Sometimes, things just fall into place.

They did for the 1846 Salt Marsh School in Edgecomb and those who sold and bought it earlier this month.

“I think we're really happy with the results of the sale,” Boothbay Region Land Trust executive director Nick Ullo said.

Fiber artist and retired Edgecomb teacher Susie Stephenson, along with husband Tom Blackford, development director at the Deck House School in Edgecomb, bought the former one-room schoolhouse earlier this month from the trust.

Stephenson said she and Blackford had long been interested in the place across River Road from the home they built in 1997; and Stephenson's artwork and materials were taking up a lot of space in their home.

When the schoolhouse's owner died, the deed went to the trust, which owns the neighboring Colby Preserve. “We're not necessarily interested in owning a house, so the concept was to sell the property,” Ullo said.

“When it came on the market, we jumped on it, pronto,” Stephenson said.

“Everything just fit together,” said Blackford, a longtime boatbuilder.

The trust got $70,000 in the sale; Stephenson got space for a gallery and studio.

The purchase has also given her and Blackford a lot of elbow work to do, getting the building back in shape.

They are wasting no time.

They're evening up the schoolroom's puckered wooden floor, and picking away at wallpaper believed to have been put up after the school closed in the mid-1900s and became a private home.

Stephenson found a surprise when some floorboards were taken up for the repair work: an 1850 penny.

“I thought it was a bottle cap, and I picked it up and it was a coin,” she said. “It makes you think, the last time somebody held this was 150 years ago.”

Among the schoolhouse's other treasures are numerous sets of initials carved on the walls just inside the front door. Stephenson believes they date to the building's school years. “I just think that these are wonderful,” she said.

Fellow Edgecomb resident Jo Cameron doesn't recall marking her initials in the entryway, where she and fellow Salt Marsh School students once hung their coats.

Although Cameron lived nearby, she said, “I was the kid that was always late.”

Cameron said she is absolutely delighted that Stephenson and Blackford have the school and will be giving it a purpose again.

Working on the building is like making a new friend, Stephenson said. She's learning where the sun hits and determining what care to give the building’s inside and outside surfaces.

The bricks to build the schoolhouse came from clay dug on Salt Marsh Cove, according to a plaque on the building's facade.

“The energy of this place is really good,” said Stephenson, who retired from teaching at Edgecomb's prior Eddy School and has substitute-taught at its successor.

As a teacher, she feels an added connection the schoolhouse. She hopes to bring its original use full circle, by offering classes at the studio-gallery.

Stephenson is also tying her family's history into the space, with furnishings including a rocking chair that was one of the few possessions of her great, great aunt, a traveling teacher. Near the center of the schoolroom is a large table that, at least a century ago, was in service in her grandfather's Belfast clothing store.

She hopes to have the studio-gallery ready to open in December. An attached bedroom, part of the school's transformation into a home several decades ago, may eventually be used by visiting artists, she said.

Stephenson also hopes to host a reunion at the schoolhouse for its surviving alumni. No date has been set.

Susan Johns can be reached at 207-844-4633 or susanjohns@wiscassetnewspaper.com