Educator Seymour Smith left a legacy in Pine Plains

MILLBROOK —  Most of Pine Plains’ youth are familiar with the hallways, gym and auditorium of the Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center (SSILC). In this year of Pine Plains’ bicentennial, the Little Nine Partners Historical Society (LNPHS) wants them to also know the history of the school, its name and how it came to be.

On Saturday, June 10, Dyan Wapnik, president of the LNPHS, with a little help from Alexis Tackett, director of the Pine Plains Free Library, gave an information-filled presentation about Seymour Smith, his contribution to the Pine Plains school system, and the history of the private and public schools that made the educational system what it is today.

Smith was born in 1779 and spent his youth in Pine Plains. His parents, Peter Smith and Sarah Winans Smith, were farmers; the land they had was later known as the Tripp-Hicks Farm in Stanford. Later they moved to land that was and is part of Pine Plains, where their son Seymour was born. He was part of a very large family.

Smith attended the district school, which, at best, provided a limited education. He finished school in Poughkeepsie, but one should note that most education ended at age 15, for boys got jobs or went to work on the farm and girls got married. When Smith returned to Pine Plains, he mustered up a volunteer group to serve for a year in the War of 1812. Upon his return, he leased a farm, later known as the Henry Knickerbocker Farm. He spent most of his adult life away from Pine Plains.

Industrious and hardworking, Smith made a success of his farming ventures throughout his life; he also had other business ventures and was a magistrate. He never married or had children, so upon his death in 1863, he had what, at that time, was a considerable amount of money to bequest. In spite of the fact that he’d spent very little time there after his youth, he remembered his birthplace and his early schooling.

A provision of his will stipulated that he authorized the Town of Pine Plains to take the money, about $6,000, to “…build an academy for the promotion of knowledge.”  The money was invested and accumulated until the building was finally built in 1877.

The Seymour Smith Academy opened in 1879 with about 50 students, both male and female, and the first graduating class held eight students. In 1896, the Seymour Smith Academy ceased to exist, as more stringent rules and regulations were being handed down from New York state. But while it lasted, it served 1,002 students, with 82 of them graduating, and 25 or more were prepared to enter college, this at a time when most students didn’t get past grade school.

The Seymour Smith Academy wasn’t free, but it was less expensive than most of the other private schools of the times, when almost no secondary education was free or even reasonable for the average student.

When Pine Plains Central School District No. 1 came into being in 1931, it was the first in Dutchess County. When the new school was built and opened in 1933, naming it after Seymour Smith seemed appropriate. Naming it after a man who had actually spent little time in Pine Plains after his youth, a man who might seem a bit strange to some, (he kept a coffin in his barn and would often get into the coffin, and would explain to guests about what a wonderful funeral he would have) but had furthered the cause of education seemed fitting.

The district has added schools, changed the grades from school to school, and now SSILC is for children in second through fifth grades. It was rededicated on May 15, 2012, its 80th anniversary, as the Seymour Smith Intermediate Learning Center, still standing proudly at 41 Academy St.