| The Redstone School, where the real "Mary had a little lamb" story took place, is part of the Longfellow's Wayside Inn property. (www.wayside.org) Included are the famous inn itself, the beautiful Martha Mary chapel, a stone grist mill as well as fields, ponds and more. |
Its fleece was white as snow;
And everywhere that Mary went
The lamb was sure to go.
There are conflicting versions of the story, but for your consideration is the tale of one Mary Sawyer Tyler, a student of District Number 2 on Redstone Hill in Sterling, Massachusetts. Her lamb followed her to the Redstone schoolhouse in 1815 and the resulting events were recorded by poet Sarah Josepha Hale and first published in 1830 in "Poems For Our Children".
The Redstone schoolhouse was built by the town of Sterling in 1798. It was moved to Sudbury in 1927 and used again as a schoolhouse there from 1927 to 1951 and is now a museum...which you will visit as part of this cache.
Or maybe it didn't all happen that way. Anyway, on with the cache.
The listed coordinates are for the Redstone schoolhouse on the Wayside Inn property in Sudbury. Easiest parking is along the road in front of the grist mill. Walk over to the schoolhouse and take a look around. Knowledge of the poem and numbers found in, on and around the schoolhouse will provide the necessary answers to these questions:
B) This one is a freebie: the answer is 3
C) The schoolhouse was in use in Sterling until 18?6
D) Mary was born in 180?
E) The number of lambs students are allowed to have at school
F) The lamb's fleece was white as ????; number of letters in this word
Now, fill in the answers for questions A through F in the appropriate places in the cache coordinates:
42° 21.ABC
71° 28.DEF
Its box was white as snow;
And near the school where Mary went
You'll find that box, so go!
After finding the cache, continue on for a picture tour of the cache area...
Mary Had A Little Cache Page at Geocaching.com