Three generations of the Rose family attended The Hornbine School. My Grandfather, Anthony Rose, attended The Hornbine School in the 1870’s. His wife, Florinda, and he had eight  children who attended Hornbine School around the turn of the century. One of their children, Manuel, married Martha Daily, who had attended The Long Hill School. They had seven children who attended Hornbine School between 1926 and 1937 before the school was closed.

     Three generations of Roses, including me - Evelyn Rose Bois, walked to school from Purchase Street. My father and his father before him, walked two miles each way. We did not have a school bus in the Hornbine area of town during the twenties and thirties so my siblings and I walked one mile to school.
     We were expected to attend school no matter what!  We never had what is now called “snow days”.  Our teacher, Mrs. Hopkins, drove 10 miles and was always there to teach when we arrived. We walked to school in the snow or rain and dried our shoes or boots (and often socks) near the wood burning stove if it was necessary.
      If we came to school late, particularly in good weather, we had to stay after 3:30 PM to make up for the  lost time. Then, our folks would punish us when we arrived home. We were needed at home to perform many chores like picking strawberries.

We were expected to go to school dressed as best we could every day. The boys always had to wear a shirt and bow tie. They dressed in knickers and eventually they wore long pants. The girls always wore a dress or skirt and blouse.

      Mrs. Mary Magan was our school janitor. She would start the wood burning stove every morning about 6 AM to have the school warm when we arrived.  She also brought one pail of drinking water for the day. We had the water in a stone crock. (In my father’s day it was a pail.) We had a dipper for all of us to drink from. We didn’t have paper cups for each individual.

      We arrived at 8:30 AM to get things ready for 9:00 o'clock. The boys had to bring in the wood and be sure to keep the stove going for the day. Often, in cold weather, the girls would start to prepare vegetables for the school hot lunch.

      At 9:00 AM, Mrs. Hopkins, who taught all seven grades, would ring the school bell which she kept on her desk. We would line up  out side with the first graders in front, followed by the second graders etc. with the eighth grade students in back. We would then march in and go to our seats.

 Next, we would salute the flag. Then, we’d say a prayer and sing a patriotic song like God Bless America. After that, it was off to work.

     Class size varied. We had eight grades in the one room with anywhere between 0 to 5  students in each grade. Our school was filled with Perrys, Almeidas, Bettencourts and Roses along with a few additional families.  We studied all the school subjects with Mrs. Hopkins. We didn’t switch classes like the children do today.

    The teacher would prepare and begin the lessons for the younger students. The older children helped the teacher with the younger students. Students who were fast learners could pick up the next class work much faster. We learned Arithmetic, History, Geography  Reading and Spelling among other subjects.

We had a spelling bee once a week. We would have two teams, one on each side of the room. We would see who could stay up the longest without misspelling a word. For a prize, we would get a small book.  I received a book that I still have after all these years.

     We even had cooking. The families would bring in farm vegetables and Mrs. Hopkins would show the girls how to cook them. We made cream carrot soup or potato or vegetable soups for a hot lunch in the winter. We all had our own dishes but drank from the same container.  During warmer weather, we would have bread and jelly sandwiches our mothers made. We brought our lunches to school in a paper bag or lunch pail.

     We had to go out side to the bathroom. We were expected to use the privy before school or during our lunch hour. We were not allowed to go any time we wanted to during the school day. We had no electric lights. We only had the window light to use during the school day. Our only heat was the wood burning stove.

     We didn’t have a lot of books in those days so we had to share them.  There were only 3 or 4 books for each grade. Mrs. Hopkins would give each of us a chance to take books home to study.

 During recess, the boys might play ball, tag or marbles on one side of the school yard. The girls might play Ring around the rosie,  hide and go seek, roll the hoop, jump the rock, jump rope or hopscotch on the other side. If it rained, we played bean bag in school.

     If we did not behave, we were punished.  Mrs. Hopkins made students sit under the teacher’s desk. Other times, students were made to sit in the waste basket. A ruler was also used as a quick way to punish an offender.

    We used pens with ink wells. The boys, at times, put the girls’ hair in the ink wells. When this happened, the offender had to sit on the wood pile in the back of the room for a half hour.

    Mr. Whitman, the superintendent, came to the school once a month.  He would be the one to punish us if the teacher thought that was what we needed. He would speak to the student who misbehaved and then he would speak to the parents.

