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Traffic report for August 24

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Bill Jones: Wyoming Valley filled with hopeful signs of better days ahead

<p>One of the things any genealogist wonders about his or her ancestors is what their educational experience was. It&#8217;s a good question at any time, but especially appropriate in late August as families prepare to send the kids back to school.</p><p>Today, comparatively few students leave the public education system before graduating from high school, and some of them return later and complete their studies through the GED (General Educational Development) program.</p><p>Until well into the 20th century, though, graduation from high school was far from standard practice. In Luzerne County&#8217;s then-largest school district, Wilkes-Barre, as recently as 1930, only about two out of seven students in the elementary grades actually made it to high school, according to the Record newspaper. That two-of-seven figure was in a district that had three public high schools, all located within walking distance of young people&#8217;s homes. In rural areas with transportation problems and few schools, the percentage might well have been lower.</p><p>Why so few? A family&#8217;s immediate economic need was often seen as outweighing a diploma, and many of our local jobs did not require a diploma anyway. A look through local city directories of many decades ago will demonstrate that non-technical, non-diploma jobs were in fact the rule for our ancestors, whether in the city or on the farm.</p><p>Some employment did require technical skills, railroading being an example. But many companies did their own training in-house, advancing good workers into more demanding and better-paying slots. The bottom line is that there was little pressure on young people to complete high school.</p><p>Even that situation was an improvement over the more distant past. Photos taken in the late 1800s and early 1900s show that thousands of our area&#8217;s youth were employed in and around the coal mines and factories, often doing dirty and dangerous work. News accounts of coal mining disasters routinely say that so many &#8220;men and boys&#8221; were killed.</p><p>There were some early attempts to help working youth gain educations. Beginning in the late 1800s the Boys Industrial Association offered evening classes, and the Wilkes-Barre schools eventually developed a popular evening program as well. At least one coal company operated a primary school, and some of the larger local churches sponsored very good grade and high schools.</p><p>Wealthier families did not face such barriers. Biographies of leading citizens of the 19th and early 20th centuries show numerous graduates of private high schools and Ivy League universities.</p><p>Most Luzerne County residents, however, did not have local access to a range of college degrees until the opening of College Misericordia in the 1920s and Bucknell Junior College in the 1930s, fairly late by national standards. Penn State was already offering mining engineering training locally, and there were several private business schools. Hospitals trained nurses.</p><p>Despite changing laws, families&#8217; economic needs during the Great Depression of the 1930s and the nation&#8217;s manpower needs of World War II continued to cut into student body numbers. In this new century some local high schools are still granting diplomas to elderly men who left the books behind and entered the military 1941-1945.</p><p>Today, with a greater value placed on education, Pennsylvania law mandates school for the young until age 15, and higher education has become commonplace.</p><p>So how did our ancestors learn? The best answer is &#8220;any way they could.&#8221; As any genealogist will note, the fact that they did learn is a tribute to their perseverance.</p><style>
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<div class="neCaption">Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </div></div><div class="metaInfo"><photo0>https://www.timesleader.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/08/web1_TOM_MOONEY4.jpg</photo0><caption0>Tom Mooney Out on a Limb </caption0><photoCredit0></photoCredit0></div></div>
<div class="metaInfo"><bylineMeta><p>Tom Mooney</p><p>Out on a Limb</p></bylineMeta></div><div class="metaInfo"><shirttailMeta><p>Tom Mooney is a Times Leader genealogy columnist. Reach him at tmooney2@ptd.net.</p></shirttailMeta></div>

Out on a limb: Tracing the educational roots of ancestors