Freeport Home Was School Century Ago
Building Was Private School 
at Time When Village Was Called 
Raynortown

       The first public school in Raynortown, as Freeport was called back in the days when the RAYNORS predominated among the first settlers, dates back to 1838, but there was a private school before that and the building is a comfortable dwelling today.  It is the home of Mr. and Mrs. Irving CARMAN at 97 Raynor Street, in the old part of the village.

     Mr. CARMAN’s father bought the old schoolhouse from Foster SPRAGUE and James B. RAYNOR in 1882 and it has been the family home ever since, although moved and remodeled to suit modern needs.

     According to old timers, the house ranks with the old MAHLAND house on Randall Avenue, the old JOHNSON house on Mill Road and the home of Dr. Horace EVANS on S. Main Street as the oldest houses in Freeport, houses whose walls echoed to the name of George Washington and people of his day.

     Miss Nancy RAYNOR, and it is believed she remained a spinster to the end, built a little two-room school on S. Main Street, opposite the present HENNEHLOTTER’s grocery store and called it "Nancy Raynor’s School."  She was the only teacher, it is claimed, and had about 16 or 18 pupils.  Some of them are living today, among them being Mrs. Amy Raynor PADGETT, Joseph RAYNOR, Mrs. Annie Golder SOPER and Edwin T. GOLDER.

     There was a turnstile at the front gate, although no nickels were required to get through.  Once in the schoolhouse, hats and coats were hung on a long wooden strip fitted with wooden pegs.

     In the larger of the two rooms was a fireplace and the boys were kept busy in Winter cutting wood.  A stairway led to the attic and underneath it was a dark closet.

     Any one misbehaving was promptly shut in there until he or she decided to be good and it worked like a charm.

     The lathes were handmade, also the nails, and in the cellar the beams was and still are trunks of trees.

      The three R’s were dispensed there until the first log school was built at what is now cannon square and Raynortown had a school of its own.

      When Thomas CARMAN bought the house he had it moved to its present location and since that time new walls, floors, etc., have been installed, but the old stairway that led to the attic now leads to the cellar.

     Among the house souvenirs is a piece of the wooden clothes rack that saw much service in Miss Nancy’s school.  Old timers agree that the modern streamlined schools and the modern way of teaching are fine, "but we had a good time, too in the old days," they say.
 

Freeport, Sept. 26, (1940s ?)
Brooklyn Eagle Newspaper
Freeport, L.I.

[Newspaper Clipping provided by Gerald V. S. Raynor, Huntington, L.I.]

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