 While the schoolhouse itself didn't have a particularly noxious history, the Greater Newbury region was no stranger to all manner of the bizarre. By the 1870s, Newburyport had settled into its role as a relatively prosperous coastal town. But 200 years earlier, the founding Pilgrim Fathers landed in a wilderness lightly populated by the Pawtucket tribe of Native Americans, greatly reduced by an enemy tribe referred to as the Tarantines.