County Clerk’s Office Holds 9th Annual Archive Day

Former Lower Township Schools Superintendent Joe Cirrincione has a family history of truancy from school. This ironic tidbit about education was unearthed by Laurie Thomas, a researcher in the Cape May County Clerk’s office, and presented to a crowd of more than 30 people at the Old Courthouse during the 9th Annual Archive Day event on Oct. 23.
Suffering from what she calls “research A.D.D.,” Thomas started sorting through the early history of schools in Cape May County, but admits to being pulled off onto interesting tangents (like the Cirrincione story).
Thomas came across a 1914 truancy report, charging Anthony Cirrincione with not sending his four children to school. Education only became compulsory for children ages 6–16 that year. Thomas checked with the present day Cirrincione, who got a laugh from learning that his ancestor hadn’t been an early supporter of public schooling.
Even with county records dating back to 1692, Thomas was unable to find records of the area’s first school. But she did find the diary of Aaron Leaming, which contained a 1723 reference to his schoolteacher, so Thomas knows that schools did exist at that time. A 1778 letter written during the American Revolution by Colonel Elijah Hand to a British general also suggests that Hand had received some type of education.
The first definitive record of a school is an 1801 deed, in which Henry Ludlam granted an acre of Upper Township land to a group of citizens for the purpose of building a schoolhouse. Similar deeds were recorded in 1805 for a Lower Township school, and 1811 for Dyers Creek in Middle Township. After that the floodgates opened, with schools opening in Goshen, Stipsons Island, Cape Island, South Dennis, and Fishing Creek in the next 30 years. The state allowed municipalities to levy taxes to support schools beginning in 1828.
Besides the existence of schools, Thomas shared what life was like in that era. Drawing from a diary, she noted that schoolteacher Theophilus Price taught for 24 days in the fall of 1848 at the Swains Town School House, earning the sum of $20. But teachers were paid by subscription, and if families didn’t pay, the teacher didn’t teach. Price closed the doors until winter, re-opened school for another 107 days, went back to farming, then moved on to the Harmony School House in Rio Grande. He taught there until the end of June, before taking a job as a carriage driver on Cape Island for the summer. It’s a story familiar to modern teachers, many of whom take summer jobs to supplement their teaching pay.
Thomas invited the audience to view many of the documents she used, including deeds, letters, and the Price diary, all of which are contained in the county archives and available to the public.
County Clerk Rita Marie Fulginiti opened and closed the presentation. “Folks today are not coming to the courthouse to find records,” she said. “Folks today are going online.”
To that end, Fulginiti noted that her office has started the process of linking their records to popular genealogy and history websites like Ancestry.com. Her staff is beginning to create “finding aids” for online access.
“There is always something interesting to discover from the past,” Fulginigi said.