Last year I spent several weeks doing genealogical research on all the members of my high school graduating class (Wolcott High School class of 1966). As you can see here, about 1/3 of my classmates were in some sort of cousin relationship with me. I had also written a post about 5 years ago about some of my favorite teachers.
Recently, I saw a posting on FB that asked if people could
remember their fifth-grade teacher, to which I responded, “of course, it was
Mrs. Dunlap and she lived right across the street from my elementary school,
Alcott School.” But it got me thinking – were many of my teachers actually
distant cousins just like my classmates were? Not one to shirk from a
challenge, I decided to see if I could do the same kind of genealogical
research on them as I had done on my classmates.
[Wolcott High School]
Challenges
Age – when looking up my classmates, I knew that they
were all born in 1948 (the cutoff back then for entering school was based on
being born before the end of the calendar year), with a few possible exceptions
for some who might have been held back a grade. But how old were my teachers?
Could I make a guess based on pictures of them in my high school yearbook?
Name – for my classmates, I had their name in the
yearbook, but while the teachers were also there, were the female teachers
single or married (the latter would be listed with the designation “Mrs.” and
with their married name with no indication of their maiden name which is key
for doing research). Also, while I have a pretty good idea of most my
elementary school teachers’ names, could I remember which teachers I had in
each subject for the years I was at WHS? And even for my elementary teachers, I
mostly remember them by their last names (since we called them Mr. X or
Mrs./Miss Y and not by their first names). And there were no yearbooks before
my high school years to conveniently give me their names.
Place lived – except for a couple of students who
lived in Waterbury and whose parents paid to have them go to Wolcott HS, all my
classmates lived in Wolcott. But the teachers might have lived in any of the
nearby towns. There was a slight advantage in that except for some of the
younger teachers during my high school years, the others would have been old
enough to be in the 1940 census. But if I didn’t know their age/name/place,
that was not much consolation.
Who to include – when researching my classmates, I
included everyone in the class, regardless of whether I encountered them in
particular classes or not. Should I do the same for the teachers and include
all of them? Some of them I encountered in various clubs, others I saw in the
halls and definitely knew them. Yes, it would make my task much harder, but
that’s not an excuse. That put the total number of individuals to look up at
around 100. That’s less than the number of the students in my graduating class,
But the work to look them all up was going to be more because of the above
challenges.
Scope of Work
In the end I decided to include all the faculty in the
school as well as the administration. Fortunately, I had access to the 1961-62,
1962-63, and 1964-65 yearbooks online as well my own 1965-66 yearbook. That
enabled me to put together a pretty complete list of everyone at the high
school during the years I was there (including for the 1961-62 year when I was
in 8th grade) [I did not include the lunchroom staff or janitorial
staff as their names were not always provided.] For my elementary years at
Alcott, I had to go strictly on memory, and there were a few whose first names
I could not remember. The total number of individuals turned out to be 101, but
I was only able to complete my research on 96 of them – there were a couple
that I could not recall the first names and I have not yet located my stash of
report cards which might have that information, and there were a couple of high
school teachers for whom I was not able to find information on them.
The wide range of ages of my teachers (the oldest was born
in 1893 and the youngest in 1943), together with the lack of maiden names for
any of the married teachers, turned out the be just as big a challenge as I thought
it would be. So, the process that I had to use was totally different than what
I could do to investigate my classmates. I was fortunate in that the city of
Waterbury published (mostly annually) a directory of all residents that often
included the occupation of each individual. Taking advantage of that meant that
I could look for entries that included the word “tchr” or “teacher”. Then, I
could look for other individuals with the same last name and same address to
find either parents (for single individuals) or spouse (for married
individuals). For married women, I could then find other information about their
husband, including the maiden name of the person they married. But it certainly
was challenging!
Overall Results
Of the 96 people I was able to complete my investigation on,
16 are related to me and 80 are not. This lower percentage is due to a number
of factors as I’ll outline below. Here are the ones who are related to me:
Betty Coe, Mary Crandall, Sheila Crichton, Virginia Fitzpatrick/Stopper (she
got married in between two of the years), Martha Garrigus, Yvonne Hacquet,
Robyn Jewell, Rose Klitka, Ethel Kohrs, Kathryn Lawson, Cynthia Meuse, Doris
Peterson, Georgianna Phelan, Cora Rice, Francis Ryan, Elizabeth Woodward. Obviously,
all of these have connections through English ancestors as all my ancestors are
from England. All but Sheila, Yvonne, and Robyn have passed away.
Observations
Non-teaching/Non-administrators – The
non-teachers/administrators (secretaries, nurses, study-hall coordinator) in my
list were demographically quite different. These 11 individuals were all
married women. They mostly lived in Wolcott, in fact three of them were mothers
of one of my classmates. They also were much more likely to be related to me.
