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Westtown School records
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Held at: Westtown School Archives [Contact Us]975 Westtown Road, West Chester, PA, 19382
This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Westtown School Archives. 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
Westtown School is the oldest continuously operating coeducational boarding school in the United States. Located in Chester County, Pennsylvania, it serves students in pre-kindergarten through twelfth grade with day and boarding programs.
Founded by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), the school opened in 1799 with the goal of educating Quaker children in an environment that fostered moral development consistent with their religious ideals. Initially, only students with both parents in the Religious Society of Friends were admitted to Westtown; in 1920, the school began admitting students with only one Quaker parent; beginning in 1933, non-Quakers were allowed to attend. The first African American boarding student arrived in 1945.
Early curricula at Westtown included reading, penmanship, grammar, and mathematics; geography, science, astronomy, surveying, and bookkeeping were also offered. Boys and girls received similar educations, but were initially taught in separate classes. The first co-educational classes were offered in the 1870s. In the early 1900s, Westtown added visual and dramatic arts programs.
Bibliography:
Westtown School. "History." Accessed October 4, 2013. http://www.westtown.edu/about-westtown/history/establishing-the-school/index.aspx
This collection includes records created by Westtown Boarding School, including its various administrative offices, Board of Trustees, faculty, and students. It is organized into nine series: "19th century records," "20th century records," "Board of Trustees," "Farm and Orchard," "Student papers," "Westtown Old Scholars Association and Westtown Alumni Association," "Subject files," "Special formats," and "Publications." Inventories for some sections of the collection are available on-site.
Most of the materials in the first series, "19th century records," were created between the opening of Westtown School in 1799 and 1900. However, there are a few items that predate the opening of the school, and a substantial amount of materials that date from the first half of the 20th century. Most of the records in this series are financial, including receipt books, boys and girls merchandise, journals, ledgers, cash books, committee cash books, treasurer's accounts, boys and girls shoe accounts, and other financial records. There are also deeds, boys and girls registers, Westtown Literary Union scrapbooks, and other records. A group of predominantly 19th-century records that were once stored in a metal cabinet are still kept together in a "Metal Cabinet" subseries.
The series "20th century records" is organized into Record Groups by division within Westtown School, including administrative departments (admissions and financial aid, development/advancement, etc.), offices (principal and assistant heads of schools), and schools (lower, middle, and upper). The largest subseries are RG06:CFO Business Manager / Chief Financial Office, RG09:HOS Head of School /Principal / Headmaster, and RG13:US Upper School.
"Board of Trustees" records are in a separate series. They span from 1794, when planning for the establishment of Westtown School began, to the present.
The next series, "Farm and Orchard," includes records relating to the administration of the farm and orchard on Westtown's grounds. The series includes farm accounts, farm and dairy statements, farm buildings and contributions, farm committee minutes, orchard day books, inventories, farm and dairy cash and day books, and arboretum documents dating from 1850 to 1926.
The series "Student papers" include autograph albums, diaries, diplomas and certificates, and exercise, penmanship, and piece books. It also has subseries for pre-1904 issues of the literary society journal, which were manuscript volumes, and the yearbook, which were originally scrapbooks.
The series "Westtown Old Scholars Association and Westtown Alumni Association" is alumni records. It includes Westtown correspondence, Westtown Old Scholars Association cash book, Westtown Alumni Association minutes, centennial memorial fund, and alumni gallery working files.
The seventh series is "Subject files" in alphabetical order.
The eighth series, "Special formats," is organized by format into four subseries: "Photographs," "Audiovisual materials," "Maps and plans," and "Architectural drawings." The photographs include: lantern slides, glass negatives, scrapbooks and photograph albums, family and personal photograph collections, Amicus yearbook photographs, photographs from other administrative offices, slides, photographs by subject, photographs by year, cased photographs, and oversize photographs. The audiovisual materials include VHS tapes, audiocassette tapes, CDs and DVDs, film reels, and other formats.
