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Solebury Township schools attendance registers
Notifications
Held at: Solebury Township Historical Society [Contact Us]P.O. Box 525, Solebury, PA, 18963
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Solebury Township Historical Society. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.
Overview and metadata sections
Solebury Township is home to the oldest schoolhouse in continuous use for educational purposes in Bucks County and possibly in the state of Pennsylvania. Center Hill School was built by Buckingham Friends Meeting in 1757 and deeded to the public school system in 1870. For most of its history, the one-room schoolhouse held classes for 1st through 8th grade. From the 1920s to the 1950s, only 1st through 3rd graders were educated there. In 1959, it was transformed into a library for the newly-built elementary school next door. In 1976 the library moved into the main building and special education classes were held in the one-room schoolhouse until the late 1990s. After that, the Solebury Township Historical Society acquired the building, and continues to occupy it as of 2013.
Over time, a total of twelve one-room school houses existed in Solebury Township: Aquetong School, Carversville School, Centre Bridge School, Center Hill School, Chestnut Grove School, Cottageville School, Highland Manor School, Hillside School, Lumberville School, Philips School, Solebury School, and Stoney Hill School. Center Hill School, being the most centrally located, had the most students: sixty-nine by 1937. A multi-room school building (the New Hope-Solebury Lower Elementary School) opened in 1938.
Bibliography:
Harrington, Ned. "The Schoolhouse." Accessed July 31, 2013. http://www.soleburyhistory.org/schoolhouse.html.
This collection consists almost entirely of student attendance registers from schools--including many one-room schoolhouses--in Solebury Township, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They are organized by school, then by year, and then by grade when applicable. Solebury Elementary School records comprise well over half of the collection. There are also a few financial records from the New Hope-Solebury School District and a cash book from the Quaker City Justice College (1865-1877). Partial inventories for the attendance registers are available on-site.
The attendance records are from the following schools for the following years: Aquetong School, 1921-1937; Carversville School, 1910-1913 and 1926-1938; Centre Bridge, 1926-1927; Center Hill High School 1905-1918; Center Hill School, 1926-1939; Chestnut Greenhill School, 1916-1938; Grove School, 1921-1937; Highland School, 1910-1916 and 1921-1922; Phillips School, 1910-1920; Solebury School, 1928-1939; Solebury Elementary School, 1935-1969; Solebury High School, 1919-1921; Solebury Township Consolidated School, 1939-1942; and Stoney Hill School, 1921-1937.
The collection also includes several volumes of financial records: minute book and secretary's account book for the New Hope-Solebury School District, 1939-1944; New Hope-Solebury School Board account book, 1942-1943; Solebury District account book, 1869-1895; New Hope Public school tuition accounts, 1937-1938; and Quaker City Justice College cash book, 1865-1877.
The Solebury Township Historical Society has also compiled a binder of secondary materials about teachers, such as copies of photographs, newspaper clippings, and research notes, circa 1990s.
Collection transferred to Solebury Township Historical Society with the acquisition of the Center Hill School building.
Summary descriptive information on this collection was compiled in 2012-2014 as part of a project conducted by the Historical Society of Pennsylvania to make better known and more accessible the largely hidden collections of small, primarily volunteer run repositories in the Philadelphia area. The Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories (HCI-PSAR) was funded by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
This is a preliminary finding aid. No physical processing, rehousing, reorganizing, or folder listing was accomplished during the HCI-PSAR project.
In some cases, more detailed inventories or finding aids may be available on-site at the repository where this collection is held; please contact Solebury Township Historical Society directly for more information.
Organization
- Center Hill School (Solebury, Pa.)
- New Hope-Solebury School District (Pa.). Board of School Directors
- Solebury Elementary School (Solebury, Pa.)
Subject
Place
- Publisher
- Solebury Township Historical Society
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by Celia Caust-Ellenbogen and Faith Charlton through the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories
- Sponsor
- This preliminary finding aid was created as part of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories. The HCI-PSAR project was made possible by a grant from The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.
- Access Restrictions
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Contact Solebury Township Historical Society for information about accessing this collection.