Scituate Narrows New School Name to Three Finalists

Scituate's search for a name for its new elementary school narrowed from five candidates to three on Aug. 31, after the School Committee voted twice to eliminate Venus Manning and the Bates sisters.

The remaining finalists are Satuit, the name for the area used by the region's original inhabitants; Daniel Ward, the Irish immigrant credited with founding Scituate's Irish moss harvesting industry; and Inez Haynes Irwin, a national suffrage leader who lived in town.

The meeting opened with public comment from a resident who urged the committee to weigh community input heavily. The resident said an earlier survey and a follow-up outreach form both showed strong support for Satuit, whose English translation is Coldbrook, and for the Bates sisters.

Superintendent Thomas Raab recapped an Aug. 18 meeting of the district's naming task force, which followed an earlier session in June. He said the group held to criteria requiring a connection to Scituate, a story students could learn from, and a subject no longer living, then reviewed the background of all five names, including Manning, a formerly enslaved Black woman and Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society member born in Scituate in 1777. Raab said the Bates sisters' story, in which two young women scared off a British raiding party in 1814 by playing a fife and drum, could not be verified beyond what local historians already know.

"The issue there is that it is a bit of folklore," Raab said. "It's a beloved story. Everybody learns the story. It's a great story, but that's really what it is and as far as we can verify it."

Raab also gave the committee more background on the three names that survived the cut. On Satuit, he said the task force noted its English translation, Coldbrook, drew enough separate written support in the community survey that members discussed recommending it as its own option.

Ward's nomination came with the longest history lesson. Raab said he had researched Ward using an article from the Irish Star and another from the Smithsonian, and described him as an Irish immigrant fisherman who spotted red algae, known as Irish moss, while sailing off the coast of Boston in the mid-1800s and recognized its commercial potential. Ward settled on Scituate's beaches, midway between Boston and Plymouth, and built a moss harvesting industry that drew Irish families fleeing the potato famine of the late 1840s; by 1870, Raab said, close to 100 Irish families had settled in town around the trade. He also connected the industry to Scituate's lifesaving history, noting that moss harvesters were free during the winter offseason to serve as surfmen with the U.S. Lifesaving Service after it formed in 1871, rescuing sailors from wrecked boats. Raab added that women and children took over much of the harvesting during World War II while the town's men served overseas, and that Scituate third graders still visit a local museum each year to learn about the industry.

On Irwin, Raab said she first summered and then lived permanently in Scituate, and that while a student at Radcliffe she helped found the College Equal Suffrage League around 1900, a group focused on organizing young women that grew into chapters at colleges and high schools nationally. He said Irwin is credited with helping inspire the activist careers of other prominent suffragists, and that a book documenting the era's national suffrage movement describes Scituate's beaches as a lesser-known but real organizing base for the cause.

Committee members weighed the tradeoffs of each remaining name. Dr. Carey Borkoski said she would oppose translating Satuit into English if the committee ultimately picks that name.

"I am strongly against Coldbrook because I think if we're going to go with Satuit, we should honor the Native American word and not English or Americanize it or whatever and really truly lean on it and honor it," Borkoski said.

Erika McMahon said she wanted the eventual choice to reflect students who don't currently see themselves represented in the town's building names.

"I want every student, and I know that we all share this, to see themselves in the people for whom buildings are named," McMahon said, wondering aloud whether there was "an opportunity for us to select someone who is underrepresented in those names of other buildings across town."

Vice Chair Maria Fenwick told the committee that task force discussions had noted the district has no building named for a person of Irish descent, a point raised in favor of Ward, whose story is tied to generations of Irish families who came to Scituate for the mossing trade.

The final decision is set for the panel's Sept. 14 meeting.