    Mrs. Cole, the school nurse, came by to check the students' health once a month.  She and Dr. Swift, who also visited once a month, gave us all of our shots. They checked our eyes, throats, teeth and gave us the T. B. test once a year. If things weren't right, Mrs. Cole would go to see our parents or take us home if it was necessary.

      We didn't have vacations every eight weeks as the children do today. We only had a few holidays off from school.
     Each year, our parents would come to school and watch us put on a Christmas play. We would dress up in our “Sunday Best” for the day. We all had to remember a poem and our part in a play.
     I remember that we all got a candy cane. We might receive a pencil with our name on it from the teacher. This would help us have a pencil at all times.
    Many children, like my father, left school when they were fourteen. We were farmers and the family needed the children to work. Some students in our area continued on to local high schools.

    My father and grandfather attended the Hornbine School when it was a smaller building. The desks were arranged facing the front as they are today. My siblings and I attended The Hornbine School after it was expanded. At that time, the desks had been reversed, facing the back of the building, so we wouldn't be easily distracted by traffic passing by the front door!
    I’ve always enjoyed visiting The Hornbine School. My husband, Joe, and I attend the open house, each second and fourth Sunday between June and September, as often as we can. We enjoy meeting friends, old classmates and relatives of people I know.

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BACK IN THE DAY

THE REHOBOTH I REMEMBER

REHOBOTH REMINISCENCE

For more than thirty years my father took approximately twenty-five steps from his home to work each day.  It was a luxury my family personally experienced as we saw how my father worked day in and day out.  Bits of my father’s working life became memories of my childhood and family life.

The Ramco Tool & Die Company was a tool and die shop located on School Street in Rehoboth which began operating in the early 1950s, and became a corporation in 1960.  The company was started, owned and operated by my father, Richard Parker Ramspott.  It was a successful business making molds for companies which would manufacture plastic parts.  In the early years, these parts might include the electrical plug at the end of an electrical cord.  Later, Ramco followed the technology of the times and made molds for computer parts.

Better than Chickens

    After returning home from serving in the U.S. Army during WWII as an engineer building bridges for the troops, my dad tried a few business ventures which included raising chickens.  A large coop was present on the family homestead next to his grandfather’s horse barn and other out buildings.  Raising chickens was once a profitable venture for families who had the land but my dad realized that post WWII that was no longer true.  He instead followed an interest he shared with both his grandfather and father.  For any free time allowed, they could be found tinkering with some machine engine or tool.

    My father’s six year apprenticeship for toolmaker began in 1945 at Bulova Watch in Providence, Rhode Island.  Later, he attended night school at University of Rhode Island and worked at Federal Chain for seven years earning a journeyman’s certificate as a toolmaker in 1959.  During these years, he also worked nights building his future business making tools and dies in one of the larger outbuildings by our house.  In the beginning he mostly worked alone.  Eventually, he hired someone part time then added more employees as the work started coming in from other businesses.  By now, his family included his wife, two daughters and a son.  A second son was born in May of 1960 after the company became a corporation.

A Young Girl Peeking Inside

    As a seven year old little girl I can remember finding my father inside the shop door working.  Two or three men were at their benches dressed in gray aprons like him talking and working or maybe in the summer listening to the radio broadcast of a Red Sox game.  Often I would find my father wearing his pair of magnifying glasses atop his head inspecting a mold carefully.  The shop then was a dark room with overhead fluorescent lights revealing the blackness of machines and their loud noises.  The oil soaked wooden floor was often littered with curly-cue shaped steel chips strewn from the drill presses.  Required to stand just inside the door, I was not allowed inside for fear of stepping on the chips and bringing them into the house.  This “old” part of the shop was about 30 feet by 25 feet and housed a grinding machine in its northwest corner.  There my dad would grind away at a mold one sweep at a time.  A mold was placed on the table of the grinder while the grinding wheel, set at a specific measurement, would grind away as the table also moved back and forth.  Sparks would fly out every time the wheel met the steel mold and could be operated for a while without him standing there in front of it.  At the door, there was a great big drill press reaching to the ceiling often times holding a large piece of steel.  Next to the drill press, further inside, was a surface grinder made in England.  One of the men reconditioned it to build the progressive dies my dad specialized in for the business.  In the middle of the shop were the lathe, an off-hand grinder, and a cut-off saw.  There was also a belt sander, a myriad of tools lying above a set of 40 square drawers, and an attic.

