Adams Center High School Annual – 1922

Adams Center, Jefferson County, NY

 

We’ve just published another high school yearbook — this one nearly a century old — so we thought we ought to comment on this particular one.  High school yearbooks capture moments in time – or at least the best of them do.  This one, soft cover and limited size included, give us a glimpse of this Jefferson County community at the beginning of the Roaring Twenties – an era which would change American culture in significant ways.  It also represents a time when there seemed to not yet be a consensus about exactly what belonged in a high school yearbook, as the contents of this number illustrates.

Adams Center High School 1922
Adams Center High School – Annual for 1922

First, the graduates that year numbered seven.  That’s not exactly a large graduating class.  So, absent was the customary bunch of pages of portraits and accomplishments.  A single photo suffices for the class.  There is a senior class history.  A senior class will.  A senior class prophecy and a class poem.  An address by the class president, followed by a response by a member of the junior class.  Then follows a series of essays:  “The United States Merchant Marine”  “The Grand Canyon of Arizona”  “A Drama”  (about Shakespeare’s Macbeth)  “Helen Hunt Jackson” (identified as one of the most famous women in the United States; unknown today, she seems to have been an advocate for Native Americans).

Remarks by the Principal at the presentation of diplomas are followed by an article advocating for a new high school.  Then comes a curious table called “School Census, 1921-1922 – Incomplete Returns” which we presume was humorous.  With prohibition in effect, next comes the obligatory article “Alcohol as a Menace”, followed by a light-hearted section called “Ifs” and a “Who’s Who”.  A photo of the baseball team is followed by a history of the school, which is in turn followed by reports on the various sports teams.

Unexpected contents

Then comes a real oddity: the constitution and by-laws of the Ontario Interscholastic Baseball League. (we are still scratching our collective heads over that one!).  Then some current poetry – again, presumably humorous if you knew the individuals mentioned.  Some more humor is punctuated by a photo of the girls’ basketball team.

Rather abruptly a photo of the Adams Center High School faculty appears, along with the list of the members of the board of education.  A boon here for family historians, next to come is a list of alumni by class, including their present city of residence.  Class years begin with 1899, and the compilation is acknowledged to be incomplete.  Then comes a list of the members of each class of the high school – including two post grads – and a list by class of those in the elementary school.  Ten pages of advertisements wrap up the book.

Yes, we do have it for sale as a download.  If you’re sold on this one, go right to it on our Jefferson County, NY page.

But we have  republished quite a number of yearbooks now, so if you would like to see them all listed in one place, you can go directly to our yearbook page.

 

Our Current Best Sellers

Back when our business was creating and selling local history CD-ROMs we found that people were interested in which ones were the most popular.  Now that we sell downloads (with the exception of the fast-dwindling remaining inventory of a few of our CDs), we thought that people might enjoy knowing which downloads sell best.  (If you’d like to view our entire catalog, you can find it HERE).

Here’s the Best Seller List:

#1 — Sullivan County, NY Index of Wills

#2 — Cross – New York State 1775 – 1975

#3 — Harte: Early Iron Industry of Connecticut

#4 — A History of the Town of Jefferson by Mildred L. Bailey

#5 — Sullivan County Intestate Estates

We decided to cut the list off at five — but maybe the next time we’ll provide the top ten. What do you think?

To everyone:  thanks for your patronage!!

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