Of my 16 cousins, 6 of them were from this group, i.e., over 50% of the group
were related to me. In contrast, there were only 10 cousins among the 85 teachers/administrators.
Age Distribution – All my classmates were born in
1948 +/-1. The age distribution for these 96 people was: pre-1910 (5), 1910-1919
(12), 1920-1929 (31), 1930-1939 (33), 1940-1943 (15). That’s 48 born before
1930 and 48 after, making this group on average just a little younger than the
parents of my classmates.
Single Country of Origin – With my classmates there
was a lot of ethnic diversity in their background. For my classmates, I had
noted, “Those with only a single
country of origin are from Italy (30), England (14), Ireland (8) and single
individuals from French-speaking Canada, Lithuania, Poland, Russia, Scotland,
and Syria. Thus, 114 of the 172 (66%) are part of the ‘melting pot’ that is America.”
But among this group of 96 faculty/administration, I found the following with
only one country of origin: Italy (24), Ireland (15), England (6), Germany (6),
Poland (4), Russia (3), Canada-French (2), plus single individuals from Greece,
Lithuania, Persia, Syria, and Wales. Thus, only 31 of the 96 (32%) are part of
the “melting pot” that is America.
The explanation
for this difference is quite simple. Most of the immigrant ancestors of these
individuals, with the exception of those with roots in colonial New England,
came to this country in the latter part of the 19th century. They
were the grandparents of our teachers and were still living in the early part
of the 20th century when the parents of these teachers got married.
The sense of “family” was much stronger. For a young person in that time period,
say with Italian parents/grandparents, to bring home a potential spouse who was
not Italian was a big no-no. (I had an uncle who was from an Italian family
and whose mother still spoke exclusively Italian. He made the bold decision to
date and marry my aunt who was decidedly of English stock from colonial New
England. That was a bold move on his part and not one taken lightly.) Thus,
we see in this group of teachers with 29 having Italian heritage, there were 24
who had both their parents being Italian, but there were only 5 (17%) of this
group who had one parent being Italian and one non-Italian. In contrast among
my classmates who were one generation removed, the Italian immigrant great-grandparents
were no longer living when their parents chose a mate. There were still strong
family ties, but of those with Italian heritage only 30 of my classmates were
full-blooded Italian while 19 (39%) were an Italian/non-Italian mix.
One more connection
In my last post,
I had noted a number of connections between myself and one of the teachers at
WHS, Sheila Crichton. I thought I was done with that topic, but as I was
finishing up going through all the teachers/staff, I found another item which
belongs in that category. One of the school secretaries, Mrs. Barbara Dowling,
had a maiden name of Matthews and grew up living with her parents at #84
Radcliffe Ave. in Waterbury. This house is right on the corner of Radcliffe and
Auburn/Atwood Ave. In the 1940 census, when my father was living at #57
Radcliffe with his grandparents, and my aunt was living with her husband and
his family at #99 Auburn, not only were Sheila’s parents living at #49
Radcliffe (where Sheila would be born in September of that year), but Barbara
Matthews was living 200’ from my father and 200’ from my aunt and uncle, in a
house that they walked past on a regular basis if not daily. Barbara was 19 at
the time. My father was also 19, and my aunt was 23. All three of them were
working at Scovill and walked the mile to the plant. My father was a toolmaker
apprentice, my aunt was a stenographer, and Barbara was a bookkeeper. It’s obvious
that they would have known each other, and that all of them would have been
aware of little Sheila joining the neighborhood that fall. They all would have
also seen Sheila growing up as Barbara lived with her parents until she married
in 1949, my father lived with his grandparents until he left for the war in
1944 and still had ties there when his aunt Loretta and uncle George inherited
the house in 1946 and he and my aunt both would have visited from time to time.
I wonder if Barbara would have recognized Sheila – who would still be going by
her maiden name when they both worked at WHS from 1962-1968?
Final Thoughts
This has been a fascinating, as well as time consuming, bit
of genealogical research. I’ve put a lot of hours in over the past two weeks,
deciding on a course of action, then pulling together all the necessary pieces
that are part of such a project. In the process I’ve learned a lot about the
teachers in the Wolcott school system and come to appreciate them perhaps more
than I did at the time. They were a dedicated group who had the best interests
of all their students in mind. A lot of what I am today I owe not only to my
own family, but to the teachers who spent untold hours working with us. In
elementary school they saw us for several hours each school day. In high school
they might have only seen us in their class for a few hours a week – or perhaps
they only saw us for a few minutes in homeroom or at periodic club meetings or
perhaps just passing by respectfully in the hall while they watched out for any
troublemakers. But regardless of which end of the spectrum of hours they may
have interacted with us, they all had a part in our lives and we are better for
it.
Go Eagles!
[WHS Eagle – from cover of 1968 yearbook]
No comments:
Post a Comment