    Originally, the attic was just filled with stuff collected from years past as it was my great-grandfather, who worked, collected, and stored things in the building.  I can remember cleaning out some of that stuff to make room for my younger brother’s H&O model train set.  A low table was built for it with enough room to have bridges, stations, houses, lamps, a mountain, and the train and its track.  By then, my youngest brother was probably five and the shop had gained its addition on the other side of the building.

    The addition was built in 1963.  It was made with concrete blocks with a flat roof and push-out windows all along the sides.  A bench counter was built under the windows.  The men worked at the benches which held their tool boxes, dial indicators, a place to work, and a lamp.  Behind the bench counter, on the eastern street side of the addition, were three operating Bridgeports where much of the mold making and shaping occurred.

Dad Working on his “Cadillacs”

    Opposite the old part of the shop, another bench faced west toward the field and woods with three more Bridgeports.  My dad called them his six “Cadillacs” because they were such beauties and their cost was dear.  An air hose was always nearby each Bridgeport for the men to clear away the metal chips produced from drilling into the steel.  We kids would sometimes have fun with those on Saturdays when my brother was old enough to “clean the shop”.  We would dodge the great spurts of air bursting out as we sprayed each other and I can remember watching with astonishment as the air blew forcefully across my hand rippling the skin. 

    Toward the back of the shop was a draftsman’s table, a honing machine, and a shaper which was never used that much.  Other machines included a panagraph machine which allowed you to follow a pattern of letters and numbers and engrave that on the steel.  He also had a Rockwell grinder which was good for sharpening cutters.  The band saw stood beside the sink that held only a scratchy, rough soap to wash the heavy black grease and oils off the workers’ hands. In later years, there was an EDM machine which the shop often relied upon for dissolving steel into a preferred shape.  Over the years, the business provided molds for various clients which included Texas Instruments and General Electric.  However, the most reliable work he procured was from Miller Electric in Woonsocket and V-Tron in Pownal, Vermont.

    With the new addition, the old chicken coop and some of the smaller out buildings were demolished and hauled away.  A new driveway and parking lot was poured.  Six or seven men and a secretary were now employed.  The addition measured twice the size of the original building and had a cement floor with room for an office and additional machines.  The shop had two exits and the back door was actually two doors together allowing a drive-on mower or a wide

dolly to be driven or rolled in as the situation warranted.  My grandfather lived across the street and worked for my dad for many years.  After retiring from full time work, he would still work on a job in the shop part time or be working on his tractor lawn mower engine perfecting its timing.  He also had antique clocks at his bench which he repaired.

“Gone Fishin” Just 300 Feet Away

    My father owned a fair amount of land which included a large pond about 300 feet into the woods behind the shop.  Sometimes the men would find time during their lunch break to fish and in winter play ice hockey.  In the earlier years, my father raised sheep on the land.  By 1968, he had a flock of about two dozen black-faced Suffolk ewes, lambs, and a ram.  Later he switched to raising Hereford cattle.

    On days with no school, especially in summer, my brother and I would sometimes ride with Dad to pick up a mold at the heat-treater’s.  It would be an errand toward Providence and into Cranston where inevitably he’d drive through Roger Williams Park and of course, stop at the merry-go-round.  He’d have a corned beef sandwich and let us ride on the horses and reach for the brass ring.  Invariably, one of us would get it, earning us an additional free ride.  He’d have to buy another ticket so we both could ride again.  As a teenager with a drivers’ license, I was sometimes recruited by my dad to deliver a mold, or return with it or with other supplies.  I would drive to the supply house, heat treater’s, or the welder’s usually in the Providence area.

    The north side of the shop bordered our family backyard.  Covered by dark cedar shingle and cinder block, the shop was a bit unsightly as it faced our home and privacy.  My mother’s gardens grew to cover and mask its stark look.  Ivy climbed the cinder blocks easily.  The Beauty Bush draped over the grass with blooms each spring.  Forsythia, azalea, and flowers were also planted creating a beautiful country garden facing our home.

Ramco Tool and Die became a successful small business in Rehoboth throughout its years of operation.  It was influential not only to our own family, but to others and their families as well, and to the community.  The company closed its doors in 1989.

To Catch a Thief in Old Rehoboth by Leslie Patterson

Ramco Tool & Die Company by Lende Ramspott McMullen

Three Generations at the Hornbine School by Evelyn Rose Bois as told to Dave Downs