Bald Hill School | Descendants of First Pupils Recall Events

August 23, 1929
The Brooklyn Daily Eagle

"The only former pupil and teacher [present] was Mrs. Amanda Terry Ruland of Terryville. Among those present were . . . Mrs. W. G. Corwin, Mrs. Thomas Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Miss Ethel Corwin, Mr. and Mrs. L.W. Ruland of Southampton . . .the Rev. Jesse Halsey and Miss Abigail Halsey of Cincinnati, Ohio; Mrs. Luella M. Terry of Patchogue."

"The Bald Hills Schoolhouse"

In eighteen hundred seventeen

When James Monroe was President and when

Long Island’s Middle Country road

Was but a footpath way,

The few settlers

In the shadow of Bald Hills

Built a schoolhouse for their children.

A good school makes a settlement,

And others came, and children grew

To womanhood and manhood

Making homes.

In eighteen fifty three the school out grown

Was sold to one James Clark,

And on this site

The present one was built:

‘Tis known today both far and wide as Farmingville.

My Mother went to school here,

I can see her now,

Little Melvina, trudging on between

Her brothers, Tom and Dan’l,

Holding by the hand

Her little sister, Lyd

Who grew to teach the school,

That is my story

Yours is just the same,

Each one of you who gather’s here today.

Your Mother went to school here or your Father –maybe both,

Their names are carved upon the trees and in the desks.

Their feet have worn the door sills, as with laugh and shout and lessons done they whooped their way to freedom through that door.

Their road, to knowledge, rough perchance, and steep

Grew many flowers of joy along its way

Whose odors sweet are wafted down the years.

Their fathers all were farmers,

Men who owned their land,

And every man a king in his own right.

And in this place they gathered on the Sabbath to acknowledge Him, the giver of all good—Almighty God.

They took their joys, their sorrows

And their planting and their harvests from His hand.

Their children growing here in this good land,

(Inhaling freedom in the air they breathed),

Grew up together making their own homes and teaching to their children

As their fathers taught to them,

Lessons of uprightness and thrift.

Some went away, some wandered far,

But once a year we all come home.

Here in the schoolhouse in the wood

We meet to pay homage due those noble souls

Our fathers and our mothers, true Americans

This is America

This spot of ground

Where freeborn men and women

Made their homes and reared their children

In the fear of God,

Afraid of none

And bound to none

And envying non:--

God save America

By Abigail Fithian Halsey

For the Fiftieth anniversary

Of the Farmingville Reunion Association, 1935