The final series, "Publications," includes student handbooks, newsletters, Westtown catalogs (with supplements and additions), The Westonian alumni magazine, and Amicus yearbooks.
The collection is organized into series, subseries, and sub-subseries as follows:
Series: 19th century records Subseries: Financial records (Receipt books; Boys and girls merchandise; Journals; Ledgers; Cash books; Committee cash books; Treasurer's accounts; Boys and girls shoe accounts; Other financial records) Subseries: Deeds Subseries: Boys and girls registers Subseries: Westtown Literary Union scrapbooks Subseries: "Metal Cabinet" Subseries: Other records
Series: 20th century records Subseries: RG01:ADM Admissions and Financial Aid (Application materials; Outreach Material; Internal files; Admissions Committee) Subseries: RG02:AHOS Associate Head of School Subseries: RG03:AHOS.OP Assistant Head of School for Operations (Information Technology; Security; Summer Programs; Walker House) Subseries: RG04:AHOS.FAC Assistant Head of School for Faculty/Staff Development (Communications; Newsletter; In-service days; Other Professional Faculty and Staff Development) Subseries: RG05:ATH Athletics (Outdoor Education) Subseries: RG06:CFO Business Manager / Chief Financial Office (Building Service; Facilities; Farm; Finance / Personnel; Food Service; Security and Safety; School Store; Summer Programs Subseries: RG07:ADV Development / Advancement (Alumni and Parent Relations; Annual Giving; Planned Giving; Public Relations; Publications; Special Events and Volunteers) Subseries: RG08:BOT General Committee / Board of Trustees Subseries: RG09:HOS Head of School /Principal / Headmaster (Administrative Council; School-wide Committees and Coordinators) Subseries: RG10:LIB Library (Archives; Lower School Library); Subseries: RG11:LS Lower School Subseries: RG12:MS Middle School Subseries: RG13:US Upper School (Academic Departments; College Counseling; Dean of Students; Director of Studies; Faculty; Faculty Committees; International Student Coordinator; Principal; Senior Projects; Service Network; Work Program) Subseries: RG14:COMM Communications Subseries: RG15:HS Health Services Subseries: RG16:ARCH Architectural Records Subseries: RG17:MAPS&PLANS Maps and Plans Subseries: RG18:FACIL Facilities Department
Series: Board of Trustees
Series: Farm and Orchard
Series: Student papers Subseries: Autograph albums Subseries: Diaries Subseries: Diplomas and certificates Subseries: Exercise, penmanship, and piece books Subseries: Literary society journal Subseries: Yearbook scrapbooks
Series: Westtown Old Scholars Association and Westtown Alumni Association
Series: Subject files
Series: Special formats Subseries: Photographs (Lantern slides; Glass negatives; Scrapbooks and photograph albums; Family and personal photograph collections; Amicus yearbook photographs; Alumni office photographs; Photographs from other administrative offices; Slides; Photographs by subject; Photographs by year; Cased photographs; Oversize photographs) Subseries: Audiovisual materials (VHS tapes; Audiocassette tapes; CDs and DVDs; Film reels; Mixed media) Subseries: Maps and plans Subseries: Architectural drawings
Series: Publications Subseries: Student handbooks Subseries: Newsletters Subseries: Westtown catalogs, supplements, and curriculum guides Subseries: "The Westonian" alumni magazine Subseries: "Amicus" yearbooks
Materials transferred from various departments within Westtown School or acquired from alumni, students, and staff.
- Publisher
- Westtown School Archives
- Finding Aid Author
- Finding aid prepared by staff of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania's Hidden Collections Initiative for Pennsylvania Small Archival Repositories using data provided by the Westtown School Archives
- Access Restrictions
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Some materials in this collection are restricted or closed for a limited period of time. Contact the Archivist for more information about accessing the collection.
