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Cabot had fourteen school districts. They were numbered from one to fifteen, but District 13 never existed, probably because of superstition. Numbers were assigned as communities in the town grew. When the student count dwindled, the school was closed and the children went to whatever school was nearby.
Districts were spaced so that no child had to walk more than about two miles. Parents were taxed to support the schools, paying in cash or in firewood, wheat, janitor service, or supplies. Teachers usually "boarded around," living with nearby families while they taught. Female teachers had to be single and were paid only about half what men earned; girls as young as fifteen or sixteen sometimes taught every grade in a single room, arriving early to fire up the potbelly stove. Schools closed in severe weather and mud season, during haying, sugaring, and harvest, and whenever epidemics of flu, measles, whooping cough, or smallpox swept through and families were quarantined at home.
District 1 — Cabot Plain
The town's first school district sat originally on Fortification Hill, where John Gunn taught in the summer of 1792. The first building was a log cabin opposite today's cemetery; it was later moved to a pie-shaped lot at the junction of the Bayley-Hazen Road and Cabot Plains Road. School kept only about three months a year, yet at one time some fifty scholars crowded in. Discipline was strict — the unruly were "regulated by the big ferule" (a wooden paddle) or a fire-toughened birch switch. Lunch was often barley cakes and potatoes roasted in the ashes of the great stone fireplace. A new school was built in 1929 at Cabot Plains Road and what is now Bolton Road on land donated by Aaron Bolton; it closed in 1948 and was sold in 1950 for $1,000. It is now a private seasonal residence. The old school that it replaced was bought and converted to a garage for the Maynard family car and still stands, unused, a few yards north.
District 2 — Center of Town
Formed in 1793 at the geographic center of town, District 2 built a log school about 1796 that later burned and was replaced. In the town's brief years as Cabot's hub of commerce and government, records suggest as many as ninety students — perhaps across more than one building. By 1840 many families had moved downhill to the "upper village" on the banks of the Winooski.
District 3 — Lower Cabot
An early school here was replaced about 1880 by a building erected by local builder True Town. Among the first in town to have individual desks, window shades, and a steeple with a bell, it produced a remarkable number of notable citizens — among them businessman Burnham Coburn; Goddard College president Royce Pitkin; Middlebury dean of English Wilfred E. Davison; surgeons Carleton and Gerald Haines; and educator Abbie Smith Babitt, who earned a PhD from Columbia. The school closed in 1948 despite a town vote to keep it open. Its bell, once stolen, was found years later in a mill pond and returned to the steeple. After its closure, the building successively served a variety of businesses, and most recently became a private residence.
District 4 — West Hill
District 4 is located near West Hill Pond. There was probably a small log cabin schoolhouse there originally, but after the brook was dammed and a sawmill located there in 1820, the community grew and a new one-room school was built to accommodate the increasing population. The school closed in 1919. There had been a sharp decrease in population in the district during WWI, and the Spanish Flu epidemic was raging. The few remaining students went to either Lower Cabot or the Village. The building was used by the town for storage until Charles and Barbara Carpenter arranged for it to be sold to the Cabot Historical Society. The building was badly damaged, and volunteers repaired and restored it to its former schoolhouse appearance. It was used for historical society meetings but was basically an empty shell until 1996, when Cabot School teacher and principal David Book and students in his “Heritage Class” partnered with the historical society to research and restore the building as a school. They found authentic furniture and textbooks for the old school. A wood stove provides heat when needed, and the building is maintained by the Cabot Historical Society as a museum and learning site open to students and visitors by appointment.
District 5 — Merritt (South Walden) School
Located about three miles from the village on the South Walden Road, the first school in this district later housed members of the Amadon family after a new building went up across the road. Electricity was installed in 1940 and the school closed in 1943. The building sold in 1947 for $500.
District 6 — Read School
District 6's early building — where young Zerah Colburn attended school briefly — fell into disrepair and was replaced around 1885; that new building burned in 1918 and was not rebuilt. The few remaining children — from the Smith and Gamblin families — went to the village school. The Read School stood on land later owned by Velma Urban Smith, who was responsible for placing a marker at the site on the present Urban Road.
District 7 — East Cabot
Built around 1886 and similar in design to Cabot's other mid-1800s schools, the East Cabot School is located at the intersection of Mack Mountain Road and U.S. Route 2. It was overseen by Walter Abbott, a school director at just seventeen. This was a thriving community at one time, with several small farms with large families. Gradually the population shifted, and the town closed the school in 1948. It was sold at auction in 1949 for $1,025 and is now a private residence.
District 8 — The Village School
The first village school was a one-room log cabin where the Cabot United Church is now. In 1845, a two-story school was built immediately north of that spot and was in use until 1863, when it was replaced by a larger two-story building where the present school is now. That school came to include a two-year high school after 1909; it graduated its first four-year class in 1920. Before that, students seeking further education were tuitioned to Montpelier Seminary, Goddard Seminary in Barre, and academies in St. Johnsbury and Peacham. In 1938 it was torn down and the present school's main building was built. This new school building was praised as being "exemplary" in a nationwide survey. It has been expanded over the years to include satellite classrooms and a large gymnasium in 1971, and in 2008–09, a Performing Arts building.
District 9 — Kimball School
On West Hill, this school was located just beyond the intersection of the present-day Churchill Road and Coit's Pond Road. The school existed at least as early as 1817, when Enoch Hoit (Hoyt) was “trustee,” and the last records found for the school were in 1841, when then-trustee I. Way submitted an expense report listing 38 scholars. No information has been found indicating why the school was closed, or the exact date, but it may have existed until about 1886. After it closed, students probably went to either West Hill School or Merritt School on the South Walden Road. The Hopkins family eventually took down the old school building, and no evidence remains today.
District 10 — Southwest Hill (Burnap School)
On Southwest Hill, "Burnap" School usually held about a dozen children — from the Wheeler, Lyndes, Tebbetts, Carpenter, Lyford, Hopkins, Powers, and Dwinell families — until it closed in 1914. Remnants of the foundation may survive near the corner of Tebbetts and Ducharme Roads.
District 11 — Walbridge School
Located on what is now Route 215 (the Walden Road) and shown on an 1870 map, the Walbridge School served for at least fifty years before closing in 1916, when its children were transported to the Village School. In 1972 the town sold the building for $50 to Richard Spaulding, a Walbridge descendant, who moved it to Cabot Plain — directly across the road from the site of the town's very first school on the Bayley-Hazen Road.
District 12 — South Cabot ("Hookerville")
South Cabot still has two school buildings standing. The older building, unused after 1929–30, later hosted PTA dances to help fund its successor. The newer school, built by Bud Bruce in 1930, enrolled thirty-three students in 1933 and was the last one-room school in Cabot to close, in 1954. Both school houses are now privately owned.
District 14
The Whittier Hill school was built before 1895 and closed around 1908; no photographs survive, and no trace remains on Whittier Hill Road.
District 15 — Peterville
Petersville was organized in 1858 by selectman Peter Lyford — hence the name — at the request of the town select board. The community consisted of four dwellings and a sawmill on Molly's Brook. Lyford oversaw having the school built, and it operated until 1910. In 1926 a large dam was built to create Molly's Falls Reservoir, and the buildings, including the school, were either demolished or moved before the valley was flooded.
The original source pages
These summaries draw on the Society's earlier archive. Each page below is reproduced in full, with its original photographs, maps, and documents.