Education in the northern part of the township can be traced back to the 1840s when a simple log, one-room school house was erected on property owned by the Manary family who came from Ireland in the 1830s. William Manary an his wife, Elizabeth Whitehead, donated part of their farm property for both the first school and first church in the Freelton area. The interior of the log school was plastered and rough pine boards placed on blocks of wood served as seating. The building was destroyed by fire in the early 1860s and for several years there was no schooling provided in Freelton village. Another simple one-room school built of frame existed approximately two miles north of the community, on property owned by Abraham Purnell and his wife, pioneer settlers from Gloucestershire, England. It seems likely that this building served as the village school for at least four years, until a deputation of Freelton residents successfully convinced the authorities that a new school was needed in the area.
In 1864 Francis Whitehead sold a quarter of an acre of his Lot 4, Concession 10 property to the School Trustees of School Section #10. Within the year, a one-storey, one-room stone school house had been erected by carpenter Peter Davidson and a local stone mason, Charles A. Stewart and his assistant, Robert Phillips. Located in a small clearing just off the Brock Road and close to the townline, the new school was called the ‘Beechgrove School’ after the large grove of beech trees that encircled it. The isolated location of the school deeply concerned the teacher, Roger Maynard, who reputedly organized the older boys to cut down saplings and roll large boulders to one side to form a fence in an effort to keep out predatory animals. Almost half a century after the closure of the school in 1953, remnants of the first fence that separated the school yard from the dense shrubbery at the rear still remain.
Many dedicated teachers taught at Beechgrove and of these, Roger Maynard, who taught from 1864 to 1875 and again from 1880 until 1882 is perhaps the best known. Born in Darlington Township in 1838, he spent his early years on farms along the north shore of Lake Ontario, where his parents, Dixon and Ann Maynard from Northallerton, Yorkshire, England, were plagued with a series of misfortunes that included a fire in which they lost all their possessions. About 1854, the family moved northwards to the vast, forested area of the Huron Tract, known as the Queen’s Bush, and settled in an area that was to become Listowel. Three years later, the first school in the area was built. Roger and another young man competed for the position of teacher. He walked the forty-five miles to Stratford to be examined for a Third Class certificate and was awarded the position.
In 1862, with a Second Class teaching certificate, he was offered the position of school teacher at Mountsberg, at a salary of $300 per annum and an understanding that he would again upgrade his qualifications. Two years later, he applied for the Beechgrove School position and was selected from the nine applicants to be the first teacher. During his first year, his wife Elizabeth died and he was left to care for three small girls, the youngest one only a month old. Relatives from Listowel took the baby and Roger never saw her again, as she died four months later. In later years another daughter, Orpha, became a qualified teacher and joined her father, first at Millgrove School and later at Beechgrove when Mr. Maynard returned for a second time.
From this small, rural West Flamborough school there have been a number of notable teachers and pupils who have left their mark upon the Canadian scene. Among them, Albert ‘Bert’ Gardiner who distinguished himself at Queen’s University, Kingston, where he graduated with degrees of B. A., M. A. and Ph.D, the latter being awarded with the highest marks in the field of sciences ever given to a student attending the university. Others from the school include John I. McFarland, one of Canada’s Wheat Kings, Garnet Woolsey M. D. who worked in New York City, brothers Bruce and Eric Sutherland who served as doctors in World War II, John Bruce Hunter who became the minister at Westminster Central United Church in Toronto and Ethel Chapman, and author and editor of the Farmer’s Magazine who is remembered in the Hall of Honour at the Agricultural Museum, Milton for her contributions in recording the rural way of life in Canada.
© The Waterdown-East Flamborough Heritage Society 2005, 2024.
