Historical Society Goes To School

The Newtown Historical Society will examine the early days of education in the town with a program to be presented by Town Historian San Cruson on Tuesday, January 9, at 7:30 pm, in the Community Room of the Booth Library, 25 Main Street.

The slide lecture will look at education’s earliest days through the rise and demise of the district school system specifically in Newtown, but the political, financial, and social problems of the town affecting the schools might well be those of many similar New England towns.

With the recent discovery in the Middle School vault of the town’s school registers dating back to 1878, a history of the fate of Newtown’s district schools can now be written. Newtown has more of its district schoolhouses still in existence than any other town in Connecticut, largely because Newtown kept them in use later than any other town, some actually being used in the population boom following World War II. Reasons for the longevity of this system most towns has long given up will be presented in the lecture.

Until now, not only has the demise of the district school system been poorly documented, but the early history of Newtown’s educational efforts has also been murky. Initially the schools were under parish control, but gradually the emphasis shifted to town control and then to separate districts in various areas of town. The story of these developments has been gleaned from early town documents that have been either overlooked or misunderstood in the past. Mr Cruson has been able to straighten out what actually occurred  in the late 18th century, and will present the story from its beginnings for the first time in a comprehensive and coherent fashion.

The lecture will be well illustrated by rare photos of the various school houses as they existed in the early years of last century and the latter days of the 19th century. In addition to photos published in Mr Cruson’s book, The Images of America: Newtown, and in The Newtown Bee, Mr Cruson will also be showing a number of newly discovered images of the town’s educational history.

In addition to serving as town historian, Mr Cruson teaches local history an anthropology at Joel Barlow High School in Redding. He is president of the Connecticut Archeological Society, a past president of the Newtown Historical Society, and is a member of numerous other scholarly groups. He has written a number of papers in the area.

The subject of this program will also be available in printed form at the meeting in the form of his history booklet, The History of the Newtown School System. In addition to the text and a comprehensive list and history of each of the town’s one room schoolhouses, there will be a number of photos included in the booklet published and available to the public for the first time.

Newtown Historical Society programs are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served following the lecture. For further information call 426-5937.