North Port Norris Schools
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By Carol Saul Gromer
All Photos Courtesy of Carol Saul Gromer
North Port Norris was once called Middletown. Today, people pass through on their way south to Port Norris or north toward Millville without knowing the rich history steeped into the soil where the Port Norris-Haleyville Road and Sockwell Lane intersect. On the southwest corner of that location is a lonely looking plot overgrown with trees and weeds. Truth be known, that land is far from being lonely. Many warm memories hover there keeping it company. To learn its secrets, take a trip with me back in time to the days when that very spot was alive with the pounding footfalls of laughing children.
On this site was not one but two North Port Norris elementary schools. They didn’t exist at the same time, of course, but one followed the other as the residents of the hamlet did their best to provide for the education of their children. Two students attending the older school in the mid 1890s were Maurice Sockwell and Jim Foster. Maurice tells that it was a one-room school with 45 students in seven grades. In 1898, at age 10, he took the job of school janitor. His jobs consisted of keeping the fire going in winter and sweeping the whole building with a broom for five cents a day. He also relates that as he got older, he and his friends had some devilish antics. The boys would take a cigar box filled with mice into the school. At a predetermined time, the mice would be released. The teacher, Mary West, was afraid of mice and would give the boys an hour off to catch them.
Maurice and Jim had another ploy to get out of school early. Their next teacher was a bearded man named Mr. Auley C. Davis. They would write a note asking that they be let out of school at three o’clock to go to the store for their mothers. Maurice continues, “He sure knew it was our writing, but I think he was glad to get rid of us and let us go”.
The older school was built about 1882 and existed until the summer of 1915. The Bridgeton Evening News reported on July 17, 1915, that Henry Schwartz had purchased the old North Port Norris schoolhouse and was having it moved to his lot on Main Street in Port Norris, next to Prichard’s Variety Store. It continued to say that when it was rebuilt, it would be used as a garage by Earl Brown. Under the caption NORTH PORT NORRIS, The Bridgeton Evening News reported this short statement in their July 26 issue that year “Work has begun on the new schoolhouse.”
If a roster of those attending the new school existed, names such as O’Neal, Danna, Randazzo, Berry, Garrison, Pruno, Todd, Broadway, Robbins, Sockwell and Terry would be among them. Maybe such a roster does exist. Buried beneath the surface in the southwest corner of that old school lot is a Rumford yeast jar. On Arbor Day in 1920, students planted a tree at that spot. Before the dirt was shoveled over the tree roots, one by one the students added their name to a slip of paper. The paper was folded carefully and put into the jar. The lid has probably rusted and the paper dissolved, but maybe not. It might be found one day still in the spot those small hands placed it.
Each school, in its day, faced the main road. In the front yard on the side toward Port Norris was a pump shed. It was built over a well where after a strenuous recess workout, the girls and boys would line up to use their metal folding cups and drink the cool water.
When the well’s useful days were over it was filled in, but it must still be there under the surface. In the area back of the school was the outhouse. It was a divided building with a door on the left front for boys and the right front for the girls.
Teachers remembered by the Sockwell girls during their years in school (1913-1920 for Kathryn and 1916-1923 for Ruth) were Miss Edith Bateman, Miss Matilda Sockwell, Miss Fleetwood from Dividing Creek, Miss Brewster from Haleyville and Miss Hoffman from Leesburg.
Kathryn and Ruth Sockwell each wrote their memories of their days as North Port Norris students. Kathryn, wrote, “It (the new school) was one big room with large windows along the west side with a big heater on the north side. Blackboards ran all along the wall behind the heater, (behind) the teacher’s desk and along half the east wall. There was a cloakroom located just inside the front doors. During the school day when each student went to the front to recite or to write on the blackboard, there was never a sound. No one threw spitballs. All came to learn and did. The big, round heater burned wood and coal. I was the janitor. I made $3 per month and put my pay in the Millville bank. At the end of the school year, I had to put two or three big five-gallon cans of oil all over the school floor with a long-handled brush. That was a real job. I brushed it on the floor of the big room, then the cloakroom floor. In the vestibule, I was almost to the door and found I had made a mistake. There I stood in a circle. The only way out was to jump. Holding the pan of oil, I leaped. When I did, the pan flew up and oil came down all over me. I wondered how I would ever get home. At that time, there was not much traffic, only a Model-T or two, so I ran home hiding behind trees away from the houses. I was a sight to behold. When asked what the kids did for recess, Kathryn related, “We took our cow, Daisy, up in the schoolyard to keep the weeds down. Since the cow went to the bathroom there on the schoolyard, kids covered their eyes with blindfolds and walked through. That was the most memorable game I recall.”
Ruth paints a different picture of her school memories—at least during recess. She says, “One day, after lunch, all the kids were playing hide and seek. I was hiding in the cloakroom when the kids found me and were about to catch me. I jumped out of the window and our teacher, Matilda Sockwell, saw me. I had to stay in after school for a week” It might still be possible to see that window. It was the one located closest to the front on the left side of the building. At the end of its career in North Port Norris, the “new” school was moved to Shellpile (Bivalve). After being used as a school in that area, it was repurposed in the not too distant past as a restaurant. The infamous window of Ruth’s jumping fame must still be there.
As time moves along, it erases many treasures. What remains for those who care are the words left by people who lived with and loved those things, people and places. Through their eyes we can peer into life as it was in days so long ago. Now that you know a bit of the history of the southwest corner of Sockwell Lane and the Port Norris-Haleyville Road, stop there on some quiet day. Listen for a few moments. It might not be the wind you hear rustling the leaves and grass, but echoes from the past that linger because you remember.
Thank you Carol for the history of North Port Norris Schools.
North Port Norris Elementary School
About 1882-1915
All Photos courtesy of Carol Saul Gromer
Bridgeton Evening News October 18, 1883
Shows that the older school was in existence at least by this date.
Bridgeton Evening News Thursday, January 8, 1903 Page 3
Bridgeton Evening News Saturday, August 20, 1921 Page 10
Bridgeton Evening News Saturday, June 19, 1915
Arbor Day Commerations
Bridgeton Evening News Tuesday, April 20, 1920 Page 7
Bridgeton Evening News Tuesday, January 10, 1921 Page 2
Bridgeton Evening News Friday, April 8, 1921 Page 9
Bridgeton Evening News Tuesday, May 2, 1922 Page 3
Some North Port Norris School Teachers The dates do not represent their complete terms of service only that they were listed on those dates as being employed as teachers at North Port Norris elementary school. Anna D Bonham Mary E West Ralph Carlisle Auley C. Davis Edith Bateman Estella Rowley replaced Edith Bateman Susan DeCamp Matilda Sockwell Helping teacher Mary Leah Shropshire Others teachers mentioned in the writings of Kathryn Sockwell who attended both the old and new schools 1912 to 1920 Miss Fleetwood from Dividing Creek Miss Hoffmann from Leesburg |
If you have more information to share, or photographs, please send us a email.
pnhs@historicportnorris.org