Bicentennial Snapshot No. 43: Rediscovering Greece’s Historic Schoolhouses of 1872 Part 2

Today we will conclude our tour of the old district schools in Greece.

Common School District in this snapshot:

Common School District # 7

The original No. 7 schoolhouse was torn down in 1899 and replaced with this one-room wood-frame building located on the north side of Frisbee Hill Road just east of North Greece Road. The belfry-topped schoolhouse closed its doors to students in 1944. Two years later, the property and building reverted to the Frisbee family who had made an initial agreement with the school district for it to be used solely as a schoolhouse.

District 7 Loses old-school by Court rule. Florence Haskins 150 Frisbee Hill Rd. sued Myron B. Kelly, as trustee of the school district for possession of the schoolhouse and the quarter-acre of land her great-grandfather had turned over for school purposes.

Justice Cribb upheld the decision that The $1 lease terminated in 1944 and the school building goes with the land.

The school was abolished in 1944 when they agreed to send pupils to Union Free School District #4 Parma, Hilton School districts.

This information came from the Democrat Chronicle on May 11, 1948.

The schoolhouse was built at a cost of $700 on a quarter-acre plot of land leased by Edward Frisbee, a North Greece pioneer, in September 1833, as long as it was used as a school. Mrs. Cancella was a teacher at the one-room schoolhouse. Lou Frisbee was the bus driver. The school had about 15 students and went from K – 10 or 11 grade.

Dorothy Frisbee used to serve soup, sandwiches, and cookies to the kids if they didn’t bring any lunch says Ruth a former student. The most difficult time was in the winter on the bus because she said the winters were tough and it was difficult for the bus to get through the snow. The roads weren’t plowed like today and the drifts were quite high. She didn’t remember how they heated the school but she said it got quite cold inside on occasions in the winter.

Common School District # 7
Common School District # 7
Common School District # 7
This is how it looks today. Common School District # 7. photo by Gina Dibella

Common School District # 8

Common School District # 8
Common School District # 8
Common School District # 8 on the 1872 map

Other than its location on the south side of Mill Road, also known as Podunk Road, just west of North Greece Road, little is known about this school. No doubt it was similar to the other schools. Each of the common school districts had a one-room school building with a single teacher who taught all grades. There is only one building left in this area and that is the Covert-Brodie-Pollok House at 978 North Greece Road the other house was another cobblestone house at 543 Mill Road but that one had to be demolished due to it being structurally unsafe, you can learn more about these two houses in the Cobblestone house snapshots.

Common School District # 9

District 9 had two different schools on the east side of Long Pond Road bordering Round Pond Creek between Mill Road and Maiden Lane. The earlier schoolhouse was made of fieldstone (hence the name “Stone Schoolhouse”)

Common School District # 9
Common School District # 9
District No. 9 Stone Schoolhouse

One out of the 17 common district schools and the 2 joint districts in the 1800s were built using fieldstone the rest of the school districts were built with wood. The cobblestone school was in school district 9 on the 1872 map of the town of Greece and it was located at 980 Long Pond Rd.

In 1917 it was replaced by a two-room schoolhouse. The Fieldstone school was sold for $ 5.00. Arthur Koerner and Willis construction firm was awarded the contract to build the new two-room wooden school at 1048 Long Pond Road. Also, The Greece United Methodist Church formed inside School Number 9 on July 25, 1841, when Reverend William Williams met with a group of people to start the church, and then another group meeting at the Greece Center schoolhouse at district school number 17 on Latta Road and the church grew to 21 members. Students were educated in that building for 30 years until it closed its doors around 1944.

Common School District No. 9 Fieldstone School in front of the two room school house
Common School District No. 9 Fieldstone School in front of the two-room schoolhouse
District No. 9 Wood Schoolhouse– A tall flagpole stood in front of the schoolhouse.

The current two-room schoolhouse was later sold at a district auction at 2 p.m. on Saturday, June 11, 1949, and was purchased by Harold Tebo. Harold then hired Arthur Korner to draw up plans to convert the schoolhouse into a private home and one of the features of the old school hidden above the now lowered ceiling is a tin ceiling that was used to reflect the heat and keep it in the building.

One Day in 2003 during the summer an elderly lady had shown up at Gene Preston’s stand and said she had attended the two-room school what I don’t remember from that day was whether she was a student or a teacher at the school, she did say that the teachers entered from the rear of the building as seen in this picture here they did have 2 classrooms and at this school, they broke the class in half were grades 1 to 4 were in one class and students grades 5 thru 8 were in the other side this way they could teach more students and possible a couple of the students were that of W.N Britton who had a house on Long Pond Road 8 houses south of Common School District # 9.

Common School District No. 9 Teachers Entrance
Common School District No. 9 Teachers Entrance
In the photo with the students you will notice the well pump to the left of the doors.
In the photo with the students, you will notice the water well pump to the left of the doors.

In the photo with the students, you will notice the water well pump to the left of the doors.

You can read what the society has in terms of minutes from Common School District Number 9 it contains not that many entries but it starts on August 10, 1910, and ends on May 5, 1942. It contains some interesting facts about how much it costs to install electricity, and water in the school and how much tuition costs.

The school had a sidewalk running to the street from the front doors. This was twice as wide as sidewalks today. When the sidewalk was removed after the house was sold the old sidewalk was put along the banks of the creek.

