Every now and then we can get a glimpse back in time to what life in Hopewell was like 50 or 100 years ago. Sometimes these come from newly-discovered photos or writing. And sometimes they come from names and numbers on a page, as with two newly-discovered sets of St. Michael’s Mission and School annual reports, mostly from the 1940s to its closing in 1973.
These reports address questions including:
- What was St. Michael’s Grammar School like a century ago? What courses did they teach in each grade? What textbooks did they use? What did the teaching sisters do during the summers to enhance their education?
- How were the teaching sisters assigned to the different grades? What other roles did the sisters have? How long did the sisters stay at St. Michael’s? What were the sisters paid? And, more prosaically, how did the school’s address (with a zip code) and phone number (with an area code) change over time?
== View the St. Michael’s School & Mission Reports in the Pamphlet Collection ==
The School and Mission Reports
These two sets of annual report documents were filed from St. Michael’s to the home office of Sisters of St. Francis, and are provided courtesy of the archives of the Sisters of St. Francis (the order that ran and staffed St. Michael’s and the school):
- The Mission Annual Reports, 1947 – 1971, 31 pp., provide list of the sisters and their roles at the school, plus totals by grades of boys and girls. There are 26 reports over the span of 26 years.
- The School Annual Reports, 1929 – 1972, 65 pp., provide the numbers of students in each grade (broken out by boys and girls), along with the name of the teacher (sister). There are 30 reports over a span of 45 years: 1929, 1937-61, 1968-71.
The two sets of reports are provided in PDF format, and have been processed with text recognition, so should be easily searchable, printable, and sharable. They also have additional introductory summaries and tables of contents..
1929 School Report Observations
The 1929 School report form is very different from the other forms beginning in 1937 that only summarize enrollment counts and sister roles in a couple pages. The 1929 form is 11 pages, including total enrollment and attendance for each grade (and the associated teacher), plus breakdowns of each subject and textbooks and attendance for each grade (1-8), a list of “periodicals of scholastic nature” read by the sisters, and a report of external classes taken by the sisters.
- The subjects taught in the school included Reading, Phonics, Language, Penmanship, Etymology, Grammar, History, Civics, Geography, Arithmetic, Nature Study, Health, Hygiene, Religion, Catechism, Bible History, and Music.
- For the 349 students attending St. Michael’s, with up to 52 students in third grade, the form reports that each grade had some 20 to 50 various books available for students, and 10 to 50 textbooks on various subjects for teachers, noting that many books are shared, since “sister cannot afford to buy books. The sheet for each grade then lists the textbooks used for each class.
- The total enrollment in the St. Michael’s parochial school (with resident children and day students) in 1929 (grades 1 – 8) was 435, with actual attendance 349. So the St. Michael’s school (albeit with out-of-area and out-of-state resident children) was larger than the Hopewell public school.
- As reported in the newspapers, enrollments during this period at the Hopewell Grammar School (now the Elementary School on Princeton Avenue) was 309 in 1926, 339 in 1927, and 392 in 1930 which also included a new Kindergarten (data for 1928-29 is missing).
– The 1929 report also includes a sheet to list outside studies done by sisters. Of the seven teaching sisters (7th and 8th grades were combined) and from the staff of some 17 total sisters (1930 Census), three sisters are listed as taking summer school courses:
- Sr. M. Anna Rose (1st, 2nd in 1938) – attended Our Lady of Angels – Algebra, Problems of Democracy
- Sr. M. Madeleine Sophie (6th, 7th in 1938) – attended Hallahan (J. W. Hallahan Catholic Girls’ High School, Phila.) – English Composition, Educational Biology, Nature Study
- Sr. M. Cherubina (8th in 1938) – attended Villanova – Moliere and the French Drama, The French Catholic Revival, Cosmology
Other School Report Observations
- The School forms from 1937 to 1973 list the teacher (sister) for each grade, and the number of boys and girls in each grade – providing totals for each grade and over all grades. The top two grades tend to be smaller, and are sometimes combined.
