PROSPECT — The Prospect Historical Society announced recently that the Marsh School has been placed on the National Register of Historic Places by the U.S. Department of the Interior.
Once, there were as many as a dozen primary schools scattered throughout Prospect, a small, rural community.
During the last century as transportation improved and family sizes shrank, schools were consolidated, abandoned and replaced with more centrally located, modern facilities. In Prospect, only the Marsh School remains to remind the town of a bygone era.
For more than 125 years Prospect children dipped their pens into inkwells to practice penmanship, studied maps, learned to spell and do sums, and made their way to the privy when the need arose. After the school closed in 1963 it was used at various times as a community center, town office, library and a food pantry. Eventually, as with so many old buildings, its usefulness expired.
The Historical Society through fundraising efforts, the support of individual donors, partnership with the town of Prospect, and the sweat of many volunteers, has worked to preserve and restore the Marsh School to the schoolroom it once was, with original slate blackboards, antique student desks, a portrait of George Washington to inspire scholars and an American flag standing in the corner.
The school is also a nascent museum displaying artifacts and documents significant to Prospect and its former inhabitants.
The Prospect Historical Society is a 501(c)3 tax exempt organization and welcomes donations of items that would be of interest.
The Marsh School will be open to the public 10 a.m.-1 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 29, and Friday, Sept. 25 (Prospect History Day), at 930 Bangor Road, Prospect.