Pattison.
Arthur Payne.
Bruyn Marshall.
Annie Goodwin.
Lucy Norton.
Venie Mockridge.
Lisa Browning.
Gracie Reid.
Mary Ford.
Hartley Gove.
Ethel Tripp.
Will Browning.
Lillie Vail.
George Hill.
Frazer Kempson.
Gertie Martin.
Will Acken.

Later there were others.

I have forgotten them now.