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Milwood Elementary School

 Collection
Identifier: RH-A-3980

Scope and Contents

Material from the Milwood Elementary School, Kalamazoo, Michigan, include black-and-white and color photographs of school and class group photographs; record books; account books and scrapbooks from the Milwood Mothers Club.

Dates

  • Creation: 1925-1999

Creator

Milwood Schools

The first school in the Milwood area was a two-room school house on Portage Road built in the 1880s. In 1921 the current Milwood Elementary School on Lovers Lane was built. This first section of the building consisted of a gym and three classrooms, the enrollment in the school’s first year was one-hundred students.

In 1925 an addition of six more rooms was built to deal with larger enrollment. As the school’s enrollment grew, more additions were added in 1931, 1940, and 1947 adding more classrooms and a science room.

In 1949 a new junior high school was built and then added on to in 1951, and a new elementary school, Greenwood Elementary, was built in 1954. Milwood was its own school district until 1955 when the district voted to become a part of Kalamazoo Public Schools.

Milwood Mothers Club

The Milwood Mothers Club was officially founded in 1932 after being initially started and sponsored by the Milwood Elementary School PTA in 1929. The only requirement for being in the Milwood Mothers Club was to have a child at Milwood Elementary School. The purpose of the Milwood Mothers Club was to build a community of mothers, to promote and organize school activities, events, and fundraisers, make classroom supplies, and support the school’s teachers and students. They met the first Tuesday of every school month.

Extent

2 boxes

Language of Materials

English

Abstract

This collection consists of two boxes of material from the Millwood Elementary School. The collection contains class photos, photos of the school, record books, and account books and scrapbooks from the Millwood Mothers club.

Physical Description

The class photos are black and white until the 1974-75 school year when from there on they are in color, they are all around 9” x 7” in size. In addition to the class photos there are many other photos of Milwood School, including two black and white photos of the school building, and color photos from school events in May 1889 and May 1899, all of these photos are 4” by 6” in size. There is also a large 14” x 11’ color photo of a class on a field trip and a 14” x 11” black and white photo of the school in front of the Capitol Building in 1956, and one folder of both black and white and color photos with unknown dates from various years. All of the photos are in good condition.

The 1925-1927 Attendance Register contains a list of students with record of their attendance, reasons for absences, and grades, as well as the classroom’s daily schedule, a summary of the school’s resources, and a list of textbooks used. The Teacher’s Records from 1951-1953 books each contain records of students and their attendance in individual classes. The attendance register and teacher’s records books are all in good condition with the binding intact and the writing still legible.

The Milwood Mothers Club Scrapbooks contain thank you cards from teachers, students, and other mothers in the community, certificates for Boy and Girl Scout troupe sponsorships and summer camp scholarships the club provided, programs from various events, and newspaper clippings. The scrapbooks also contain Milwood Mothers Club programs for each school year detailing meeting places, times, and dates, the club’s objectives and officers, the school calendar, and a calendar of the club’s events and meeting topics. The 1935-1950 scrapbook is in a box because its binding is falling apart. The 1950-58 scrapbook is in good condition. The bindings on the 1963-68 and the 1968-77 scrapbooks are still in good condition but many of the items in the books are falling out of the books. The Milwood Mothers Club programs for the years 1959-1962 are not contained in scrapbooks. The Milwood Mothers Club account books are a record of the money received, donated, and spent by the club and the club’s balance after every expense.

The construction and renovation papers deal with the building of a new school building, additions to the school, and various other renovations and construction projects at the school. The expense receipts are wrapped in paper in the box because they are unbound and in poor condition.

Title
Milwood Elementary School Finding Aid
Status
Completed
Author
Anna Yacullo
Date
2017-10-17
Description rules
Describing Archives: A Content Standard
Language of description
Undetermined
Script of description
Code for undetermined script
Language of description note
English

Repository Details

Part of the Western Michigan University Archives & Regional History Collections Repository

Contact:
Charles C. and Lynn L. Zhang Legacy Collections Center
1650 Oakland Drive
Kalamazoo MI 49008-5307 US
(269) 387-8490