- The early School forms list the facility as “St. Michael’s” [School], but then mostly use the singular “St. Michael” from around 1940. The Mission reports also often use the singular. This usage is not observed in other publications.
- In addition to the teachers, other roles listed for the sisters focused on care of the children (Nursery, Kindergarten, younger and older Boys, Girls, Sewing, Library, Tea Room), plus some support roles not assigned to day workers (Staff, Clerical, Children’s and Sister’s Dining Room, Laundry, Dairy, Lavatory).
Mission Report Observations
The Mission reports provide the number of sisters and a breakdown of their roles at the school, plus totals of sisters and students. The forms from 1951 through 1969 also provide a breakdown of the total enrollment in grade school (i.e., including day students) versus the total children being cared for (i.e., only in residence).
- The name of the sisters as provided on the forms (and also in the U.S. Census records) confusingly can vary between the Birth / Family name, e.g., “Bridget Ginty,” or the Religious / Baptismal name, e.g. “Sister Mary Meinulpha” (abbreviated as “Sr. M. Meinulpha”) – where the first name is almost always Mary. This can make it difficult to correlate between the different records, and between different years.
- For each sister, the Mission reports provide the birth year (and therefore age), the “prof.” year when the sister made their first profession of vows, and the year assigned to St. Michael’s.
- Sister Mary Meinulpha was by far the longest-serving sister:
– She was one of the first group of five sisters that brought eighty children from north Jersey to open St. Michael’s in 1898.
– She is recorded as having been born around 1868, and taking her profession of vows in 1898 at age 30, when she came to St. Michael’s.
– She then appears in the 1900 and 1910 U.S. Census records as a Teacher, and the 1930 and 1940 records as a Matron.
– She is listed in the 1945 and 1947 records as holding “Odd Jobs” and then as inactive.
– The 1948 form records her as having died while still with St. Michael’s – at around age 80 and after 50 years at St. Michael’s.
- The forms occasionally list salaries for the sisters. In 1947, two sisters listed separately under St. Alphonsus Catechetical School were listed with a yearly salary of $540. In 1952, the yearly stipend for the school year was $137.40 for each sister. In 1971 and 1972, the full-time yearly salary was listed as $540.
- The address is listed as “St. Michaels Children’s Home, Princeton Ave.” The zip code 08525 is added in 1963.
- The phone number is listed as “Hopewell 18” from the first form in 1947. This becomes “Hopewell 6-0018” by 1954. A 206 area code is added in 1963 as “(206) 466-0018” (?) Finally, the 609 area code is added in 1968 as “609-466-0018”.
== View the St. Michael’s School & Mission Reports in the Pamphlet Collection ==
Please contact us if you have additional information about St. Michael’s.
More on St. Michael’s Orphanage
St. Michael’s Orphan Asylum and Industrial School operated for three quarters of a century (1898 to 1973) just south of Hopewell, providing support and education for abandoned and neglected children.
Presentation
- Main page – St. Michael’s – History, Presentation Video, Media, and References
- Talk – St. Michael’s Orphanage: A Visual History – Wed., May 8, 2024
Briefs
- Post and Brief – The St. Michael’s Cemetery – and Celtic Cross
Posts – Photos
- Post – Photos of St. Michael’s Kids
- Post – St. Michael’s Photos – Behind the Building
- Post – St. Michael’s Orphanage Photo Collection
Posts – Records and Documentation
- Post & docs – St. Michael’s Orphanage – Census Records (1900-1950)
- Post & docs – St. Michael’s School & Mission Annual Reports, 1940s-1973
- Post & docs – St. Michael’s Orphanage – Farm Report – 1914
- Post – Investigating History in Hopewell Maps – St. Michael’s Building
Resources
- St. Michael’s School pages from the Pennington Borough Historical Website
(History, photos, 1900 census, memories)
Media
- Images – View the 200+ St. Michael’s images on the History Project site
- Video – Songs and Prayers of the Children of St. Michael’s Orphanage – 1930s
- Video – A Home in the Country: The Story of St. Michael’s Orphanage, by Jack Koeppel, 2016 Hopewell Public Library presentation