Collection Inventory
60.0 Linear feet
19.5 Linear feet
6.0 Linear feet
Students' family expense accounts
Physical Description4.5 Linear feet
3.5 Linear feet
2.5 Linear feet
0.75 Linear feet
0.75 Linear feet
0.75 Linear feet
0.25 Linear feet
Other types of financial records include: Bank of Chester County account book, statement books, funds received by contributions, income books, teacher salaries, deeds and title papers, investments, private fund for schooling, contributions to building fund, insurance records, inventory (merchandise stock), scrapbook and more.
Physical Description0.5 Linear feet
Various deeds and related papers relating to Westtown School. Inventory exists on-site.
Physical Description2.0 Linear feet
0.75 Linear feet
7 scrapbooks include original correspondence and financial papers ("Old letters and accounts") dating from the start of the school (1799) as well as ephemera, newspaper clippings, and other miscellaneous documents dating from the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries. There are many materials relating to student life and alumni fundraising.
Physical Description1.5 Linear feet
Materials that used to be stored in a metal cabinet and are still referred to in this way. An inventory exists on-site. Mostly 19th century records are included, although there is a large quantity of 20th century records as well. It consists primarily of original records with some printed materials, such as school books and published reports, mixed in. Records include financial records, committee minutes (including Building Committee), Westtown Literary Union and other student club records, student government records, and much more.
Physical Description14.0 Linear feet
Visitors registers, grade books, "sundry old records" including letters (especially business office correspondence) and financial records, property-related documents, treasurer's letter bank statements and reports, Westtown Boarding School letters, tax records, and vouchers.
Physical Description24.0 Linear feet
320.0 Linear feet
A partial folder-listing for this subseries is available on-site.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
1.0 Linear feet
A partial folder-listing for this subseries is available on-site.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
Material prior to 1 July 2008 filed with RG06:CFO Business Manager / Chief Financial Office.
Material prior to 1 July 2008 filed with RG06:CFO Business Manager / Chief Financial Office.
Material after 2007-2008 is filed under RG15:HS Health Services.
A partial folder-listing for this subseries is available on-site.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
Includes athletic office records, athletic department swimming records, score books, track and field, wrestling, boys and girls cross country, other sports.
Physical Description10.0 Linear feet
Includes: budget and financial statements (including farm house and real estate maintenance), 1912-1954; board and tuition ledgers, 1926-1949; faculty salary lists; cash books; farm house journals; cash receipts, treasurer accounts, board and tuition incidentals; payroll taxes; general ledgers; enrollment contracts; cash book balances; bank statements and investments; and penion and disability records.
Physical Description117.0 Linear feet
Material after 2009-2010 is filed under RG18:FACIL Facilities Department.
Material after 30 June 2008 is filed with RG03:AHOS.OP Assistant Head of School for Operations.
Material after 30 June 2008 is filed with RG03:AHOS.OP Assistant Head of School for Operations.
Includes: word and deed files; Alumni Office Westtown bicentennial materials and reunion planning files
Physical Description18.0 Linear feet
Material prior to Director of Communications.
See series III. Board of Trustees.
A partial inventory exists on-site. Includes: strategic planning, scholarships and gifts, Earl Harrison (former Head of School) papers, emails from Head of School, chronological file, communications, faculty, General Committee, school-wide committees, and subject files.
Physical Description54.0 Linear feet
1.0 Linear feet
Primarily student work and faculty minutes and emails.
Physical Description5.0 Linear feet
Primarily student work and faculty minutes and emails. Includes Day of Peace files and strategic plan from English teacher John McKinstry; Deborah M. Daniels teaching files.
Physical Description5.25 Linear feet
Includes: finance office, Dean of Students, college counseling, Development Office, faculty minutes and emails, Upper School Director of Studies and Academic Committee, student emails to whole community, academic departments, students' work including journals and essays, curricula, Service Network files, student writings and exams, daily schedules, absence books, records from various departments, Tom Woodward, Joe Marchese.
Physical Description100.0 Linear feet
Subseries is organized chronologically and then alphabetically.
1.0 Linear feet
Material prior to 1 July 2008 stored with RG03:AHOS.OP Assistant Head of School for Operations.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
See "Special Formats" series, "Architectural drawings" subseries.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
See "Special Formats" series, "Maps and plans" subseries.
