To the Editor:

I enjoyed Mary Ellen Johnson’s column the old school bells. My mother and father (Mary (née Tymchyn) and Harry Kott) donated the bell and cupola from the Cobblestone District 10 School on Stone Road to the Albany Institute of History and Art. My family (Tymchyns and I) went to the Stone Road school.

I remember two of the students would carry water from my mother and father’s farmhouse in a pail suspended from a pole. The outhouse had two sections — one for girls, the other for boys. It would get tipped over every Halloween.

My brother Harry Kott, made the old schoolhouse into a home but he was transferred out of the area so didn’t live in it very long.

For years, the bell stood outside to the left of the entrance to the institute. It was even pictured on a postcard that the institute sold.

Elaine Relyea

Guilderland