Barb Worboys (Left) Harold Tebo (Right) Photo was in the Mid to Late 1970s

Ever since my mom, Barb Worboys’s Grandfather Harold Tebo bought the house from the District in 1949 did not modify the exterior except for removing the front entrance and adding a large slab concrete pad in front of the front door and a second chimney at the end of the south end classroom.

Left is the large blue barn Preston, Foreground Common School District # 9

The only modifications were done on the interior of the structure only where Arthur Korner and Harold Tebo agreed on changes regarding where the stairs are to be moved to, how to use the coal chimney that was in the center of the house with a second chimney at the end of the south classroom, a garage door, and basement access below and in the rear on the north side above ground was where the teachers had once entered the school from to open the school up for the students to enter for school, and above the lowered ceiling in some parts is still a tin ceiling which helps in a few small areas to help with heating the house.

Doug Worboys

When the new Canandaigua Bank was built at 3204 Latta Rd, Rochester, NY 14612 they were inspired by school # 9 and used the pictures of the exterior to design the building. Inside this Branch for Canandaigua Bank, it is decorated with school-themed photographs that they picked from the Greece Historical Society and others and here a few of the images are on display, three of them are different grade class pictures from Hoover Drive, one of District #3 Ada Ridge School and District No. 11 Frederick Lay School, as well as a custom-designed Chalkboard.

This is the East Elevation Blueprint Drawn by Arthur Korner
South Elevation from the Architects that designed the Latta Road Branch.

If you took and flipped the East Elevation blueprint on the left and overlay it on the south elevation on the right like in this image comparison below you can see it is almost the same design except for the two covered porches in the actual blueprint for the school conversion to a private house vs the bank rendering. the second chimney was not shown on the east elevation drawing but it was on the West or front elevation. So if you look at the pictures of the school above you will see how the bank flip the elevations around to design the bank and used the school as it bases of the building.

Common School District #10 / Abelard Reynolds School No. 42

In 1856, Greece School District No. 10 was divided and the old schoolhouse at Stone Road and Dewey Avenue became District No. 15.  A one-room brick schoolhouse for District No. 10 was built on Lake Avenue opposite Stonewood Avenue.  This building served the district for about 40 years.

Around 1896, a two-room frame schoolhouse was built.  After about 20 years of service, that building was sold at auction, taken down, and reconstructed as a private dwelling on Lake Avenue south of Boxart Street.

In 1916, a modern brick building replaced this frame building.  This new building had four classrooms, a gymnasium, and rooms in the basement for manual training and domestic science. This was similar to Greece School District Number 5 which had 4 classrooms, a gymnasium, an assembly hall combination, a teachers’ room, a store room, and inside lavatories all on a nine-acre plot. But Common School District Number 12 was a two-room Brick Building that only had 2 classrooms and had inside lavatories.

On January 1, 1919, Greece School District No. 10 came under the control of the City of Rochester, when a portion of the district was annexed to the city. In the fall of 1924, the gymnasium was remodeled for use as a kindergarten.  (There had previously been no kindergarten.)  The other basement rooms had also been set up as classrooms.  Within seven years of being built, School 42 was outgrowing this building.   In the summer of 1925, a six-room portable addition was built.  In January 1926, the eighth grade was transferred to Charlotte High School. By September of 1926, the seventh grades were moved elsewhere and School 42 became a regulation elementary school.

Contracts for the construction of the current building were awarded in July 1927.   A portion of the present building was ready for occupancy in the spring of 1928 and the rest was completed by September of that year.   This new building contained 20 classrooms, a kindergarten, an auditorium-gymnasium, a teachers’ lunch room, a kitchen, school nurse’s quarters, and the usual offices.

On October 9, 1952 plans were approved for a three-story addition to School 42 to be built on the back of the U-shaped building.  This addition would include seven new classrooms and a combination lunchroom-community center.

On May 29th, 1959, President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed a bill into federal law that specifically allowed Abelard Reynolds School No. 42 to acquire a set of chapel bells from London, England – duty-free.  The bells arrived shortly afterward aboard the Queen Mary.

There have been additional improvements made to the building through the years.  School 42, standing two miles south of Lake Ontario, now proudly serves a diverse population of approximately five-hundred students from the City of Rochester.

Three schools have occupied this site on the east side of Lake Avenue directly opposite Stonewood Avenue. The first was a one-room brick structure.

Who was Abelard Reynolds:

  • Was born on October 2, 1785, at a place called Quaker Hill, near Red Hook, NY.
  • In 1812, purchased lots (23 and 24) on the north side of what became East Main Street and built the first frame house west of the Genesee River.
  • Moved his family to Rochester in 1813.
  • Was the first saddle-maker, the first magistrate, and the first innkeeper on the “one-hundred-acre tract.”
  • Became the first Postmaster of the incorporated city of Rochester in 1812, appointed by Colonel Nathaniel Rochester.
  • Moved his house in 1828 to build the Reynolds Arcade on Main Street: a multi-storied brick building 56 feet deep with 86 rooms and 14 cellars. 
  • Was one of the founders of Rochester’s first public library.
  • Was a member of the Masonic order and a Prelate of the Knights Templar.
  • Was a member of the first Board of Education.
  • Died on December 19, 1878, in Rochester, NY.
Common School District # 10
Common School District # 10
Common School District No. 10
1916 Common School District No. 10
1927 – Abelard Reynolds School No. 42. From Rochester Public Library History and Genealogy Division
Abelard Reynolds

Common School District # 11

Common School District # 11
Common School District # 11
District No. 11 Frederick Lay School photo from GHS

This school was located on the north side of Ridge Road just west of Mt. Read Boulevard [formerly known as Eddy Road]. In addition to the original one-room building created this two-room brick and shingle structure. All Greece schoolhouses were equipped with an outdoor lavatory, also known as an outhouse or privy. Some schools were fortunate enough to have luxuries such as an organ or a furnace. This school was one of the first to have a furnace, although it still had outdoor privies.

