Grace L. Knowles

Grace Lillian Knowles was born in Billerica on March 8, 1868, the daughter of John Knowles, a farmer from Centre Harbor, New Hampshire, whose Gothic Revival cottage on Wyman Road was known locally as the Knowles place. She entered the Howe School in 1880 and graduated with the class of 1884, and the school department's teacher tables later list her as a graduate of the Worcester Normal School. In the 1930s she was still living in the family house on Wyman Road with her sisters.

Her teaching career began in the winter term of 1889 to 1890, when she took over the Spaulding School after the resignation of Carrie E. Handley. The School Committee reported that she "quickly gained the confidence of her scholars; her manner in the school room is pleasing, and we have reason to believe she will become a valuable teacher." She had the Hill School the next year and then the one-room Crosby School, a mixed school of all grades, which she kept from 1891 until 1904. From then on she taught the third and fourth grades at the Pollard School at the Centre; the Billerica magazine of 1912 counted her among five Pollard teachers sharing 245 pupils, and in 1914 the town gave her an assistant as the classes grew.

When the town adopted the six-and-six plan in 1916 and moved the seventh and eighth grades into the new Howe High School building, the School Committee appointed her principal of the Pollard School, which now held the first six grades. She led the school for eighteen years while still teaching the fourth grade herself; in 1933 it had 212 pupils. Outside the classroom she served as a director of the Billerica Library Association.

After several months' leave for ill health she resigned in May 1934. The superintendent's report noted that "beginning in 1889 Miss Knowles gave forty-five consecutive years to the Billerica schools" and added, "In the history of the schools of the town, I find no like service recorded." It predicted that she would retire "assured of the grateful appreciation of hundreds of former pupils whose lives she has influenced." She died on June 20, 1944, aged 76, and the school report for that year listed her In Memoriam as "for forty-five years teacher and principal in the schools of the town."

References

1. Catalogue of the Howe High School (1897), p. 28, class of 1884: Grace L. Knowles, teacher, born in Billerica March 8, 1868
2. Catalogue of Howe School (1880), students entering 1880: Grace L. Knowles
3. MACRIS BIL.199, John Knowles House, 15 Wyman Road (Knowles family; Grace b. 1868, Pollard School principal)
4. Report of the School Committee, 1889-90: Miss Grace L. Knowles took the Spaulding School for the winter term
5. Report of the School Committee, 1891-92, list of teachers: Grace L. Knowles, Crosby School
6. Report of the School Committee, 1916: Miss Grace L. Knowles appointed principal of the Pollard School
7. Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1934: resignation of Miss Knowles after forty-five consecutive years
8. Report of the Superintendent of Schools, 1944, In Memoriam: Miss Grace L. Knowles
9. Town Clerk, deaths registered 1944: Grace Lillian Knowles, June 20, aged 76 years 3 months 12 days