CABOT — Enoch Hoyt was the first to settle on West Hill. His property, amounting to 320 acres, later became the Orson Kimball farm. According to John M. Fisher in his history of Cabot written for Abby Maria Hemenway’s Gazetteer, Hoyt came from Epsom, N.H., and arrived by way of the Bayley Hazen military road as far as Cabot Plains in 1797. From there he proceeded through the wilderness to the high land on the western side of town.
photo by Cabot Historical Society
Enoch had four brothers who soon followed and settled near him. The Hoyts were an industrious lot. They quickly cleared large areas for what became some of the finest farmland in town.
There were two other early settlers on that western side of Cabot, David Lyford and the Blanchard family. Lyford married 17-year-old Judith Heath in 1795 when he was about 24. Squire James Morse officiated. That was his and Cabot’s first marriage ceremony.
A few years later, Judith made history again when she captured a bear cub by its hind legs and ran home with it tightly wrapped in her apron with the mother bear in hot pursuit. She managed to reach their cabin and David was able to shoot the mother bear and then the cub. The meat, skin, and fat from the bears were quite a prize, so her tale of derring-do was handed down through generations and is now part of Cabot’s folklore.
By about 1820 there were enough families with children in that community for a school to be needed and Kimball School, sometimes also called Hopkins School, was opened. Others whose children attended that early school were the Addams, Hopkins, Ross, Peck, Wheeler, Hoyt and Lyford families.
The community near West Hill Pond grew considerably once Avery Atkins dammed the brook to provide power for a sawmill in 1820. Productive farms, a thriving lumber industry, and work available at the nearby Woodbury granite quarries all helped to support a thriving community.
This concentration of population created the need for another school, and in 1854 a new schoolhouse was built at the junction of roads leading to Cabot, Lower Cabot, Woodbury and the Coits Pond section of town. That school was known as the West Hill School.
Over the years, the two little one-room schools in District No. 4 served not only as schools but also as community centers. There was no electricity or plumbing in either building. Water was brought to school by one of the older youngsters or the teacher. Everyone used the same dipper when they wanted a drink. Each school had an outhouse for a toilet and a woodshed.
The new school building had improvements over Kimball School, a woodstove in the middle of the room instead of a fireplace, blackboards, more windows and a separate entryway that helped to prevent losing heat in the classroom when the outside door was opened. In later years, the new school had individual desks instead of benches facing the wall.
The number of students at Kimball School dwindled as property changed hands and families moved away. The town closed that school in 1886 and the handful of students there had to go down the hill to the newer West Hill School.
The old Kimball School building was eventually taken down by the Hopkins family, who owned the land where it stood at that time.
Again, changing demographics and economic pressure caused the need for an adjustment. World War I took a toll on the whole town, and the Spanish Flu Epidemic was raging, causing many deaths among Cabot citizens.
School opened as usual in September 1918 with Mrs. Dora Garney teaching. By the end of that school year, there were too few students to warrant keeping the school open and it closed in 1919. Some students went to Lower Cabot School and others went to the village. The schoolhouse was used by the town for storage of road equipment for several years. The floor eventually broke through and the town then rented it for $1 a year to a neighbor, Chris Barbieri, who used it for storage.
Charles and Barbara Carpenter lived on Cabot’s Southwest Hill and both were interested in preserving history. In 1976 the Carpenters were successful in persuading the town to sell the old schoolhouse to the Cabot Historical Society for $1. They applied for a grant from the state and appealed to the Cabot community for assistance. Everyone pitched in to repair the floor and foundation and rebuild the east wall that had been opened to allow large equipment to be driven in. They cleaned and painted it inside and out. It was a huge undertaking, but the community effort was successful and the building was saved.
The Cabot Historical Society had regular meetings there and continued working on restoring the inside, gathering desks and memorabilia from collectors throughout the community.
The Heritage Class, led by Cabot’s former high school teacher and principal David Book in 1996, partnered with the Cabot Historical Society to research the period the school represented and help restore it. The students found authentic textbooks and furniture and pitched in to clean, repair, and transport donated items to make the school one of the very few remaining one-room school museums.
The old school is still owned and maintained by the Cabot Historical Society and is open for guided tours by appointment.
At the top of West Hill, across the road from the Bothfeld family’s Dunstable Farms, there is a small cemetery surrounded by broad fields and pastures, with tall trees along the fence line and lovely views beyond. This is the final resting place for those early settlers and others who followed them over the years.
District No. 4 School bells no longer ring and the mill at West Hill Pond is now a private residence. The Kimball, Harvey, Fisher, Hopkins, Peck, and Houston farm families are gone, but the high pastures, woods, and fields remain with new names on mailboxes along well-kept gravel roads. Much has changed since Enoch Hoyt built his cabin here, but West Hill will always be a treasured part of Cabot’s history.
Jane Brown is a member of the Cabot Oral History Committee.