District No. 11 Frederick Lay School
Class photo of District #11, located on Ridge Road (where Home Depot is currently located), 1906. William Britton is far left, back row.

Each of the common school districts had a single teacher who taught all grades. High schools did not develop until the very end of the 19th century.

Common School District # 12 – Greece Ogden School

Common School District # 12
Common School District # 12
Common School District # 12
Common School District # 12
District No. 12 South Greece School or Henpeck School today, photo courtesy of Gina DiBella

The Granite brick in the center at the top of the schoolhouse in south Greece reads:

School District #12
Greece Ogden school.
Erected 1864.

Students living in the South Greece area known as Henpeck attended school in this brick one-room schoolhouse on the east side of Elmgrove Road just south of the Barge Canal. This one-room schoolhouse closed in 1930 when a new schoolhouse was built further south on Elmgrove Rd due to the one-room schoolhouse reaching capacity for students to attend school the new District #12 school was built on Elmgrove Rd at Elmore Dr, The Elmgrove School District joined Spencerport Central District when it was formed in 1949.

The old two-classroom school at 463 Elmgrove Rd. was sold at auction on March 1, 1959, and bought by Harold Tebo. Harold’s intent was to make this a bowling alley. He had bought alleys and other fixtures from a bowling alley in Rochester that had closed. He stored the items at the old school #9. Later he sold stock to people to make the lanes a public company. The idea didn’t work out. The building was later sold again and is a small private apartment in 2007.

In 1959, the red brick building was auctioned off and today is a private residence.

Each schoolhouse was equipped with a pot-bellied stove for warmth during the cold winter months. Every day the teacher assigned one boy to gather enough wood for the day from the woodpile behind the schoolhouse. Another student was responsible for getting fresh water from the well of a neighboring home. The water bucket and ladle were placed in the front of the classroom for all the students to use.

Students from District No. 12 South Greece School, date unknown from the Office of the Town historian

Common School District # 13 – West Greece Hoosick

Common School District # 13
Common School District # 13
Common School District # 13
inside of Common School District # 13
inside of Common School District # 13

This school was located on a hill at the southwest corner of Ridge and Manitou Roads. To the south of this two-room frame schoolhouse, was the Hoosick Cemetery. Manitou Road has since been straightened. The schoolhouse was moved to Dean Road in the town of Parma and used as a private residence.

Common School District # 13
Common School District # 13 is now a private residence photo taken in 2001 by Doug Worboys

Common School District # 14

The plot of ground on which this school building stands today was donated to the district, to be used for the purpose of a school building, by Terry Burns (Great-Great-grandfather of Art Newcomb) on June 8, 1852. This was a quarter-acre plot. Some of the early teachers of this school were, Lotta Janes, Jennie Martin, Mary McShea, Mary Burns, Miss Grinnen, Bridget Beaty, Ellen McCarthy, Miss Johnson, Lillian burke, and Mary Ann Mellon. June 1945 the teacher Florence (kirk) archer Bygrave, rang the school bell to summon pupils to the last lessons ever to be said there. That afternoon the schoolyard flag came down for the last time, thus ending nearly one hundred years of dispensing education to the children of this community. The following year the school joined with No. 5 school at Latta Rd. and Mt. Read Blvd., and after being vacant until the spring of 1947, it was sold at public auction, and was converted into a private dwelling.

School Days at Dist.14 School

From the Memoirs of Art Newcomb

Some of my schoolmates at the one-room school were Fred and Jimmy Beaty, .At that time the schoolroom contained several rows of large double desks. Two pupils sat together in the double seat. I usually sat with my brother Floyd and sometimes with Austin Beaty. At one time Floyd, Austin and myself, all shared the same seat… Some of the games we played were “Fox and Geese” in the snow, “Duck on a Rock”, “Tickly Bender” on the thin ice in the creek, tag, beanball and baseball.. Everett Kirk was the school cut-up, and one time brought eight sticks of dynamite to the school in a market basket. He had found the dynamite at the site of some blasting project in the neighborhood. He hid two of the sticks under the bridge nearby, and brought the rest into the school and concealed them in his desk. Later he terrorized the teacher and most of the pupils by juggling a few of the dynamite sticks from hand to hand , frequently dropping one on the floor in the process. Fortunately , however, none exploded and he was finally induced to remover the dynamite from the premise. The school contained an organ which was pumped by foot. Several times a week, Emma Kirk played the organ and we all sang. One afternoon an incident of great disturbance occurred, the occasion of which, was prompted by the boy pupils in pursuit of a mouse which had taken refuge inside the organ. In the ensuing scuffle the organ was overturned and in the frenzied effort to capture the mouse the organ was completely demolished … On very cold winter days all the pupils would move in closer to the part of the room nearest the stove to keep warm. All eight grades were taught by the one teacher, and each class moved to the front seats, at the front row of desks, when it was time for their lessons to be recited. Hats and coats were hung on hooks and nails on the walls about the room. Each morning, two of the boy pupils were sent down the road to fetch a pail of drinking water from one of the neighbor’s wells. The pail was set on a bench in the schoolroom, and a tin cup was provided from which to drink.

