The Liberty High School Annual for 1919 was the first-ever yearbook Liberty High School published.
Some of the 1919 graduates from Liberty High School
About yearbooks
High school yearbooks are one form of history within which everyone is recorded when they graduate from high school. They, and their community, are frozen at a point in time that the yearbook captures and keeps. Haircuts, clothes, friends, teachers, the sense of humor of the era, the area businesses – they are all captured as they were, not as we choose to remember them or tell our children they were back in the good old days.
1919 versus today
The class of 1919 graduated before a period of major social change, as a cursory examination of the yearbook will demonstrate. First off, the size of the class demonstrated the extent to which completion of a high school education was not a general expectation. In a community that had not changed that much in size between 1919 and the later, post WWII yearbooks we republish, this graduating class is tiny. Viewing the credentials of the faculty, it’s clear that the expectation that a high school teacher would have even a baccalaureate degree is a creature of the near-century that elapsed since this class graduated.
The function of the yearbook has also changed, quite clearly. More recent yearbooks are almost entirely about the class graduating, and on the activities in which they were participants. This issue turns the focus back to those who went to Liberty High School in previous years, even decades. From our point of view today, capturing this much news about Liberty High School alumni dating back into the previous century (the first class with alumni reporting was the class of 1893) is a book for those searching for a larger population than a single year’s graduating class.
It’s available!
You’ll not be surprised that we’re offering the Liberty High School Annual for 1919 as a download. Interested? CLICK HERE to see it on our main website.
We’re happy to republish a remarkable history of Paxton, Massachusetts, written by a person who without question knew more about the history of Paxton, MA than anyone else living at the time she prepared it. Roxa Howard Bush was a careful and very complete local historian of Paxton, and despite the brevity of her book (62 pages of text, plus pictures), it is a remarkably complete study of the history of the Town of Paxton. The book was privately printed in 1923. We do not know the number of copies printed, but we do know that few copies are still extant and even fewer available in the rare book market.
The old Paxton Inn, Paxton, MA
Unlike many local histories that are long on flowery language and short on names, places, and dates, Landmarks and Memories of Paxton is densely packed with names, and for that reason will be of particular interest to family historians and genealogists.
If you live now in the Paxton area, or if your ancestors lived there at one time, we suspect you will find this summary of the local history of Paxton and its people essential.
CLICK HERE to go to the page on our main website about Landmarks and Memories of Paxton, MA and how to purchase the download of it.
Why republish the Maine State Prison Report for 1907?
Because we think a surprising number of people will find it useful! We count students of public administration, penology, criminal justice, sociology, political science and history among them, not to mention people interested in state and local history in Maine, and, of course, genealogists and family historians.
First, a little about the Maine State Prison Report.
Cover of the Maine State Prison Report for 1907
Only 60 pages long (67 pages including the index we prepared for this document), this report provides astonishing detail about the state prison population. It lists the names of the inmates of the state prison, then located at Thomaston, Maine, in 1907. It also lists those who left the prison (via clemency, via completion of sentence, or via death) during that year. For the current prison population, it provides birthplaces, the crimes for which imprisoned, the counties in which they were convicted of their crimes, the length of their sentences, their ages in 1907, and the dates the prisoners were sentenced.
The report deals as well with those who were determined to be criminally insane — or, as happened even then, those who were insane and being warehoused in the state prison (interestingly, this practice is quite common today). Interestingly, the one death reported among the insane population that year shows “dementia” as the cause of death.
If black sheep great-uncle John (or great-aunt Nina) seemed to drop off the face of the earth in your family research back in those days, and the reason happened to involve conviction for a felony in Maine — or even loss of their mental faculties, they just might be here, along with enough supporting information to confirm their identity, as well as the kind of information you can use to locate newspaper articles or court records that might provide more information.
Click here to go to our main page about this document to see a PDF file of the index we have compiled of the Maine State Prison Report for 1907, and to purchase the report as a downloaded PDF file.
Being in the state slammer is nothing to be proud of, as the crimes for which these unfortunates were doing time will demonstrate. However, we think that this publication will solve some family riddles that have only become more puzzling as the intervening century has passed and those with first hand knowledge of the circumstances have passed away.
The publication also names the individuals responsible for operating the penal system in Maine in 1907, both at the County Jail level and at the “big house” as well.
The report evaluates each of the facilities that made up Maine’s penal system at that point in time in considerable detail, and does not hesitate to criticize the county jails — and the people responsible for them — that do not measure up to current standards both in terms of efficiency and in terms of prisoner care and rehabilitation.
The publication is also an excellent document of state of the criminal justice system in 1907, when nationally the Progressive movement was at its peak. There is descriptive material not only about the programs in the state prison, but also in the county jails. There is abundant statistical data at all levels.
In short, we think this is a document of local history, genealogy, and social history that is well worth preserving.
Where does the Maine State Prison in 1907 fit into the history of the prison system in Maine?
The Maine State Government provides some excellent historical background on their website.
The prison about which this report was written was built following a fire in 1854. In 1923 fire again claimed the Maine State Prison. The prison was rebuilt, several additional prison units dealing with special populations were built over the years, and in 2002 the last of the prisoners were moved from the prison in Thomaston to the new Maine State Prison in Warren. The structure at Thomaston was subsequently demolished with the exception of the Maine State Prison Showroom, which remains open.
There seem to be many more persons in State custody in Maine now than there were nearly 100 years ago in 1907.
It appears that there are, both in absolute numbers and relative to the growth in the state’s population. The population of Maine grew from around 730,000 in 1907 to roughly 1,275,000 in 2000, an increase of roughly 75%.
