A Windfall For Genealogists—

Historic School Registers Collected For Safekeeping At The Booth Library

By Jan Howard

A new historical resource is available to genealogists and townspeople at the C.H. Booth Library.

All of the school registers for Newtown schools from 1878 to the 1960s, with the exception of 1910 to 1920, are available under controlled conditions to researchers and townspeople seeking information regarding their families, according to Town Historian Dan Cruson.

“To the best of my knowledge, Newtown is one of only a few towns that have these available to the public,” Mr Cruson said. He said he does not know why there is the gap of ten years in the registers.

The school registers, which list the daily attendance records of school children, came under the auspices of the Newtown Historical Society about two years ago when Mr Cruson, while researching the town’s schools for his monograph, heard a rumor that the school registers were stored at Newtown Middle School.

“I didn’t act on it immediately,” he said. Later, after talking to then Superintendent of Schools John Reed, Mr Cruson visited the middle school vault and located the almost complete record of the schools down to the 1960s.

“I told John Reed that they were just gathering dust in the vault and were not useable,” Mr Cruson said. “I asked him if they could be turned over to the historical society.”

Mr Reed agreed to the transfer of ownership of the registers to the society. Part of that agreement was that the registers would be housed in the vault at the C.H. Booth Library and available to genealogists and other researchers.

Early this year, members of the Newtown Genealogy Club helped move the heavy school registers from the middle school vault, where they had been collecting dust for decades, to the C.H. Booth Library, where they stacked them on shelves in the vault, according to Mr Cruson. The club became involved after a program he presented this year, during which he made a plea for help in moving the books.

In 1878, the state enacted a law that required the keeping of a register by every teacher of a public school so the registers are also helpful in providing names of teachers during those years. Each teacher who kept the attendance records at the schools signed the register.

The register was provided at the expense of the state in order that records of school attendance, and other records, could be kept in a uniform way throughout the state, and that the reports required of the various school officers could be accurately compiled.

A supply of school registers for the year, and blank forms of returns, were to be forwarded annually to the school visitors, an early version of a Board of Education.

 The school registers were considered state documents, Mr Cruson said. Though they remained in town, they had to be available to the state Board of Education.

“The law established uniformity and that the registers be done on a statewide basis,” he said. “It was a massive attempt to standardize and improve the schools.”

“Almost all the schools are included in the books,” Mr Cruson said.

When the school visitors made a visit to a school, they would look at the register in regard to daily attendance and perhaps quiz the students about their studies, Mr Cruson said.

The registers, in addition to listing the child’s name and attendance record, also would include the child’s name, age, birthday, father’s name, and his occupation. “They will establish parentage,” Mr Cruson said. “That is the strongest use of these.”

All the names of the children of the local family are listed together, making it possible to establish siblings in a family.

“They are very handy for genealogists,” he said.

Mr Cruson said the registers also note when students left school to go to work so educational levels can be established.

“They are not all as detailed, but some are a virtual history of a school,” he said.

The registers, which listed the attendance of the schools’ students, were “incredibly imperfect,” he said. The registers also might contain comments and criticisms.

Attendance was certainly a problem, he noted. “There are comments critical of parents keeping kids out of school,” Mr Cruson said. “Kids were yanked out of school to work on the farms in the spring and fall.

“You could find out how often your ancestor played hooky,” he said.

The 1890s register has also provided additional information for townspeople interested in Newtown’s history. Because the 1890 federal census was lost in a fire, Ray Maki, who heads up the Newtown Genealogy Club, took the 1890s register and copied it to serve as an 1890 census substitute for Newtown. Genealogist Harlan Jessup also copied the Grand List for 1890 to provide additional reference for Newtown residents in that year.

The year 1878 was pivotal in Newtown, according to Mr Cruson. In addition to the school registers being required by the state, a survey and map of the town’s 24 school districts were also made.

Prior to 1878, school attendance records were kept, sometimes incompletely, in individual notebooks by the district committeemen, and remained with them, Mr Cruson said.

The school registers, he said, “was an attempt to standardize the records.”