The picture you see here is the home of Jim and Susan Jerome, once the home of Edwin and Julia Parsons, our great great grandparents and the grandparents of Miss Marion Parsons. This picture was taken many years ago and they have done lots of work to restore the home and to make it the lovely place it is today and a nature-friendly greenspot. Wouldn't Edwin and Julia be proud and amazed?

When Marion and her sisters, Grace and Martha, and her many cousins (too many to list here) attended school, it was at the Geddes District One School on Terry Road. They called it the Terry Road School. Education was a top priority to these and other farm families in the area and when the day came, in the early 1900s, that the little building could no longer serve the education needs of the children of the Westvale community, some families opened their living rooms for classes. There was a group of younger children that met in the parlor of Willis Parsons, Marion's father, and they were called the Tiny Tots. The Willis Parsons home was just up the road from the house pictured here, on the other side of Genesee Street. (See earlier posts.)

It's likely that classes where also held at the home pictured above. Jim Jerome, the current owner and my cousin, has told me about a group of older kids who would meet to study what we would now call "industrial arts," though it was called something else then.

I'm wondering if any of you know anything about these classes and would be willing to share? I can be reached at 503.344.4434, and am keen to find out more about how community members supported school for kids in the community until the new school was built circa 1926.

You input for the book, The Brass Bell, is much appreciated.

Warm regards,
Nancy "Camille" Cole