Explore 20th Century Children's Geographies in our new Story Map

See the new Story Map here!

School record books found in CLK High School

​The Keweenaw Time Traveler team uncovered over 50 student record books in the CLK High School in 2018.  Since then a sample of the records have been scanned, transcribed, and mapped.

Original scan and transcription of a class sheet

Map of Student Home Locations 1904 to 1926

​In order to map these student records, we utilized the Keweenaw Time Traveler’s historical geocoder (a tool used for rapidly mapping archival information).  This linked the school records to specific locations of the homes and schools the children lived in and attended.  To learn more about this mapping process, see the video below or visit our YouTube channel.

T​hese records are especially valuable as they contain student information such as names, ages, grades, addresses, attendance records, and vaccination records.  There are also notes recording when a student left the school, if applicable. Not only does this information tell us a lot about the children, but it can also be used to connect the children to other records in the Keweenaw Time Traveler through addresses and family members. This allows us to follow a person’s story through space and time.

E. Johnson's class at Webster in 1918

​In this StoryMap you can explore historic Calumet schools and the children who attended them in 1917.  Of focus is William Chopp, who attended Bertha Humphreys 5A class at Webster.  We follow William and his family through time using school records, census data, draft cards, city directories, employment cards, and birth records.  This rich variety of historical records provides a unique timeline that is invaluable to both researchers and the curious mind.

Children's Geographies in 20th Century Calumet StoryMap

​We have also recently been invited to work on a book chapter concerning historical children’s mobility and migration. Historians and geographers have been studying adults and their home and work places for decades, but the daily activity spaces of children have received much less attention.  This remains an area of fascination for researchers at the Keweenaw Time Traveler and we are using these school records to examine children's journey to school. Currently, we are analyzing the data and looking for relationships between student absences and vaccine rates, children's exposures to industrial pollutants, and to uncover the daily patterns of children's journeys to school. To see more about this project see the video below or visit our YouTube channel.

​Now it’s your turn! Use the StoryMap to explore school children and their classes or visit the Keweenaw Time Traveler Explore App to find more family connections. Let us know what you find!

​​​​This StoryMap showcases some of the early work of this project and we are working to make these records available on the Explore App in the next year.