 Williamsport School Williamsport School was located on the entire block that faced Route 22. It was a stately building. It was built in 1905 which was the year my Dad was born. It was built mostly of brick and stone blocks. It had a double door main front entrance and a couple of side entrances. The side entrances led to the basement and second floor. The basement contained the boiler room, the cafeteria, some classrooms, recreation rooms and the restrooms. The main office was by the front entrance on the first floor as were the first, second and third grade classrooms, hall and auditorium. The front part of the upstairs contained grades four through the eight. A hall led to the back of the school where the Freshman through Senior classrooms were located. The school was surrounded by green grass with the playground, baseball diamonds, a sidewalk and entrance on the front of it. At recess, many of us “walked around the block” or played on the playground swings, etc. At that time, our only gym was the Pavilion which was a block away and adjacent to the Parish House. When the new gym was built on the side of the school circa 1953, it afforded us with many more athletic and social opportunities. Some of our teachers (Mrs. Bernice Hulse specifically) insisted that we play softball during our recesses and/or lunch time. My arms were always spindly, so softball was not my forte. When I was younger, in order to improve, I often played softball at recess with friends. My game improved a little but I ended up being a south paw in order for that to happen. The school was good for a lot of things besides readin’, ritin’ and ‘rithmetic. : ) ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck
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 Daddy and Waltz of the Flowers My Dad always said there must be a lot of music in me because none ever came out. When I was in about the fifth grade, we purchased flutophones for music class. I didn’t realize it at the time but they were supposed to help us learn to read music. If we could, we would be in the band. I didn’t have a clue and did not learn to read music until I was in Music Fundamentals class in college. Consequently, I was not in the Williamsport Band. I could, however, carry a tune and sing along with everybody else. When I was in high school, I sang in the girls’ sextet. I always stood next to Alice Rigsby. I told her to sing alto in my ear and it would come out of my mouth. It worked pretty well. We sang at banquets and school events. One of the songs was from “My Fair Lady”, Get Me to the Church on Time. We also went to Ohio Wesleyan University and sang, Sourwood Mountain, and several other songs. My favorite perfume at that time was Tweed. I wore it to the latter event. I just kept spraying it on. Every time boys walked past me, they looked. While I thought maybe they thought I was attractive, I think my overuse of that perfume was the reason. : ) One of my most memorable events was at the Circleville Fair Grounds Coliseum. We had an all county-wide concert. I wore a new black, taffeta skirt and a white, embroidered nylon blouse. My Dad took my mother, Betty and me. He always took me wherever I needed to go and never complained. Picture this: my big farmer Dad sitting on a coliseum bleacher listening as we sang Waltz of the Flowers. Could it be that he was even proud? It makes me laugh to think about it but I cry instead. Happy Father’s Day to All! ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck Clarence Tecumseh Harmount Betty and I walked about three blocks to school every day. It took us around ten minutes. My parents always saw to it that we had warm coats though our clothes underneath were thin cotton dresses and cold. We had to walk past Clarence Harmount’s house on the corner where Pettit’s now stands. My mother always warned us not to stop and talk to him. Actors and actresses were not well thought of in those days. Clarence had a barn on the alley which contained dogs that may have descended from those used in The Uncle Tom’s Cabin performances. When we walked past the barn, they barked. I think they were big, brown dogs. Glimpses of them could be seen through the cracks in the barn. Clarence was always outside in the mornings carrying food and water to his dogs. He was an old man at that time. He was tall and thin and looked like Gabby Hayes. He had gray hair and a beard and wore an old suit jacket or a long barn coat and gray hat. And of course, he always said, “Hello girls”. We put our heads down and grudgingly said, “Hi” and sped on past to the only traffic light in Williamsport. From research that I personally did on Ancestry.com, I found that he was born on August 17, 1874. All of the information provided looked impressive to me. Clarence died on March 11, 1960. My brother Bob bought much of the memorabilia from the Uncle Tom’s Cabin performances, probably at an estate sale from the former attraction. I suppose