Memoirs of Art Newcomb
Common School District # 14
Common School District # 14
District No. 14 Beatty Road School
Common School District No. 14 Beatty Road School now, photo courtesy of Gina DiBella

Today the former Beatty School is a private residence.

Common School District # 15 – Barnard School

The second school was erected on the north side of Stone Rd on 1/2 acre donated by Mr. Bartholf, inside it had a big wood stove, wood box, water pail, and dipper. This was used until 1916 and sold. The buyer was Edward Parsons who moved it and converted it into a garage at the rear of 622 Stone Rd. In 1916 a third structure, a two-room schoolhouse, was located at the apex between Maiden Lane and Stone, facing Stone Road, this was completed and considered a model rural school building for its time. By 1924, however, it was overflowing and another building became necessary. A school (shed rented) at the rear of Dewey Avenue Union Church on the southeast corner of Dewey Avenue and Haviland Park (now Bethany Presbyterian) temporarily accommodated grades seven and eight. The school had folding chairs, rough lumber tables, and inadequate heating. Grades 1 thru 6 were taught by Mrs. Mildred Bates, Miss Mary Collins, and Mrs. Martha Abigail taught 7th and 8th grade.

On September 5, 1924, the cornerstone for the new school was laid. John A. Garrison, a former pupil of the second school in 1860 laid the cornerstone. The formal opening of the new brick school was held in May 1925. The school had two classrooms, a library, and a science room. The 1925 PTA held a membership drive. The first project was to secure playground equipment. Proceeds provided two slides for the playground.

Barnard School
Barnard School
Common School District # 15
Common School District # 15
Common School District # 15 – Barnard School
PositionName
PresidentMrs. Walter Brewer
Vice-PresidentMrs. Howard Badgerow
SecretaryMrs. Hiram Mume
TreasurerMrs. Fred Bartels
First Staff at Barnard School

Kindergarten and first grade still met in the old wooden school house for many years. It was relocated to the northwest corner of the 1924 structure. The north section of the present building was finished in 1928. On April 30, 1930, the district was reorganized as Union Free School District 15. In August 1938 voters in the Barnard District were split on building on a 10-acre plot at Dewey Ave. and Britton Rd. The PWA would furnish $135,000 and the remaining $165,000 would be raised by a bond issue. Arguments by objectors felt first a need for a new school had not been demonstrated. Objectors wanted guarantees that would show a second high school in the northern section of the district could be filled. The plan was for a 10-room structure capable of handling 170 pupils below 7th grade plus making the possible establishment of a 9th grade at the present school, thereby avoiding the need to send the 9th-grade students into Rochester City Schools. Northern residents sought approval while residents in the southern portion of the district disapproved of the issue since it was not needed and would increase taxes. Gross registration in 1938 was 612 total, and attendance was 527, including 411 in the main building and 116 in the second structure. The efficient operation was 448 for the main structure and 128 for the other. Britton Rd Junior High school became the second school of Union Free District #15. On October 29, 1947, a resolution was passed to build at the corner of Dewey Ave. and Britton Rd. The cost was $475,000. The school held grades K-6, and each grade had two classrooms for a total of fourteen. In 1949, Harold Kimber became Principal. On August 25, 1953, the voters approved an addition. The school remained K – 6 until 1965. A two-story addition was added to the building on the north end. This consisted of two Industrial arts and Home economics rooms, art, gymnasium, and eight classrooms. After the addition, they took in 7th and 8th grades. This school remained K-8 until 1960 when English Village Elementary School opened. Eventually in 1981 Britton Rd. school closed while enrollment was in a decline. The school was torn down after Wegmans Food Market bought the Property and the new Wegmans Store opened in December 1983.

Today it houses a private Jewish School, Derech Hatorah (Derek ha tor a) of Rochester.

Derech Hatorah (derek ha tor a) of Rochester photo by Bill Sauers

Common School District # 16

Common School District # 16
Common School District # 16

District #16 in 1872 was located at Greenleaf Rd. near Ling Rd. as shown on the map of 1872. There is a discrepancy between this district and District #2 in 1822. Then there is a conflict following the 1872 map and the 1887 and 1902 maps show a school located across from the Upton-Paine house where the entrance to Elmridge Plaza calling this district 16 but because when they submit the Trustee’s reports the was nothing on the report indicating the address of the school or its location for record-keeping on that paperwork only the committee members knew which one went to which actual school location or it was kept in another register that was lost and never digitized by the State of New York Education Department or State University of New York kept it on file has yet to digitize these records for research and for the historian and local historical societies to store them for preserve for as long as the schools were in use for but we will never know.