According to the Maine State Prison Report for 1907, a total of 521 individuals were “in jail” on December 1, 1907. This number included a total of 68 in the “big house” — the Maine State Prison at Thomaston.
The Maine State Prison website indicates (2005) that the population capacity of the new Maine State Prison at Warren is 916. Not given on that website is the population of the county jails and other, less secure and more specialized facilities in the penal system within the state. We will make the assumption that the prison is currently at capacity — as most prisons today are.
On that basis, the population of the “big house” has increased from 68 to 916 — a whopping 1250% increase — while the State’s total population grew only 75%. From the criteria for admission to the Maine State Prison today (on the state’s website), it appears that the criteria for sentencing to the “big house” are considerably more stringent today than they were a century ago as well.
CLICK HERE to go to our main page about the Maine State Prison Report for 1907.
Alain White wrote this book around 1920 for the Litchfield Historical Society, and it’s the definitive history of the Litchfield Township from the point where the early town histories leave off until the point when White’s book went to press.
Litchfield Map from White’s History of the Town of Litchfield
Several years ago, we scanned, indexed, and published the book as a CD-ROM — and it was a moderately good seller.
Then, two things happened:
Technology advanced. CDs fell out of favor, replaced by downloads
Several not for profit organizations scanned lots of historical works and made them available for free.
Retiring the CD was not a difficult decision at that point.
But there were two downsides:
The free downloads did not have the index we painstakingly created of this book, and
While the free downloads are certainly legible, the quality of the reproduction of the images leaves a bit to be desired (compared with our high-resolution scans).
If you’ll go to the page on our main website about this book, you’ll see where you can get a free download of this book (minus the index, and at decent but not great resolution).
You’ll also have the opportunity to purchase and download our version, which DOES include the index and the high resolution scans. (We also provide a free list of everything that showed up in the index so you can decide before purchasing whether our index is worth the money.)
Three Court Calendars of the Sullivan County Court.
July 1893 term, June 1899 term, and January 1904 term.
To us these are quite novel. Although they were obviously very familiar to practicing attorneys a century and more ago, we have not encountered other specimens of similar material.
Title page of a court calendar for Sullivan County, NY
Information includes the attorneys in the county were at that time (they’re listed), the county officers (likewise listed), and, interestingly, the grand jurors and the trial jurors for the term are listed too. It specifies which cases would be heard, and approximately upon what date.
Among the litigants, we say some familiar names, including a railroad that was never completed – the Liberty and Jeffersonville Electric Railway – suggesting that without even operating it succeeded in running afoul of some people (the investors, perhaps?). Regardless of its historical value, it’s fascinating to look at these relics of a judicial system that is now transformed into a far different animal.
Here’s another new download from the Connecticut Quarterly, Volume IV (1898).
It did not take much to be considered a Tory during the times of the American Revolution — being committed to maintaining the status quo was really the only requirement to be categorized as such. As a consequence, Connecticut had many, many people who fell in this category.
As the article points out, not all were subjected to criminal prosecution, but there were many ways in which Connecticut’s Tories paid for their loyalty to King and to the status quo. The “Tory effect” was also lasting. Descendents of Tories often found that it was prudent to move westward rather than stay in their Connecticut home towns with the stigma of being the child or even later descendant of a Tory.
This could result in whole communities forming in newly settled areas in which the occupants generally were guarded about where they came from and why they had elected to settle where they did.
A few years ago we republished the high school yearbook of the class of 1932 from Rockville High School in Connecticut.
Now we are happy to offer a rare chance to be able to look back on these students a quarter century (and one great depression and two wars) later with their 25th reunion program.
Rockville High School Class of 1932 25th Reunion
More information about this program, now available as a download, is on the Tolland County page of our main website.
Our second publication of Southern History in the last month is this important volume listing the occupations and addresses of more than 1000 graduates of Emory College (now Emory University) in Georgia.
The volume includes some history of the college and other supporting documents, but most important is the information provided about the graduates themselves. Here’s the table of contents:
Table of Contents
More information is available at our main website, where you can also download this document.
Quinlan’s History of Sullivan County is considered the definitive history of Sullivan County, New York up until 1873.
James H. Quinlan, historian
While we were working through those early years in Quinlan’s History, we discovered that it was sometimes hard to tie all those events together in a sequential way. To help us understand Sullivan County history better, we decided to use Quinlan to help develop a timeline of those years. Suddenly much was made clear.
We’re glad to be able to offer this timeline free for your use. Just click below to download it with our compliments.
If you find that this timeline raises your curiosity and makes you want to read the whole book, there’s no reason not to do so. There are several free scanned versions of Quinlan you can download, but our favorite is one scanned by Penn State University. A link to a free version we like is on our main website on our Quinlan page, HERE.
After you download it, you might discover what we did: that a 700 page book really needs an index. No one can fault Quinlan for not providing one, given all that he did provide us with. But we did decide to do something to make up for his omission. We indexed Quinlan ourselves. While you are on our Quinlan page, you will probably notice that we sell our index. Frankly, it was a lot of work, and we think you will find that it is worth the price.
This is one of the oldest high school yearbooks we’ve republished, and also one of the best. High school yearbooks were different animals, back before the roaring 20s — indeed, high schools were! Not everyone went to high school, just for openers.
Hartford, Connecticut, was also a different city. Hartford was prosperous then. This was a time when the city (and probably the state) were governed by the “Seven Bishops” — the Episcopal Bishop of Connecticut, and the CEOs of the six major insurance companies headquartered there that made Hartford the Insurance Capital of America.
This is a remarkable social document, and it is available now as a download now, for $5.00.