they were stored in Clarence’s barn. I have learned that Ohio State has a collection of things from Clarence’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin show. In 1961, a relative of Clarence’s talked of reviving the show but that never happened. My brother had plans to construct a small museum of local historical artifacts on Jim Town Hill outside of Williamsport but he became ill and passed away before his vision could be realized. The town of Greenfield, Ohio has Annie Oakley for its attraction and is vibrant. I have always thought that Williamsport needed something or someone to attract people like other small towns. Clarence Harmount and his family may have been Williamsport’s biggest claim to fame. Note: In 1903 Harmount’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Troupe gave its first performance in Williamsport. The play was based on Harriet Beecher Stowe’s Christian anti-slavery book. They traveled all over the area and beyond. Albert Luther Harmount was the father of the Harmount family and all of his children were involved in the production. When he died, his oldest son, Clarence Tecumseh Harmount, took charge. The company disbanded in 1929. Clarence Harmount returned to Williamsport and lived there the rest of his life. Additional information regarding Harmount’s Uncle Tom’s Cabin Troupe may be found in Peek at the past, Williamsport, Ohio (pp.159-173) by Bob Francis. It is located at the Pickaway County Historical Society in Circleville, Ohio. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck The Transition When I started writing these blogs, I wasn’t thinking so much of writing about my family. I soon realized that I couldn’t write about events without giving the people involved in them a name. I have tried to write the blogs chronologically and have found that sometimes difficult too. I have tried to keep things in the correct time frame. However sometimes, things happen at the same time. Sometimes the blog starts in one year and ends up a few years later. My last few blogs ended up in the early 50s. Consequently, I want to back up a little into the late 40s for some stories about school, Williamsport and its people. Our Upstairs and Front Porch When we moved into the house on Water Street, the upstairs was essentially an attic. It was one long room with windows on each end. The inside of it was like the one on “Little House on the Prairie”. It was not finished and there was no wall board. Since there were five of us needing places to sleep, my brother Bob took on the job. He put on wall board and divided the space into two rooms. He let Betty and me help. Consequently, there were little blobs of plaster on the wall board where it was joined. They were painted over and still there when the house was torn down. I guess you could call them little blobs of love. : ) Kat and Jean slept in one of those rooms and Bob in the other. Betty and I slept downstairs. After our older siblings were gone from home, Betty and I got the upstairs for our bedrooms. While they were our bedrooms, we slept in rooms that had onions and green beans (leather britches) drying there in the winter. You could say we slept with onions and green beans. I think that “Little House on the Prairie” shows were not always realistic. Our house had a metal/tin roof. While it was nice to hear the rain on the roof, whoever slept up there froze in the winter and baked in it like an oven in the summer. Because of that, our family spent long hours on summer nights on our front porch. We loved the front porch! We could sit in the swing and see the big dipper in the sky in front of us. We sat through rain and storms on the porch. When we got older, our friends joined us there. Boyfriends sat on the swing with us. And when the swing fell, so did our boyfriends. I’m sure some of them remember that. Some are still alive and they know who they are. : ) Betty and I practically lived on the front porch. We invented our own entertainment. Plin Morris lived across the street from us. He worked on a farm but always wore a white shirt and a fedora. We watched for him to come home from work. He was bald and we waited for him to take off his hat because his head was stark white. We were little kids and had to be entertained somehow. Another activity that Betty and I did on the front porch was looking for license plates on cars that were out-of-state. I had a little spiral ringed note pad and every time we saw one, we marked it down. I believe that I had wander lust even then. I never left the state until my Senior year in high school when our class went to Washington D.C. and New York City the year I graduated. ©Marilyn Francis Ferguson 2020 Photography/graphics by Michele Ferguson Schuck |
Marilyn Francis FergusonGrowing up in Williamsport, Ohio is a blog by Marilyn Francis Ferguson which describes small town life in the 1940s and 1950s. Blog Categories
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