New Booklet Fills In Some Gaps In The History Of Newtown’s Schools

By Jan Howard

From a 1650 law, colorfully entitled “The Old Deluder Satan Law,” to the rise and fall of the district school system, the early days of education in Newtown are outlined in a new booklet, Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of Its Schools, by Town Historian Dan Cruson.

Mr Cruson discussed Newtown’s educational system, how it began and how it changed and grew from the 18th Century to the 20th, in a lecture/slide program January 9 at the C.H. Booth Library, sponsored by the Newtown Historical Society.

The talk included the educational system’s long history, from its beginnings in 1711 to the rise and fall of the district school system, with all of its social, political, and financial overtones. The system evolved from the initial parish control to the town and then to the district before again coming under a consolidated town system.

The lecture also included slides of the town’s one-room schoolhouses at various times in their history, including some that are newly discovered. Some of these rare photographs appear in the booklet.

Until recently, Mr Cruson said that knowledge of the town’s district schools was limited and remained a mystery. He noted that the early 20th Century history book Newtown’s History and Historian: Ezra Levan Johnson provided boundaries of the individual school districts but very little information about the schools themselves.

“The problem was in finding when they were formed and how they functioned,” Mr Cruson said.

Thanks to the recent discovery of school registers dating back to 1878 in the Middle School vault, Mr Cruson’s book contains the most up-to-date information on the town’s educational system. The volumes, dating from 1878 to 1962, include lists of teachers and students and other information, such as attendance records and some personal information, such as students’ birthdays and parents’ names. They have been helpful in providing information on the demise of the district system, and the formation of the town’s modern educational system.

“They chronicled when the district schools closed and why,” Mr Cruson said.

The volumes came about as the result of a re-survey of the district in 1878, after which the town was required by the state to keep records, he said.

The First Schools

In researching the book, Mr Cruson said he looked at legislation first. The Puritan colonists believed that “every child should be able to read to foil the old deluder, Satan,” he said. They believed it was Satan’s purpose to keep men from reading the Bible and learning about God. The answer to that was education.

In 1711, Newtown was chartered, and in 1717 the town voted to build a schoolhouse that would be used as a school and for town meetings. It was located where the flagpole exists today. Responsibility for setting up the school fell to the Ecclesiastical Society, or parish, then the smallest unit of local government. It built the schoolhouse, hired the teacher, and collected taxes to support the school and the teacher.

“As the town developed, the schools developed,” Mr Cruson said. The town started with the central village, and in 1733 there was a need for another school. The existing school was moved south and became the Middle District School. Construction of the North Center District School was delayed because of debate over its location and raising funds, and was finally erected in 1738 at the site of the present Soldiers and Sailors Monument.

Mr Cruson said that Newtown’s pattern of debate over the need for a school, which continues to this day, had its roots in this early period.

As the town grew, the outlying areas of the town began to develop and schools were required in those areas. The Taunton District School was the next to gain approval from the town in 1738 followed by Zoar and Land’s End in 1845, Hanover in 1755, and later by others, such as Huntingtown in 1764.

In 1766, the General Assembly officially recognized Newtown’s district school system.

  By 1790, 19 of the town’s 23 school districts were in existence. By 1794 they had become corporate entities, Mr Cruson said. “They could hire their own teachers and received money from the district for the schools.”

In 1796, the Newtown School Committee was formed “to keep an eye on the schools,” Mr Cruson said. A Board of School Visitors was established to look at attendance and curriculum in the district schools through regular visits to the schools. The visitors often complained about parents pulling their children from school to help with chores at home, Mr Cruson said.

 This committee was also responsible for testing teachers. If the teachers passed, the visitors would certify them. “The teacher could go back to teaching school,” Mr Cruson said.

 From 1796, when the School Committee was created, school matters no longer appeared in the town’s record books. The School Committee records are not complete, and beyond 1800 there is not much information, he said. “There are still gaps in there.”

In 1856 the School Committee was dissolved. Debates took place on who would control the schools – the town, some agency, or local school districts – which brought about local disputes such as Mr Cruson documented in the “Gray’s Plain School War.”

The Decline Of District Schools

In 1865, the Connecticut General Assembly passed legislation making it possible for towns to dissolve district schools and consolidate students into one system.

“Newtown ignored the law entirely,” Mr Cruson said. The subject was discussed, however, in what Mr Cruson in his booklet terms “spirited correspondence” that was printed in The Newtown Bee.

“The letters in The Bee were fantastic,” he said.

There was an underlying split in the townspeople, not only along political lines of Republicans versus Democrats but along ethnic lines as well, with new Irish Catholic voters being Democrats and the older “Yankee” Protestant population being Republican.

“The Irish wanted to centralize the schools. The Yankees fought to keep the district schools open,” Mr Cruson said. “The Yankee establishment controlled the town.”

“By 1909, half of the towns in the state had abolished the district system,” Mr Cruson said. “Newtown didn’t do it.” Because of a loophole in the legislation, “if you had a Borough, the town didn’t have to do it.”

In 1916, the State Board of Education came to Newtown to look at the schools, “and they found it so bad that they threatened to stop state aid to the schools,” Mr Cruson said. This led to a town meeting that abolished the Board of School Visitors. In 1917 a Town School Committee was established, a forerunner of the Board of Education.

Meanwhile, in 1902, the town had voted to establish and maintain a public high school, and rented the lower floor of the Newtown Academy, which was destroyed by a mysterious fire in 1920, after which  “the school board condemned the school,” Mr Cruson said.

Mary Hawley Comes On The Scene

In 1919, a faction from the high school had formed a community school of its own following the firing of a popular teacher, and Catholic students were going to New Milford, Mr Cruson said.

According to Mr Cruson’s booklet, the high school fire further polarized the town. The school controversy began again.

At this time, Arthur Nettleton advised Mary Hawley that this was an opportunity to heal the breach. Miss Hawley offered the money to build and maintain the new high school, “bringing everyone back together again,” Mr Cruson said.

Hawley School was considered state of the art, with a gymnasium and lab and other modern equipment, he said. “It was a facility that made improvements in education.”

“The burning of the high school led the way to the modern school system,” Mr Cruson said.

 Beginning in 1915, the district schools had begun to close, but it was several more years before students no longer attended the remaining schools. Newtown has more of its district schoolhouses in existence today because it kept them in use later than other towns. Some were in use until the mid-1940s, and others were re-opened during the population boom following World War II, such as Flat Swamp and Huntingtown, which served sixth graders until the Hawley School addition was opened in the fall of 1949.

Most of the school buildings were sold to private owners by 1950.

The district school system was fairly good, Mr Cruson said. “The students received individual attention from the teacher.” There was also a longer school day and school year, though he noted while the schools might be open, not all the students attended.

The Bee gave a detailed account of a teacher exam session, Mr Cruson said. “If the teachers didn’t pass, they weren’t certified. The teachers were very capable.”

Mr Cruson teaches local history and 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 a member of numerous scholarly groups. He has written a number of papers on local and regional topics and has lectured in the area. Educating Newtown’s Children: A History of Its Schools sells for $8 and is available from the Newtown Historical Society.