Once upon a time, Westport was a mill town.
As Mary Gai notes, “All mills were the same at first. The mill stones were imported from France.
“They were simultaneously wood cutting mills and grain mills. When steam power overtook all around 1840, the mills did cider, cotton (making raw fibers into ‘belts,’ the Mill at Richmondville went into twine. Both of my parents worked there in the late 1930s, making twine. Much of that road was employees of the mill. Mills were not appreciated. They were dismantled and turned into either commercial centers or residences.”
In the case of The Mill at Richmondville, they were turned into an office building — and, now, into apartments.
There was the mill at Compo Cove, which burned twice (and is now the home straddling the Sherwood Mill Pond inlet). It’s memorialized still in the name of the “Old Mill” area.
(Photo/courtesy of Paul Ehrismann)
And, by Ford Road, there were these:
It’s misspelled on the postcard. Today, nearby, is Sipperley’s Hill Road (often misread as “Slippery Hill Road”).
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50 Years Ago This Week:
Led by former Bedford Junior High School principal Norman Flint, a group of parents, students, administrators and others did a protest walk to demonstrate the dangers for students who must walk to the Riverside Avenue building. (Today it is Saugatuck Elementary School.)
RTM candidate Charles Ziff noted: “In many areas sidewalks don’t exist and where they did, they were in very poor condition or overrun by shrubs.”
Bedford Junior High School, back in the day.
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I think the math may be mistaken, 50 years ago was 1973 and
Dr Glen Hightower was principal. Jus sayin….
Chip: Norman is identified above as the former principal at that point (1973).
Mr. Flint was BJH principal in the 50’s and 60’s
Lack of sidewalks is still a big problem in Westport
So in other words, he was the former principal when he led the march.
The part about Norman Flint (who was my English teacher at Bedford Junior High) leading a protest about the dangers for students walking to the building on Riverside Ave. is mixed up, I think. There were no dangers walking from Junior High to Staples and few students did. The walking was Staples kids going from Staples to Junior High for the cafeteria, auditorium, and gym, which Staples didn’t have. It was a bit of a nuisance to do all that walking, but not very hazardous. Bedford was on the Post Road but no roads were involved walking to the schools, just walking between the ball fields and tennis courts.
In 1973, Bedford Junior High was on Riverside Avenue. The march, it seems, was about the dangers of walking to and from the school all along the street in both directions — downtown, and to Saugatuck.
And that area is now one of the best side walked areas in town. In fact, I remember walking on sidewalks with our Spanish class from BJHS to downtown in 1976, 3 years after this event. Protests worked then, apparently. Power to The People!!
.Bedford Junior High was originally what is now Kings Highway School. It then moved to the ex-Staples High School on Riverside Drive, now the current Saugatuck Elementary School. Besides the eponymous elementary and junior high schools, Fred Bedford also donated Greens Farms School and the original YMCA.
On rivers and mills, if one takes the Boston section of the Lake Shore limited between Pittsfield and Springfield MA sitting on the south side-along the Westfield River, they will see the remnants of several mills that used waterwheels for power.
I am late to respond so I am pleased to see that Peter Barlow and John Kelley both correctly identified the picture of “Bedford Junior High School back in the day” as Staples High School. Someone must have a picture of the very first Staples High School building. The one my parents graduated from. I’ll have to look. I might have one myself.
Click here, Mary: https://06880danwoog.com/2014/08/26/westports-school-daze/
Apparently, gym was not once required and students would bring they lunches in “lunch boxes.” Greens Farms had a gym/cafeteria added post war and from the pictures you posed, Kings Highway (as Bedford Junior High) had the same addition. I imagine the other pre-war schools also had gym/cafeterias added. (At Burr Farms, we had the cafetorium while Long Lots had a gym/auditorium combination.
I can tell you that in 1966-1968 there were very spiffy sidewalks on Riverside Ave. both directions from BJHS. I walked them daily.
Apropos of nothing, but I remember my third grade at Greens Farms, where we frequently had rectangular ice cream cones, with arch shaped ice cream. Unusual for most of America, coffee ice cream was offered rather than chocolate.
John Kelly, Were we in the same grade in Greens Farms School? I started kindergarten, at the bottom of the hill, in the 1952-53 school year. I remember a Miss Spencer too. I think I had her in the 1953-54 school year. My 4th grade teacher was Ms Asquith. She taught me the expression “ by the skin of your teeth.” She told my parents I passed 4th grade “ by the skin of my teeth.” Then it was on to Burr Farms for 5th grade and “Chicken Head.”
I vaguely remember you-you’re family owned the bowling alley if I remember. We moved to Westport when I was in second grade where I had Ruby Sperry in 2nd grade and Annette Gandley in 3rd. At the newly opened Burr Farms, I had Marie Schubert for 4th grade (who became Mrs. Hanulick after the school year), Annette Fournier for 5th (with a Mrs. Carpenter for math), and June Jack for 6th (with Lewis Pierce for math and science). I attended Long Lots Jr. High through 8th grade after which we moved to New Jersey. I still consider Westport to be my hometown.
John, I had Fourier, Mr. Jack, Mr Pierce, Hanulick, Mr. and Marshall aka jingles. I’m mixing you up with someone else I think. Maybe I’m thinking of someone named Kary or Kerry. Once when Miss Fournier kicked me out of class, Mrs Carpenter brought me in to her class and she put an A on my paper. I felt so good I remember it to this day! I wish I had her as a teacher. I remember Mr. Marshall married an English teacher and eventually they got divorced.
I can tell you the sidewalks in 1978 were pretty good. I and a couple of other friends, as 9th graders at BJHS, would jump out the cafeteria window at our lunch period and run down said sidewalks to Art’s Deli and get sandwiches (Art would ask why we weren’t in school with a wink). We would hustle back and sneak into the cafeteria and enjoy our lunch to the envy of everyone else. The teachers on cafeteria duty couldn’t, or wouldn’t try to, (those were the days!) figure out how we got fresh deli sandwiches.
As to the mill on Sherwood Mill Pond, I grew up in “The House of the Miller”, which was moved down the street from the mill itself (don’t know what year), to 4 Old Mill Road. When I was growing up in the 50’s and 60’s, the Aitkins lived in the converted mill. Spent many summer days swimming around and under their house on the spillway into the Mill Pond.
We had a sign over the front door claiming “The House of the Miller”. Despite many very high tides and a few hurricanes, it never flooded. The house was torn down and replaced in the early nineties when my mother, Marjorie Barrile, the town 5ax collector, passed away.
And today, Riverside Ave. is still dangerous with the traffic at both drop off and pick up time. Only the danger is caused by parking parents. When both sides of the street are full of parking parents and the traffic is moving on the two available street lanes at commuter times, where and how do emergency vehicles pass safely?
Most the guys at BJHS, from ’61-63, walked every day downtown to the YMCA to have some fun. No mishaps The population was growing from the 20K 1960 census (to 27K in 1970) but fewer cars and they didn’t go as fast. “Chrome Dome” was Principal Flint’s nickname. Suspended me half day once for breaking Anne Sheffer’s pen. The Wonder Years of Westport. Long gone.
Mr. Flint must have moved on to Coleytown Junior high when it opened circa 1965 because he was our Principal and Mr. Dan Christensen was Vice Principal. It was a state of the art school and we were the first 6th grade class to move up to the junior high level. Like Dave Eason I was also suspended (smoking in what we called Flint Park) in front of the school and chased down by science teachers Mr. MacFarland and Mr. Van Hagen. Years later Mr. Van Hagen tutored one of my daughters! He did not remember the incident, I have never forgotten! P.S. I do not smoke!