Beverly Pettine Retires from The Hornbine One-Room School Museum in Rehoboth

On June 15th the Third Grade at Palmer River School in Rehoboth gathered in the auditorium to recognize Beverly Pettine, a resident of East Providence. Ms. Pettine has run the Hornbine One-room Schoolhouse Program for the last 17 years. She retired from her many school program responsibilities at the end of this school year.

The students saved their pennies this spring to buy books which were dedicated to Ms. Pettine and donated to the Palmer River School Library. All the books were related to one-room schoolhouses and will be available in the library for students and teachers.

Rebecca Smith and Cathy Potter, from the Rehoboth Historical Commission, were on hand to present Beverly Pettine with a proclamation from the town selectmen commending her for her seventeen years of volunteer work.

In 1968 the Hornbine School Association, which was a group devoted to the preservation of Rehoboth’s One-room Schoolhouse Museum, was a vibrant active group. But after several decades, the membership declined and they were unable to complete the necessary activities needed to operate a functioning program.

Beverly Pettine, who taught third grade in Swansea, retired seventeen years ago. Soon, she joined the Hornbine School Association and revived the Hornbine School Program. Ms. Pettine continued to build the program and now they have about eight hundred students visit the school each season. Students from three Rumford classrooms attended in early May.

Over the years, Beverly Pettine recruited and trained several people to teach at the school. Ms. Pettine wrote a variety of realistic but non-threatening lessons for homeschoolers, third graders and other grades which attended the school for the day.

Beverly revived the Open House Sundays from June to September. It wasn’t long before we had many Sunday visitors from around the country. Now, we have dozens of visitors each season.
Bev always kept the Hornbine School decorated with bird’s nests, flowers grown in her own garden, and colored chalk drawings drawn by her niece. Pumpkins, hay bales and dried corn were prominent outside the school in the autumn.

Beverly arranged for building maintenance. This included the landscaping, carpentry, emergency repairs and the chimney sweep.

Beverly loves the Hornbine School and poured hours of effort into it each year. She often spent her own money for decorations, books, and other materials. She spent many hours organizing historical Hornbine School photos, news articles and other information into book binders that are organized by year. This will insure that the information contained in the binders will not get lost.
Rehoboth has benefited from Beverly Pettine’s selfless efforts during her active seventeen year association with the Hornbine School.

Thank you Beverly Pettine. We are going to miss you!

The Hornbine School Museum is open to the public each 2nd and 4th Sunday, 2-4p.m. It is situated at the corner of Baker and Hornbine Roads in southeast Rehoboth.