Ditson School Teacher

Teacher at the Ditson School in Pinehurst, on Boston Road. The six-room brick school with an assembly hall was built in 1931 to replace the crowded two-room Pinehurst School, and was occupied on December 1, 1931, with Principal Thurza M. McElman and one teacher for each of grades 1 through 6. At first it was called the new Pinehurst School; after town meeting articles of 1934 it was named the Ditson School in honor of Thomas Ditson, the Billerica patriot tarred and feathered by British soldiers in 1775, and it appears under that name from the 1935 town report. An addition was built in 1949. The school was still in use in the 2020s, and the Vining School's pupils were merged into it in 2020. This position lists the opening staff and the teachers of its first years, not a full roster.

Sources: Billerica annual town reports 1930-1941 and 1949 (school department reports and teacher lists), 2020.