District No. 16, David Todd School

There are some questions about where District 16 was located. On 1852, 1887, and 1902 maps of Greece, there was a school indicated on the north side of Ridge Road across from and east of the Upton-Paine House (now Ridgemont Country Club)’ It was thought to be District School No. 16 by some. However, the 1872 map shows a school on what was first the Blanchard property and later property owned by Patrick Fleming. The 1872 map clearly says that this was District 16. It is because of record keeping that we do not have a clear answer to the location of which location is the correct Common School District 16 location. From what we can tell based on later maps the town was growing in population and that forced the town to rearrange the Common School Districts 3, 8, 9, 12, and 13, which may have led to the restructuring of the common school districts to create this school, and the students that went to the Patrick Fleming farm may have been forced to either to go to school # 5 at paddy hill or District 4 in Charlotte but we will never know.

The bell that called students to class at the one-room schoolhouse known as the David Todd school is now on display at the Greece Historical Society and Museum. Although all ages of children were in the same classroom, students were taught separately according to their grade levels. Those being instructed at a particular time would move to the front desks, while the remainder of the students worked on their lessons at desks at the back of the room.

1910 School Room exhibit at Greece Historical Society and Museum, photo from Bill Sauers

Common School District # 17 – Greece Center Latta/Long Pond

Common School District # 17

In 1824 the minutes of the Greece Common School board meeting list the forming of district 17. On April 25, 1828, District 17 was divided with Parma, Parma retained the old school building and property judged at $12 (USD in 1823 dollars) (340.24 in today’s cost) of that $6 (USD in 1823 dollars) (170.12 in today’s cost) was to be paid to the Town of Greece for its inhabitants. The commissioners then adopted new school lines for District #17. Sometime around 1919 district #17 changed to District #2.

Late 1933 – The school had eight rows with one to five students in each row of first to eighth grade. The school had a pot belly stove that the older boys had the job to keep burning. The water was retrieved from an outside well with a hand pump. Lighting was by electricity this year because power ran north to the highway garage. At some point, said the Late Pat Preston spouse of Gene Preston, the school had just the 1st to 4th grade and then the students would go to School 38 on Latta Rd (2007 is now a condominium complex), and then high school they would attend was Charlotte High School on Lake Ave. Mrs. Heard was a teacher during that time and classes started around 9 a.m. The bathroom was double separated. A large cardboard circle colored green and red hung on the doors. Red meant the room was in use and green meant the room was available. Lunch was at your desk or outside, weather permitting. As far as punishments well those couldn’t be recalled whether any were handed out. The teacher was without question in control. There was a period for recess and the favorite game was hide & seek.

Greece Grog Shop in former Greece Common School District Number 17, Greece Historical Society Archives

When no longer a school, for a number of years, it was a liquor store.

Greece Common School District Number 17, (2009) photo courtesy of Bill Sauers

For nearly 40 years John Geisler ran a real estate business out of the old school building. He sold the building in 2016.

Greece Common School District Number 17, 2022, photo Bill Sauers

Since 2016 the building has been vacent. Unfortunately, it is not listed as a local landmark and its future is uncertain.

Joint District of Parma and Greece

In addition to its other District schools, there were two joint districts shared with Parma.

Greece Parma Joint District # 13

Greece Parma Joint District # 13
Greece Parma Joint District # 13

This school was located on Manitou Rd at the corner of Payne Beach and Manitou Beach Roads. It is shown on the 1872 Map and believed to be used up until 1944. At this point, students then went to the Hilton Schools.

No pictures or other info is available on this school.

Greece Parma Joint School District No. 14

Joint School District No. 14 from the Office of the Town Historian
Greece Parma Joint School District # 14
Greece Parma Joint School District # 14

The #14 District School of Parma and Greece, also known as the Lane’s Corners School, was located at the southwest corner of Wilder and Manitou Roads.

Class photo of District #14 students and teachers, 1903. The #14 District School of Parma and Greece, also known as the Lane's Corners School, was located at the south west corner of Wilder and Manitou Roads.
Class photo of District #14 students and teachers, 1903. The #14 District School of Parma and Greece, also known as the Lane’s Corners School, was located at the southwest corner of Wilder and Manitou Roads.

New Greece Central School District and Consolidations Forming in 1928

Greece Central School District # 1 – Willis N Britton / Hoover Drive / Odyssey / Now Discovery Charter School / Young Women’s College Prep Charter School of Rochester

