The Tarbet one-room school for Sand Point and Barrachois students closed in 1967. Shown left to right (back row) Shirley Cameron (teacher), Mary Latimer, Ross Nelson; (middle row) Hughie Mattatall, Dorothy Reid, Danny Chambers, Dale Reid, Sherry Patriquin

In the mid to late 1800s one-room schools were built in most rural communities in Nova Scotia. Folks who had school age children just got together, pooled what money they could afford and the men erected the school.
Since the pupils had to walk to Tarbet School it was built in the centre of the school section, but many students still had a mile or more to walk to get to school, as the Tarbet section included Sand Point, and Barrachois up as far as the Sunrise Trail.
Many of the early settlers to the area came from Scotland so the school was named Tarbet after the village of Tarbet in Scotland, located on the west shore of the area in Scotland known as Loch Lomond.
A website says the focus of the village of Tarbet, Scotland, today is the baronial Tarbet Hotel.
Most one-room schools were just called for the district they were built in. Perhaps a debate on the naming of the school between Sand Point or Barrachois led it to be called Tarbet?
The land for Tarbet School was donated by the MacBurnie family, whose farm was at the top of the hill going down to Sand Point. Their farm included the large field on the right so the school was built on the corner near the road know as the “Short Cut.” At that time older residents remember that both the road on which the school was built (now called Brule Shore Road) and the road connecting it to Route 6 (now called the Jeff Ross Road) were called the Barrasois Road.
At that time the fields surrounding the school were cleared and used as farm land. The pupils often took “short cuts” through the fields and woods to get to school the shortest way.
It must have been very cold on those walks to school and one girl often told this story: “My mother always made me wear bloomers to school on the cold days, (girls did not wear slacks to school then and the bloomers were worn over their underclothes but under their skirts), so I would take them off, put them in a snow bank for the day and then put them back on as I went back home so mom never knew the difference.”
The late Charlie MacBurnie was the last MacBurnie to live in Sand Pont /Barrachois and now Malcolm and Christine Mattatall own the property. Charlie’s sister Janie, who lives in West Virginia, says that it would have been their father Clinton, or perhaps their grandfather Jacob, who gave the land for the school.
The school was constructed by 1888 as records of a meeting to plan the Barrasois Church show that the meeting was held in Tarbet School on Feb. 2, 1888. The first school register for Tarbet at the provincial archives in Halifax lists Annie MacLeod as the teacher for the year 1898. An incomplete list of teachers from that year on until the year it closed in 1967 shows that Edna MacLeod taught the most years at Tarbet, a total of 12 or more years there!
Back on Nov. 23, 1932, the Tarbet School was set on fire and it burned to the ground. At that time the fire was thought to have been a prank by several local boys and if their reason for setting the fire was to get out of going to school, that did not happen!
For the remainder of the school year, classes were held in an empty house, the old George Weatherbie house, today the site of Robert Dicks’s home.
In 1933, John Adey (Jack and Blair MacKinnon‘s grandfather) built the present Tarbet School on the site of the first school. Pearl (Mattatall) LeFresne, of Tatamagouche, who will be 96 in May, remembers her first day of school at Tarbet.
“The teacher was Margaret Reynolds who came from Stewiacke. She had red hair and wore long white laced-up boots and I can still see her standing at the front of the school sharpening a pencil,” Pearl says. “I was scared to death of her and went home from that first day and told my parents I wasn’t going back.”
Pearl also can remember a poem that was penned by someone in her family about the school and it starts as follows: “Tarbet School was built by the sea, the prettiest place you ever did see. It had two doors in the front and one in the back. And many large windows, we have nothing to lack.”
In those days the rural schools usually only went on to Grade 9 or 10, depending on how far the teacher was qualified to teach. Students had to go to a bigger school to if they wanted to go on in high school.
Hazel (Weatherby) Coe also went to school in Tarbet and says she has many memories of the good times at the school with her friends.
Many later students of Tarbet remember the days when the late Betty Murray taught school at Tarbet. It was her first year of teaching school, and much to the dismay of a few parents, the children did all sorts of other things besides learning the three “Rs.”
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The lawn around the school was mowed, flowers and scrubs planted and a flag flew on the flag pole. Not only that, part of the school days were spent in practising for music festivals in Truro and New Glasgow, concerts and having Red Cross.
Students often drove to the festivals and other events in the back of one of the Bonnyman and Bell transport trucks with Lily Ross all decked out in her usual hat and white gloves. Betty often packed her own small, noisy car with the Tarbet students for some events as well.
The Tarbet School, along with some singers from the village, even performed several operettas in the village. One was called “Little Alice BlueGown” and of course they were written and directed by Betty. She often proudly told of her first years of teaching school and how talented and willing to work her first pupils were.
Betty never missed a day of school during the three years she taught there; if her car could not make it she came across the bay on her skis. Once she even fell through the ice but continued on to the school to teach “soaking wet.”
The Tatamagouche Rural High School opened in 1949-50 so a fleet of yellow buses started picking up the junior and senior high students from all school areas to attend TRHS. After that the one-room schools just had up to Grade 7, but by the early 1960s they started closing when the enrolment went down and then all the students were bused to Tatamagouche for school .
The year 1967 marked the last year classes were held in Tarbet and the last teacher was Mrs. Shirley (Bill) Cameron. At that time the school building was offered to the residents to be used as a community hall and over the years, as such, it has hosted many events.
However, on Friday night on Dec. 4, 2009, between 7.30 and 8 p.m. all that changed as history repeated itself. Someone decided to torch Tarbet School.
Fortunately, a passing tradesman, who had been working late, noticed the flames in the early stages and called the fire department. The firefighters managed to save the structure, but many repairs are needed.
A meeting will be held on Wednesday, Jan. 27, at 7 p.m. at the Roach Hall at the Hills of Annan Seniors Complex in Tatamagouche to plan the fate of the Tarbet School /Community Hall.
Everyone who is interested in Tarbet School is urged to attend.