Sorting through some of my aunt’s belongings this past weekend I found a 120-year-old souvenir booklet that had belonged to my grandmother Anna (Annie) Jantz and was given to her in 1901 by her teacher Miss Agnes Nickel. Doing a little research online I discovered that in the early 1900s the teachers of small schools often distributed souvenir booklets to the students at the end of the school year.
The cover of Grandma’s booklet has a picture of George Washington, an American flag, an owl sitting on some books balanced on a globe and a gold sun rising out of the ocean.
The first page in Grandma’s souvenir book has a sketch of a schoolhouse and an introductory message. I wondered if perhaps it was typed by the teacher or someone other than the printing company who made the booklet because the typewriter appears to have had some dirty keys and the large letters and numbers clearly had been created with a stencil.
The second page identifies Grandma’s teacher Agnes Nickel and all the students in her class at the Belfry Public School in District 22 in the Risley Township in Marion County Kansas. I know my grandmother was born in Hillsboro Kansas. Maps show most of the community of Hillsboro lies within the Risley Township.
Although Belfry was a public school it was obviously serving a community of Mennonites since almost every surname on the list is almost instantly identifiable as being of Mennonite origin including those of the teacher, director, clerk and treasurer.
I knew my grandmother’s father Peter Jantz immigrated to the United States from Poland in 1874 living in Illinois for a time and then moving to Kansas in 1877. I also knew Mennonites immigrating from Russia and Poland established more than a dozen communities in Kansas in the 1880s several of them in the Hillsboro area. So the fact that most of the students at the Belfry Public School were Mennonites made sense.
My grandmother Anna (Annie) Jantz’s name is near the bottom of the second row in the class list and I see her older sister Matilda Janz is listed as the second name in the first row. I also see Edward Jantz and John Jantz presumably her brothers in the first row. I am assuming this is a multi-grade classroom so perhaps the students are listed by grade with the more senior students listed first. Since grandma was the youngest in her family it makes sense she is furthest down the list.
The next two pages in the book contain excerpts from two poems The Green River by William Cullen Bryant and The Village Blacksmith by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow.
Another page has an excerpt from a poem called In School Days by John Greenleaf Whittier. I read the full poem and the excerpt here really leaves a lot of the story out. The page opposite is empty. All the pages in the booklet are very, very thin like onion skin paper.
Grandma’s souvenir booklet was produced by the Ohio Printing Company in New Philadelphia Ohio. This page at the end of the book has an illustration from the Biblical story of King David playing music for his sheep or perhaps it is an illustration of the Greek God Pan who played the pipes for his flock.
The back of the book has another image of a schoolhouse. Note the sheared edges of the card and the fancy tassel that holds the book together.
I am so pleased to have this souvenir booklet of my grandmother’s and I love the little glimpse it gives me into her school days in Kansas. Grandma’s family immigrated to Canada in 1906 and settled in Drake Saskatchewan.
Other posts……….
Getting to Know My Great Grandfather
A Hundred Year Old Birthday Book
History Hunting in the Cemetery
What Next? 