Greece Common School Districts Nos. 3, 11, and 16 were consolidated to form Greece Central School District No. 1 in 1928 located at 133 Hoover Drive. It was the first centralized school district in Monroe County and the 13th Central School District in New York State. Nearly three decades later, voters approved the annexation of Greece Central School District No. 1 with Consolidated School District No. 5 and Union Free District No. 15, both consolidations of former Greece common school districts, in May 1955. On July 9th, 1928, voters approved the acceptance of the donation of five acres of land in the Koda-Vista tract, from Willis N. Britton. The school district did look at a few other properties before approving the Willis N. Britton site, the property at Ridge Road and Latona Road where Mrs. Clark had property near Falls Cemetry and near the Colby-Shearman House. There is a clause on the land that the Willis N. Britton family that land was to be used as a school and if at any time the land was not going to be used as a school it would revert back to descendants of the Willis N. Britton family who owned the land before. The first formal organization of the first school board in 1929 was John Easton, Norman Weeks, Adelbert Lanctot, Arthur Kerkel, and Arthur Koerner. Norley Pearson was District Clerk. John Tallinger acted as Treasurer and Mr. Lanctot, President. Willis N. Britton officially opened in 1929 at a cost of $200,000 but they decide to tack on the building the third floor at that time so instead of building 2 stories at $200,000 they raised an additional $25,000 for a total of $225,000, and the original gross square foot of Willis N. Britton School was 40,326 square feet and 18 classrooms. In 1948 Willis N. Britton School gained its first expansion to the building and expanded the gross square footage by 29,134 square feet to now a total of 69,460 square feet and 14 additional classrooms making the school able to have 32 classrooms in the school. In 1952 another addition was added to the school expanding the school to another 10 classrooms and 18,273 square feet to the building making it now 24 classrooms and 87,733 square feet. In 1957 is when the gym was added to the building and 3,670 square feet were added to the building bringing it to 91,403 square feet. Then in 1961/1962 the wing that housed the home ec and the technology shop was added that adding an additional 26,845 to the school for a total of 118,248 square feet to the school and in 2004 an additional expansion occurred to create a music wing that added additional square feet to the building, according to the Monroe county real property portal it reports that the square footage for the property at 105,271 square feet when Greece Central School District finally closed it’s doors for good at the end of 2011 – 2012 school year at 133 Hoover drive and moved Odyssey Academy to Maiden Lanes at the Old Cardinal Mooney / Greece Apollo Middle School Campus at the start of the 2012-2013 school year due to the drop in student enrollment, one of the other reasons for moving Odyssey to the Maiden Lanes location was the lack of space for the outdoor sports programs and the gym was getting old where it was deemed a little bit small by Section V standards if the school district had expanded towards Corona Rd it might have been able to stay as a District school but we will never know what the school could have been if it was able to stay and grow. One of my classmates Erin Gallenger painted a mural of a Snow Leopard at the North Entrance to the main Parking lot and redesigned the school’s logo as her Graduation Gift to the school before the Class of 2002 exited the campus as graduates and the following year is when the International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme started.

Willis N Britton / Greece Central #1
Willis N Britton / Greece Central #1

Willis N. Britton was one of the Town’s Largest Peach Growers in the Town and was appointed to the role of town supervisor in 1903.

You can learn more about Hoover Drive’s Odyssey

Odyssey’s Motto
1950s School Room exhibit at Greece Historical Society and Museum, photo from Bill Sauers

What is unique about the pull-down map at the Greece Historical Society and Museum?

On our Facebook post for this snapshot take a guess what is unique about it there is something missing on it compared to modern pull-down maps of the United States look at pull-down maps or just maps of the United States. There is a clue in the description of the picture.

The District’s name was officially changed to Greece Central School District in April 1973.

Current Greece Central Logo

Thank you for joining us today. Next week we start our look at Prohibition.

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John “Jack” D. Foy

John "Jack" Foy

John “Jack” D. Foy

Branch: United States Army

  • World War, 1939-1945
    • Branch of Service: Army
    • Unit of Service: Company A, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th Infantry Division, 3rd Army
    • Location of Service:
    • Highest Rank: Staff Sergeant
    • Dates of Service: 1943-1946
    • Entrance into Service: Enlisted
    • Military Status: Veteran
    • Service History Note: The veteran served as a front-line gunner in Patton’s Third Army and was one of a small number of survivors from his original company.

John Foy grew up in Charlotte, the fifth of six sons born to Mr. and Mrs. Charles E. Foy and one of ten children. He attended Holy Cross School and graduated from Charlotte High School in June 1943. He was preceded into the service by three of his brothers. He enlisted in the army’s ASTP program at the age of seventeen in August 1943 and he chose to go to Cornell University, “because it was closest to home. I’d never been away from home before. We were supposed to go there for two years and after two years get a degree in engineering and then get a commission in the Army Engineers.”

Charlotte High photo by John Cranch
Charlotte High photo by John Cranch

“But the Army in its wisdom decided after six months to close the whole program down. They decided they needed infantrymen instead of engineers. That’s something that always bothered me. All these guys—there were some 300,000 of them all across the country–and these college guys with extremely high IQs and almost all of them got sent as infantrymen right into the front lines. I had hundreds of them drop alongside of me. I often wonder what our country would be like today if we didn’t lose all those scientists, engineers, doctors, even politicians. Who knows what our country could have been. But they all got killed. I went over with about 200 hundred men in my infantry company; I was a machine gunner in an infantry line company. Of the two hundred that left only about a dozen of us came back. The rest of them are buried over in France and Germany.”

Queen Elizabeth

After his basic training at Fort Benning, Georgia, Jack was assigned to Company A, 347th Infantry Regiment, 87th infantry division. He went over to England on the Queen Elizabeth, “the biggest boat in service. I slept in the swimming pool, the first class swimming pool, of course; we were stacked eight high.”

“Near the end of November 1944, the army was up in the area of Metz, Nancy, France. That’s where we joined up with Patton’s Third Army. It was a very rude awakening; there were some naughty men shooting at us. It was an area the Germans had just been pushed from a few days before we got there and they knew where troops were likely to congregate and they were dropping artillery on us. We lost a lot of men even before they had a chance to fire their weapons.”

