Welcome to Cliftondale: Looking back at the old Felton School

(Editor’s Note: This is the eighth in a series of articles about the upcoming “Open House” event set for the first weekend in May at the old Cliftondale School – now known as The MEG – at 54-48 Essex St. in Saugus.)

By Janice K. Jarosz

When Newburyport Turnpike was completed, a toll gate was built at the entrance, approximately where the Orange Dinosaur now resides. Officials hired Cornelius Conway Felton, of Newburyport, to be the first official toll taker to oversee collecting the tolls from traveling motorists.

With such a long distance from Saugus, Felton moved his family to Saugus around 1904-05. When his son, Cornelius Conway Felton II, was of age, he enrolled him in the Ladies Seminary, on Main Street, Saugus, as a student and choir boy soon after the school accepted males. In one article it was written, “The story of the efforts of the toll keeper’s son to obtain the rudiments of an education will one be related in Saugus, but of the boy who became the profonde scholar, and President of Havard.”

Rev. A. P. Peabody, D. D., says: “Mr. Felton filled a very large and, in some respects, a unique place in our world of letters. Felton was adept in all branches of liberal culture. The ability that he showed in many and diverse directions, he would have been accounted as genius of a very high order.”

Recognizing the contributions made by the distinguished family of Cornelius Conway Felton II – some of whom are buried in the old cemetery at Saugus Center – Saugus town officials named the newly built school on Central Street the Felton School as a tribute to the 19th president of Harvard University. The Felton School, which was used from 1900 to 1978, was located on Central Street – opposite School Street – and was demolished in 1982, paving the way for the current Saugus Senior Center to be built on the old schoolhouse site.