School records

Start with the district

Public school records were made by the school district, and in some states, such as Minnesota, also by the county superintendent of schools, who received reports from teachers. To find them, you first need to know which district your family lived in. In Minnesota, for example, early districts were often tied to specific schools within a county, and before 1957 their numbering was largely a county matter.

Look for school district maps and old inventories of school records. The Minnesota Historical Society, for example, holds maps of school district boundaries and inventories of historical school records made county by county by the Works Progress Administration's Historical Records Survey. Ask the state archives in your ancestor's state whether a similar inventory exists.

Remember the federal census too. From 1850 the census had a column for people who attended school within the year, and in 1940 it asked about school attendance and the highest grade completed. A mark in that column tells you a child was in school and roughly when.

School censuses

A school census was a list of school-age children in a district, taken to help local governments plan for teachers, buildings, and funding. The Minnesota Historical Society notes that a census was taken each year there, which makes school censuses a way to follow a family year by year between federal censuses.

Depending on the place and year, a school census may give the parents' names, the children's names, ages, and sometimes birth dates, their sex, and even the distance from home to school. Read them with care. A child's age is the age when the list was made, so a birth year worked out from it can be off by one. The adult named may be a guardian rather than a parent.

In Minnesota, the State Archives says attendance registers and school censuses generally do not fall under the restrictions placed on private student information, so they are usually open to researchers.

Registers, report cards and pupil records

Inside the school, teachers kept attendance registers, class records, and classification registers. Many districts also kept pupil record cards or sheets for each child. Teachers often sent annual reports to the county superintendent with the names of their pupils, their grades, and attendance.

These records can show when a child started and left a school, which may hint at a move or the start of work. Records that include grades are more likely to be restricted. The Minnesota Historical Society lists pupil record cards and teachers' reports with grades as restricted, and attendance registers and school censuses as unrestricted. Rules differ by state, so ask the archive before you visit.

Teachers

If an ancestor taught school, look for records kept about teachers. County superintendent files may include teacher record cards giving the teacher's education and where it was obtained, certification and subjects, participation in a teachers' retirement fund, and positions held with places and dates. For a woman who taught before she married, look under her maiden name.

Yearbooks, school newspapers and histories

Yearbooks can show a student's photograph and the names of classmates. Historical societies and libraries collect them, and they can usually be found by searching a catalog for the name of the school or town and the word yearbook. School newspapers were often filmed with the other newspapers of the town.

School histories and reunion booklets made by alumni can add names and stories. They may be found in libraries, in school district records, or in collections donated by former staff or students.

American Indian school records

The Bureau of Indian Affairs operated schools for American Indian and Alaska Native students from the early 1800s, as part of federal policy aimed at assimilation. Records of many of these students are at the National Archives in Record Group 75, held at different facilities depending on the state where the school was.

Beginning in the 1880s, the bureau ran off-reservation boarding schools, and most of them kept a case file for each student. A case file generally gives the student's name, tribal affiliation, degree of Indian blood, the names and tribes of the parents or guardians, home address, religion, and dates of attendance, and may hold enrollment applications, medical forms, grade reports, and letters. For reservation day schools and boarding schools, individual files are rare, but students may appear in agency records such as attendance registers, lists of students, and school censuses.

These records are part of a painful history. The National Archives advises considering where the student and any siblings lived when choosing which schools to search, and looking at schools in the same or neighboring states if the first one has no record. Files less than 75 years old are restricted and must be screened by its staff before release. For a mission school run by a church, contact that denomination.