John "Jack" Foy, infantryman
John “Jack” Foy, infantryman
Battle of the Bulge Monument at Ontario Beach Park

“It rained every day we were there. The mud got deeper and deeper. We were there until a couple of days before Christmas 1944. We got alerted that we were going to move. That was the start of the Battle of the Bulge, which was in Belgium about a hundred miles north of us. We didn’t know anything about it really. All the infantry knows about the war is what goes on a hundred feet from his foxhole. Everything else was just a big blur he didn’t know anything about.”

“In the Bulge, it was 10 degrees below zero and sometimes even colder than that. It was down below zero for two weeks. We were out in the cold and we had normal fall clothing on—we didn’t have winter clothes. You had to keep moving all the time or you’d freeze. We lost a tremendous amount of men from frozen feet and frozen hands. It was awful. It was the worst weather they’d had in Belgium in over a hundred years.”

White Christmas
Writen by Irving Berlin

Preformed by Bing Crosby

Produced by Decca Labels

Year 1942
White Christmas
Written by Irving Berlin
Performed by Bing Crosby
Produced by Decca Labels
Year: 1942

“They pulled us out; our company was the last one to leave and I was the last one of my company out. The engineers had primed a bridge with explosives and I got there and just pulled the lever down and Boom! The bridge goes up. Right next to the plunger I saw a regular army radio lying there. Usually those were locked on to a certain frequency for talk between guys in the same company. I picked it up and this one was tuned to the BBC in London. This was Christmas Eve, maybe six o’clock at night. It was completely dark there. Bing Crosby was singing White Christmas from London. Somebody had changed the frequency. It was a beautiful song right in the middle of such horror and misery.”

“I had a Jeep at that time, as a machine gunner, to carry my gun and ammunition. We headed north going through Reims. By that time it was about one o’clock in the morning. At the huge cathedral in Reims, midnight mass was just letting out and the people were streaming out of church and we were roaring down the street in front of them with the engines wide open on the way to the Bulge. It just seemed so strange that here they were celebrating the birth of the Prince of Peace and we were on our way to kill. And that’s what we did.”

“We were on the west side of Bastogne. The Germans were trying to close the road off. It was our job to stop them. We ran right into the German Panzer Light air division which was one of their top divisions. We were still greenhorns more or less, but we stopped them. We pushed them back. We were there fighting them in pretty much the same location for about two weeks. We’d push them back and they’d push us back. Go back and forth. We were there from Christmas day until the middle of January. ”

“They pulled us out and sent us to Luxemburg. It was another country, but it was only about a hundred miles away. It was supposed to be a quiet section where we could kind of rest, recuperate, and build up again but it didn’t turn out that way. The Sauer River was between us and the Germans. Every night we’d go across the river in rubber boats and stir up trouble.”

The regiment was sent back into Belgium to Saint Vith to try to break through the Siegfried Line. The Germans had built a series of thirty-square feet forts. “They covered each other so you couldn’t sneak up on one without the guy next door seeing you. The idea was we’d have to put everything in to breaking into one of them and work our way down the line. It worked fairly well. I had a blow torch I picked up some place. It worked with gasoline. I used to carry it with me on a rope on my belt to heat coffee or a can of beans. I thought, ‘this ought to work on these pillboxes.’ We snuck up real close to one of them. I pumped the blow torch up with as much pressure as I could and we squirted a stream of gasoline through an air vent. It’d only hold a pint a gas and when I figured the pint was just about gone, I told the guy I was with, ‘Okay, light it.’ He sticks the match underneath the stream and it travels right up into the pillbox. I thought there would be a big explosion, but there wasn’t. There was a dull thud. But then heavy black smoke came pouring out and the Germans came pouring out, too. We took quite a few pillboxes using that.”

The U.S. Army finally broke through the Siegfried Line and in early March they were in the Rhineland. “It was picture postcard country with a castle on top of the hill and a moat. Sometimes we’d attack a castle of all things. It was like we were the knights of old charging across the drawbridge to an old castle. We captured four or five castles like that.”

“We came to a little town, Rhens-on-the-Rhine; it was built by the Romans more than 2,000 years ago. That was where we crossed the Rhine River and it was pure horror. The darn Germans had 20mm anti-aircraft guns right on the bank of the river. They knew we were coming sooner or later. I was supposed to be in the second assault wave. The first company went across with just paddles in these small boats and the idea was to get to the other side without being discovered. Some German shot up a flare when they were about halfway across and they opened fire and had quite a battle going.”

Maus Castle

“They had an engineering company that was with us. We had more boats than we had engineers to run them. A call went out: ‘Anybody know how to run these damn boats?’ Well, I had fooled with boats down here on the [Genesee] River since I was five years old. So I was pretty good handling boats. They had these big engines, 32HP Johnson engines, on the back of these small barges. So I just ran down and jumped in one of boats there, pulled the cord, started the engine up; ‘Okay, jump in!’ It would hold only about twelve to sixteen guys. They jumped in and across the river we’d go. I ended up running the darn boat for half the night. I got sunk once or twice, I’m not sure; well at least once I got sunk. The shell hit the boat and blew the bow off it and it went down. But I was able to climb back in. I was more valuable running the boats than I was fighting on the shores, so I went back, got on another boat that wasn’t being used.”

