The memorial trees of Johnston’s Thornton School

An excited crowd gathered at Calef’s Hall on Plainfield Street in Johnston on the evening of June 25, 1908. The hall had been gaily decorated and everyone was dressed in their Sunday best and eager to congratulate the two students who were graduating from Thornton Grammar School that night; Winifred Toomey and Asa Wisner Hall Jr., both 16 years of age.

Asa was born in Oswego, New York on Jan. 11, 1892, the son of Asa Wisner Hall Sr. and Johannah (Dugan). The Hall family had come to Rhode Island only recently and settled on School Street. The elder Asa was a longtime electrician and a father to two other children besides Asa; 14-year-old Ella and 12-year-old William.

The 1908 graduation program began with Thornton Grammar School students performing a hymn. Reverend William Henry Starr then offered a prayer. Students Essie Rice, Bessie Hanna and Joseph Alexander sang a song followed by students Dorothy Stone, Helen Dexter, Florence Bennett, Elsie Sweet and William Davis performing a dialogue. Continuing on with the program, Bessie Hanna and Joseph Alexander returned to take part in a duet and were proceeded by Clarence Marriott and the two graduates each performing a recitation.

Local milk dealer and member of the school committee, Jonathan Barnes, presented diplomas to Winifred and Asa and the exercises closed with a benediction by Reverend Frederick Collins, pastor of the Church of the Messiah. That night, the future stretched out in front of two young people. For Asa, however, the future would be condensed into less than two years.

On May 8, 1910, the 18-year-old man expired at his home from heart failure due to the effects of chronic mitral insufficiency, a condition in which the flaps of the heart do not close appropriately, thereby allowing blood to flow backwards through the heart. Three days later, nearly every resident of Thornton moved morosely down School Street carrying bouquets of flowers. Revered Charles Conal MacKay of the Thornton Congregational Church officiated the funeral service at the Hall home. Burial followed in Pocasset Cemetery.

In memory of their friend and former classmate, the female students of Thornton Grammar School planted a maple tree in the schoolyard and dedicated it to Asa, adding to what would become a little garden of memorial trees there. Five years earlier, student Robert Battye Booth had been killed when he suffered a fractured skull after falling from a cherry tree not far from his home on June 29, 1905 at the age of 10. Just as the graduating exercises of the Thornton Elementary School were taking place that particular year, Robert and some other boys decided to pick cherries from an orchard that belonged to none of them. When the owners spotted the little trespassers, a threatening yell erupted. Robert’s friends got away but the shout scared him so badly, he fell from the tree and struck his head on the ground. The son of George Booth, overseer of the Pocasset Mills, and his wife Dorothy, Robert was buried in Pocasset Cemetery. His classmates had planted a tree upon the school grounds in his honor.

Less than a year after Asa Hall’s untimely death, Margarete Anna Augusta Haeseler passed away. Known to friends and family as “Metta,” she was a former student of the Thornton Grammar School. Having come to America from Germany with her parents Emil and Margaret in 1892, she died of pulmonary tuberculosis on April 27, 1911 at the age of 25. The following month, the children at the grammar school added a tree in her memory to the schoolyard.  

On Jan. 13, 1919, the Thornton Grammar School caught fire and burned to the ground due to firefighters struggling with low water pressure. The loss was estimated to be about $32,000.

Kelly Sullivan is a Rhode Island columnist, lecturer and author.