Remnants of Windham’s 19 one-room schoolhouses remain as a reminder of the “way things were” before state regulations, consolidation and transportation improvements. Windham’s schools were scattered throughout the town, built as the demand increased by population shifts and growth.

For the first 40 years of the 1900s, many children in the southern part of town, in the area of Pope Road on the Route 302 end and the Highland Cliff Road neighborhood, walked to school to the red brick building once called the Amos Hawkes School. Later it would be called Knight School.

Located on the end of Pope Road near Route 302, a school had been in this “district” since the late 1700s. Generally, there were about 70 students in the one-room, eight-grade school, taught by one teacher. When the superintendent made one of his quarterly visits to the school in 1918, there were only 14 students.

It was traditional to name a school for either a family or area that was nearby. Amos Hawkes Jr. (1762-1852) was a farmer who lived near Duck Pond (old name for Highland Lake). Perhaps he built this school since his family had a brickyard. Many of the families in this area were Quakers, belonging to the Society of Friends. Joel Rand taught at this school in 1840 and among his 47 students, most belonged to the Friends Society.

Like all these early schools, the heat was provided by wood. The “big” boys were the ones who kept the fires burning by chopping, stacking and carrying the fuel. In 1901 it took 2½ cords of hardwood for a school year – at $3.90 per cord. New seats were needed in 1903, it was noted in an annual report. They didn’t arrive until three years later – one for each of the 20 pupils.

A new woodshed, a new outhouse and a rebuilt and recapped chimney were all accomplished in 1915 – adding $171 total to the town’s school budget.

Once there was a road on the left hand side of the school – called the Lowell Road, it intersected with Route 302. That part of the road is no longer used by the public, and the old Hawkes-Knight school is now a private home. One former pupil told of traveling to school by sleigh. He attended for six or seven years. “No playground,” he told me, “but we played in the pasture.” The school closed in 1941.

Former pupils fondly remember that this end of Pope Road that goes by their old school, was a wonderful place to find frog ponds, peepers and polliwogs in the springtime.