Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society

Photograph from 1923 showing Principal Charlotte Merriman with her teachers.  From left to right are Sarah Dickinson, Mildred Lane, Merry Brooks (mother of Helen Morgan Vogt), Evelyn Topping, an unidentified substitute, Charlotte Merriman - Principal, Frances Buckley, Sarah (Sally) Welch, Alice Smith, and Hazle Tryon;  

 

Miss Merriman, as she was always referred to as, came to Port Washington from an upstate teacher's college in 1915; Over the course of several decades she catalogued the history of our peninsula in "Tales of Sintsink", starting with the Matinecock indians and ending with the first World War.  One of our readers tells me that when she went to Main Street School in the early 1950's, that this book was used as the third grade social studies textbook.

 

Many years later, at the request of our Society, she wrote her story of coming to Port Washington, which we published in our very first Journal of The Cow Neck Peninsula Historical Society, in the mid- 1960's.  As part of the celebration of our 50th year, we reprinted her entire story in our 1962-2012 Journal.