By THOMAS SHANNON
THIS SEPTEMBER MARKS 100 years since students first attended Germantown Central School. The path to creating a centralized public high school in Germantown was a long one. A grammar school operated by the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts, and later the resident Reformed and Lutheran ministers, served Palatine children from 1711 on. It was supplanted by the first public district schools, operating in Clermont by 1791, and Germantown by 1797. Within a few decades, a system of 6 district schools served Germantown, 12 served Livingston, and 5 served Clermont. The districts were spaced out so that no student would have to walk more than two miles to attend.
This remained the status quo until 1916, when District Superintendent Winthop Millias of Valatie, overseer of all the local districts, met with several influential Germantown residents who were in favor of centralization. It was fairly common around the turn of the last century for students desiring a high school education to hop a train to Hudson every day. The move to centralize was led by Germantown district 5, which served the center of town from its location on Church Avenue near Main Street. The leaders of district 5 were determined to bring both district consolidation and the establishment of a high school to a vote in 1916, and unanimously voted to not accept the former without the latter. Both concepts were ahead of their time and went down in a town-wide plebiscite that year.
By the early 1920s, several of Germantown’s well-to-do businessmen were adamant about building up the civic amenities available in town. The impulse was to counteract the loss of 225 residents between 1910 and 1920, a stunning 13.6% decline. That raw number and percentage decrease were both unprecedented, and have yet to be exceeded. Their labors eventually yielded the Germantown National Bank, the Hudson Valley Cold Storage, and Germantown Central School.
In 1921, however, they were still up against serious opposition. A letter to the Columbia Republican newspaper on May 24, 1921, signed “a Taxpayer,” pointed to the failed Riverside Seminary back in 1864 and stated “a high school in a small town of 1,424 inhabitants that is not even incorporated as a village, is about as foolish a proposition as would be a tramway running from one end of Germantown to the other.”
The ghost of Riverside Seminary hung over the early debates. More of a private middle and high school than a seminary, the massive building stood on Main Street where the empty bank building currently sits. It was built and organized by Philip W. Rockefeller, Jr., better known as “Cap’n Phil,” and led by a young Reformed minister named Rev. Harvey R. Schermerhorn. He was popular as both principal and preacher, and his Sunday sermons held at the Seminary regularly outdrew those at the established Reformed Church, then located on cemetery hill. A poisonous whispering campaign drove Schermerhorn out of town by 1868, and with that, Riverside Seminary closed. News of his death at 85 in McAlester, Oklahoma reached Germantown on March 25, 1921.
A primary issue at hand in 1921 was that the old district 5 schoolhouse was in need of substantial renovation. Opponents of centralization portrayed the effort as a ploy by the well-heeled merchants of district 5 to pass the buck to all taxpayers of Germantown. From this early date in the process, districts 1 and 6, the northernmost in Germantown, were left out of the consolidation plan. Opposition there was too strong.
A couple of cranky letters to the Columbia Republican’s editor on the eve of the consolidation vote complained that the vote was being held solely in the Grange Hall (on the corner of Maple Avenue and Main Street) rather than separately in all of the individual district schoolhouses. Both also reserved their most cutting vituperation for what they called “the Corner People.” Though never identified by name, a safe extrapolation is that the Corner People were among those who wound up on the inaugural Board of Education.
The first BOE President Henry Rockefeller Lawrence operated a store along with his brother Lyle, in the building that now houses Pop’s Universe. Henry lived at 106 Main Street, and Lyle lived in a house he built in 1911 where Stewart’s is located now. The Lawrence Brothers also owned the northwest corner of Main Street and the Blossom Trail, now State Route 9G. That corner is now occupied by the empty bank building, which began its life as the Lawrence-Boice Insurance Company. Also conspicuous on that first BOE was Leland Lasher Crawford, husband of Cap’n Phil’s granddaughter, Edith, and also Germantown’s first Town Historian.
The vote to consolidate was held in the Grange Hall on November 22, 1921. The tally for district 2 was 61 yea, 10 nay; district 3, 26 yea, 0 nay; district 4, 26 yea, 8 nay; district 5, 101 yea, 1 nay. The vote totals across the four participating Germantown districts was 214 yea, 19 nay.
With the vote secured, District Superintendent Charles Rivenburgh, ironically a resident of one of the recalcitrant North Germantown districts, went to work drafting a consolidation plan. By the end of May 1922, New York State approved Rivenburgh’s plan. It consisted of eventually folding all of Germantown and most of Clermont and Livingston into the new central school district. At first, only districts 2, 3, 4, and 5 from Germantown along with two Clermont districts joined. Thus the original name of Germantown Central School: Germantown-Clermont Union Free School District No. 2. North Germantown’s district schools, respectively located on Camp Creek Road and the present southern end of Block Factory Road, held out until 1931.
The next big hurdle was to purchase land and approve a building plan. A vote was held on January 29, 1923, again solely at the Grange Hall, to purchase six acres from Jeremiah Lasher Jr. (referred to colloquially as Jerry Lasher on the deed) for $6,000. Lasher lived in the house his paternal grandparents built. The columned house still stands at the northern outlet of Woods Road, and can be seen prominently from many GCS windows.
Also on the ballot that day was a building plan. Press reports mistakenly underestimated the price tag at $60,000 to $75,000, but the actual bond agreement document states that the bond was for $95,000. The land purchase and building plan both passed by a vote of 163 yea to 1 nay. It ultimately cost a little bit over $100,000 to finish the original school building in time to open in September 1924.
Look for future columns about the early years of Germantown Central School in coming months.
Tom Shannon is the Town Historian of Germantown