3.5 Linear feet
The Board of Trustees minutes have been microfilmed and digitized.
The archives maintains a complete set of General Committee / Board of Trustees minutes, beginning in April, 1794. These minutes cover all aspects of operation of the school, both practically and philosophically. Great detail about the founding and growth of the school is contained here. The minutes are handwritten in bound volumes from 1794 through 1913-1914; they are typescript beginning in 1914-1915. Bound volumes of minutes exist through May 1975. Beginning with the school year 1969-1970, an "Official Record Book" (currently in ring binders) was compiled each school year to include minutes and supplemental documents such as subcommittee annual reports, financial records, etc. (In the later part of the twentieth century, these record books were compiled by the Assistant to the Head of School. Much of this information is usually found in minutes of earlier years, too.) The minute books from 1794 through 1913-14 were microfilmed in 2003. The film is available in the archives, Westtown School library, and a copy is in the collection of the Pennsylvania State Archives.
The record group includes a series of pamphlets of rules of the committee. These outline the structure, purpose and operation of the committee. They also often include the responsibilities of school officers, the daily schedule and other school practices as set by the committee.
Three handwritten bound volumes of minutes of the Acting Committee are extant: 1798-1802; 1802-1807; 1807-1817. The Acting Committee was a small executive committee with direct oversight of the Superintendant and many aspects of the school; it was replaced by the Committee on Instruction. [?] The three volumes of Acting Committee minutes were microfilmed in 2006. The film is available in the archives, the Westtown School library, and a copy is stored with OCLC Preservation Resources in Bethlehem, PA.
There are three indices to the Committee minutes: A soft cover, handwritten index to the first volume [?]; a hard cover, bound, handwritten index 1794-1901; a card file index covering 1902 to the mid 1950s. Terms used and topics covered vary among the indices.
Other material in the Board of Trustees Record Group includes separate runs of minutes of subcommittees, files of Committee material likely gathered by school administrators, and files created by individual members while serving on the Committee / Board.
Other General Committee / Board of Trustees material will be found in 20th century records, RG6:CFO and RG9:HOS.
Physical Description23.0 Linear feet
Includes farm accounts, farm and dairy statements, farm buildings and contributions, farm committee minutes, orchard day books, inventories, farm and dairy cash and day books, and arboretum documents.
Some more recent farm records are part of with RG06:CFO Business Manager / Chief Financial Office.
Physical Description6.0 Linear feet
27.0 Linear feet
181 volumes. A listing by creator and date is available on-site.
Physical Description5.0 Linear feet 9 boxes
41 volumes. A listing by creator and date is available on-site.
Physical Description0.75 Linear feet 3 boxes
About 50 items, some framed and some rolled. Mostly diplomas with some marriage certificates, membership certificates, and other accompanying documents. A listing by name and date is available on-site.
Physical Description1.5 Linear feet
142 school exercise books in subjects including mathematics, bookkeeping, botany, composition, Latin, surveying and navigation, and other topics. A listing by student, date, and subject is available on-site.
One box of penmanship books.
Piece books (poems and essays copied by students), 1799-1880s, organized chronologically.
Physical Description6.0 Linear feet
Hand-written. Known by a number of titles, including The West-Town Miscellany, The Germ of Literature, The Naturalist, The Cabinet, The Gazette, and The Casket. An inventory by title and year, volume with issue number and date, article titles, and authors, is available on-site. Includes Westtown Literary Society exercise books.
Physical Description13.0 Linear feet
0.75 Linear feet
Includes Westtown correspondence, Westtown Old Scholars Association cash book, Westtown Alumni Association minutes, centennial memorial fund, and alumni gallery working files.
Physical Description6.0 Linear feet
Organized alphabetically by subject. Inventory exists on-site.
Physical Description6.0 Linear feet 20 boxes
109.0 Linear feet
Includes photographs of Westtown: Activities, Athletics, Buildings, Campus Views, Classes, Curriculum, Events, Objects and Artifacts, and Persons. A full list of subjects, as well as a guide for locating photographs, is available on-site. Some photographs are framed.
