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8                                               Memories of a Long Life

Chapter Three

 

MY FIRST SCHOOL DAYS

 

             I will now write about my first school days.  We were allowed to go at five years old to a free school, and it was mostly taught in summer.  My father had but two boys and (one of them was grown when I can first remember him).  I had one sister older and one younger than myself; we three girls had our hoes to chop in the corn; so during the school term we would be out two or three weeks before we would get the chopping over to go back to school.  How glad when we got over and went back to school, yet I loved farm work and love it yet.  Have never been ashamed that I was taught to work, to cook, wash and milk.

 

            Well, I attended the common school, (note: about 1845) but not for long.  The first teacher I ever went to was Miss Eliza Bynum, the oldest daughter of Mr. Joseph Bynum, the good man who started the first Sunday school in the Moore schoolhouse after Mr. Joseph Bynum gave the land to build a church, Mt. Zion.  She was a good teacher.  I was a little child.  I loved her and tried to mind in every way.  Then came another.  She was an old maid, wore a wig.  I thought that was the queerest thing.  She was said to be a right good teacher, but I did not love her as I did Miss Eliza, yet she never struck me.  An old man had the school for a short time, but he would go to sleep and some of the boys just cut up and played pranks.  He did not teach very long.  Miss Lizzie Moore came and I think every child loved her.

 

            After two full terms I was in history, geography, arithmetic, and first grammar.  Dictionary was one study I did not miss.  Janie M. Clegg and myself had not missed a word in some weeks; she was at head and I was second.  Her mother and sister had come on a visit from Orange County, as they were preparing to leave North Carolina.  A colored girl came after Miss Janie to go home, as her aunt and her husband never expected to come back to our land.  Well, then, that was why I was at the head, but Janie came back.  She had to go foot, that was the rule, but she was a good speller and it was not long before she stood next to me, but I never missed one word.  We were preparing for a big time at the close.  A girl some three or four years older than I begged me to let her go head the last day.  She thought she would get me to exchange places with her.  “Now, Lucy, if you will I will give you a gold finger ring,” but no sir, her gold ring did not get me to give up my place.  I was only about ten or eleven, (note: about 1850) and it was there I acted my first dialogue and my part was a temperance part.  We had odd fellows, freemasons, juniors.