“Things started opening up a little bit. The weather was getting better so our Air Force could get in and strafe the German army. We were moving kind of fast and we’d come up to all these little villages. The German army had almost disappeared. In front of these towns they’d leave a bunch of old men, who were usually soldiers from the First World War, and young kids, which were fourteen or fifteen years old. The Hitler youth. As soon as we came around the corner, the old guys would give up right away. But the young kids, all they knew was this Hitler garbage, stuff they had been fed since they were babies. And they wanted to fight. And they did fight. Quite frankly, they were good fighters because they were in well entrenched positions and their firing was just as deadly as an experienced soldier. At first you felt funny; you felt like you were shooting your kid brother, but after a couple of our guys got shot by them, we stopped showing mercy and we took them out, which we had to do.”

“In April, we discovered our first concentration camp, one called Ohrdruf. I find it hard to describe. You could smell it coming down the road. ‘What the hell is that?’ We got up to a fence and there were all these people wearing—striped pajamas, I guess, is the best way to describe it—and they were just skin and bones. It really awakened us to the Germans. Right away we called back to our regimental headquarters and the Colonel, the regimental commander, came up and he saw it and he called back and before the day is done, General Patton himself was there and he saw it. The next day Eisenhower was there and I think Churchill from England came to see. He couldn’t believe it. I saw General Patton walk behind a shed and just puke his guts out, it just made him so sick. There’s a tough old geezer, but he did. We started moving again and twenty miles down the road we ran into Buchenwald Concentration Camp.”

John’s unit moved into Czechoslovakia at the beginning of May 1945. “We were collecting thousands and thousands of Germans every day. They came in to surrender; of course they wanted to surrender to us rather than the Russians. They knew what the Russians would do to them because they had done the same thing to the Russians when they took over their country. We went out on a patrol—there were 20 of us, I think, in the patrol. We went into a little town that was filled with Germans and we just drove a Jeep and a couple of trucks right on down to this big building that was the headquarters, evidently. We went in and there was a German general, a lieutenant general, the equivalent rank of General Patton. He surrendered to us. Here there are 20 of us and he surrendered about 50,000 people to us.”

John’s company was still in Czechoslovakia when the war ended on May 8. After a few weeks the company was assigned to go to Japan. They returned to the United States on the Navy ship, the West Point. His battalion had received a Presidential Unit Citation for their crossing of the Rhine River: “Our general was pretty proud of us. So he kicked all the officers out of the state rooms on the top deck of the ship and gave us the state rooms which were pretty nice coming back. We came back to New York and we were one of the first fighting divisions to come back. They had a big celebration in New York. They had big fireboats in the harbor when we came in. We all got 30 days leave to go home and recuperate for a little while and we’d have to report back at the end of thirty days to get ready to go to Japan. We weren’t too happy about that.”

“While we were home, that’s when they dropped the atom bombs. If they didn’t drop those bombs we would have easily lost a million men in the landings in Japan. I hate to think what would have happened. I know I wouldn’t be here. Because after the war they came out with the plans that they had already drawn up for the invasion, and our division was due to land halfway between Tokyo and Yokohama, right in Tokyo Bay. They expected 50% casualties in the landing party. That was just the landing party. I never would have made it.”

“My company went over to Germany with about 200 hundred men. When we came back there were 12 or 15 of the original company still left. They weren’t all killed—about 80 of the 200 were killed and the rest were badly wounded. I got hit three times, but not seriously; it was just grazing to my arm, my side and my leg. I got back to the aid station and the doctor sprinkled some sulfa powder on it, bandaged it up, and said ‘get your butt back up there.’”

“All the guys I had been close with had gotten killed and strangely enough you didn’t want to get to know the replacements. Say Joe Dokes next to you got killed and they sent up another guy, Pete Brown, to take his place. You didn’t really want to get to know Pete Brown because you knew chances are within three or four days he was going to be dead. When you’re in the line for a while, you knew how to stay alive, how to keep going, how to take advantage of the least bit of cover, and what to do when you heard the sounds of the shells coming. You knew what to do. These young kids didn’t know and they’d get killed. There was a sort of core of us of maybe 20 men in the company that had been there from the start; at the end there was only maybe a dozen left. But we kind of hung together and we were the ones that stayed alive.”

“People would ask me, ‘how did it feel when a guy you had served with for a year or so when he got killed right alongside of you?’ Your first feeling would be that you’re sorry Joe got killed; very selfishly you second feeling was ‘boy, am I glad it wasn’t me.’ You became very callused to death. I actually piled dead German soldiers up around my foxhole. I didn’t have any sandbags or anything and the ground was like a rock to try to dig, it was frozen solid. So we piled dead German soldiers up around us for protection. Sounds like a horrible thing to do, but we did. I look back now and wonder ‘How the hell could I have ever done such a thing? You did a lot of things you never thought you could. Conditions were so different then. You did what you had to do. I hate to think of it. I killed men. It’s hard to think of sometimes, but that’s the way it was. If we didn’t kill them, they would kill us.”

After a stint in the Navy during the Korean War, John returned to Charlotte where he had his own plumbing contract business. He and his wife raised four children. Today is lives right on the Greece-Charlotte border.

Other photos that are connected with John aka “Jack” Foy