In 1874 there was a union of two districts in Boothbay Harbor and the following year a high school was built. There were three rooms and the grades were: primary, intermediate, and grammar. The building was first used for the winter terms after being dedicated with appropriate ceremonies. The grammar school was taught by L. F. Coburn, Brunswick, the intermediate by Miss P. H. Burr, Mercer, and the Primary by Miss Georgia E. Hodgdon, Boothbay, now Mrs. W. R. Holton.
The grade school building at Boothbay Center was built in 1877, the grades being grammar and primary. As in the other cases the first schools were taught in the winter following erection. The grammar school was taught by Miss Annie Adams, Boothbay, now Mrs. Woodbridge Reed, and the primary by Miss M. Ella Baker, Boothbay, now Mrs. Charles E. Sherman.
Two terms of school,
with an average length of ten weeks, were
taught. Average wages per week
in summer were $4.70; average wages
per month in winter were $36.70; and
the total school fund in 1880 was $4959.73. The first public graduation
exercises held in either town were in 1893
by the graduating class from
the Boothbay Harbor High School. They were arranged by F. B. Greene
during his first year as superintendent
and Edgar L. Simpson, the
principal at the time. In 1893, the grades in the village schools was
systematically established, alloting for each room the work for
two years in each grade before the high school, and this
included a
regular college preparatory course. The course of study
was printed,
framed and hung in each room throughout the school.
Since that date (1893)
public graduations have regularly occurred and the course, from primary
up, has been maintained with few
variations from the form then
established.
In later years, The Grand March
became a Boothbay Region
tradition, the first one being held in 1911 at
the Pythian Opera House.
Source: Green, Francis Byron.
History of Boothbay, and Boothbay Harbor, Maine.
Portland, ME:
Loring,
Short and Harmon, 1906.
Foreign Travels
Grand March