Physical Description84.0 Linear feet
Includes tintypes and daguerreotypes.
Includes about 100 oral histories of students, alumni, faculty, and staff. Not all have been transcribed.
Physical Description15.0 Linear feet
Approximately 140 tapes. A full inventory with item description and date is available on-site. Includes recordings of student concerts, faculty panel discussions, alumni day events, oral history interviews about Westtown experiences and Civilian Public Service (Conscientious Objectors during World War II), the Second International Congress on Quaker Education sessions (June 1997), Upper School student interviews with Lower School students, and more.
Approximately 450 discs. An inventory of discs with description and date is available on-site. Most discs contain digital photo galleries; some contain scanned older photographs or other file types. There are many class, yearbook, and Portfolio photographs, photographs of alumni at reunions, and photographs of student performances; there are also some photographs of faculty and staff, student work, and other subjects.
Approximately 140 items. Inventory with reel description and date is available on-site. Includes Westtown promotional films, footage of class reunions, films recorded in directing classes, recordings of student performances, and other films.
Includes LPs, Super-8, 16mm and 35mm film, and other formats. Approximately 50 items. An inventory with medium, title, date, and creator is available on-site.
About 175 items. Alphabetical listing by title with creator, date, and description is available on-site.
There are also about 30 Westtown Farm maps drawn by students, 1804-circa 1904. Listing with creator, date, and physical description/format is available on-site.
Maps and plans form part of RG17:MAPS&PLANS in the series "20th century records."
Physical Description5.0 Linear feet
Westtown School's collection of architectural records includes close to 400 drawings and plans that date from the mid-1800s to the present. While a significant portion of the structures on campus are represented in this record group, not all buildings have surviving drawings and plans. Records that do exist (but are rarely complete for any one building) include original drawings by the architect, floor plans, elevations, details, etc., as well as some artist's renderings. These records include the work of several important Philadelphia area architects including Addison Hutton (1834-1916), Walter F. Price (1857-1951), Walter Smedley (1862-1939), William Macy Stanton (1888-1969), Paul M. Cope (1921-2006), and H. Mather Lippincott (1921-2010). Of note in the collection are 1880s drawings by architect Addison Hutton for Westtown's current main building, plus elevations of the Boiler House and Laundry constructed at the same time and plans for landscape grading near same; detail drawings for the 1929 Meeting House designed by Walter F. Price; plans by Walter Price for conversion of a barn into an educational facility for Westtown elementary students in 1934; William Macy Stanton's plans for a new physical education building in 1953; and multiple drawings, plans and working files by Cope & Lippincott architects for 20th century projects including the 1970 Center for the Living Arts and the 1976 Science Center. The collection also documents the conversion and renovation of nineteenth century (and late eighteenth century) structures for contemporary use.
The records are arranged primarily by structure, with occasional exceptions dictated by size and format of the record. The inventory (an Excel spreadsheet) includes the following information about each record: Structure name and subgroup; description of record including date; creator's name; storage location of the record (drawer and folder number or storage tube number); and details of the record's provenance and / or previous location. Thus, the searchable inventory can link all records related to a particular structure or creator (architect), a particular time period, or a specific storage area.
Additional information about buildings and other physical structures at Westtown may be found in the published histories about the school, as well as in the archives in the Board of Trustees minutes, the records of the Chief Financial Officer, in the manuscripts collection (which includes significant correspondence between Addison Hutton and school administrators regarding the design and construction of the main building), and in the photograph collection.
Architectural form part of RG16:ARCH in the series "20th century records."
Physical Description5.0 Linear feet
31.0 Linear feet
1.0 Linear feet
Westtown's newsletter was called Central Currents and then Collections. Recent copies are computer print-outs of a digital edition.
Physical Description1.0 Linear feet
6.0 Linear feet
Monthly publication
Physical Description9.0 Linear feet
14.0 Linear feet