Hampshire Middle School secretary discovers historical school records in safe

District 300 historian Patricia Menges and Hampshire Middle School Principal Jim Wallis go through some of the attendance and school board records dating back to the late 1800s on Aug. 13 in Hampshire, Ill. The school records were found in the safe of the Sandy Bressner, The Associated Press

AP

District 300 historian Patricia Menges and Hampshire Middle School Principal Jim Wallis go through some of the attendance and school board records dating back to the late 1800s on Aug. 13 in Hampshire, Ill. The school records were found in the safe of the Sandy Bressner, The Associated Press

By Jen Wiant

HAMPSHIRE, Ill. – Attendance secretary Karen Stuehler was going through the safe at Hampshire Middle School, separating middle school documents from those she would send to the new Hampshire High School, when she made a startling discovery.

On the top shelf in two cardboard boxes, she found about 30 books of attendance ledgers, handwritten school board minutes, and newspaper clippings about Hampshire schools that dated back to the late 1800s.

“I was just cleaning it out,” said Stuehler, who found newspaper clippings from the 1950s through 1970s that mentioned her two older brothers among the papers, she said.

“Anybody could have found it.”

The records now are the oldest records in District 300, district archives manager Patricia Menges said. She would like to make them available for the public to peruse.

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“We would like to share them with the community,” Menges said. “These are their records. They don’t belong to the school district; they belong to the town, to the people.”

After making an inventory of the items, Menges will work with district administrators and the Hampshire Historical Society to determine what should be done with them, she said.

A graduation invitation for the Hampshire High School Class of 1891, minutes from a school board meeting in 1919 setting one teacher’s yearly salary at $550 and a custodian’s wages at $40 a week, an 1892 blueprint of the village of Hampshire, and a document certifying the condition of the school outhouses in 1912 were just a few of the items that Menges discovered as she went through the boxes for the first time.

“This says, Diploma awarded, School District 23, County of Kane, 1912. This was saying that we were a school district,” Hampshire Middle School Principal Jim Wallis read from what he thought might be the equivalent of a county life safety inspection of a school building.

“If you’re into history, there are some amazing things here,” Wallis said.

With a new Hampshire High School now open, the building that used to house the high school and Hampshire Middle School is transitioning into just a middle school building. Stuehler found the boxes of records, which had been stored uncovered for more than 100 years, while separating middle school and high school documents last month, she said.

Stuehler gave the records to Wallis, who alerted district Superintendent Kenneth Arndt of their existence, he said. Arndt sent Menges to the school to take a look at them.

District 300 is in the process of completing a Request for Proposals to have the district’s paper records scanned into a digital form, which would allow the district to dispose of fragile paper records, save staff time searching the records, and save storage space, Menges said.

But for now, the newly discovered items and the district’s other records will remain in a safe at the district office, she said.