The School Trustee,
who was in charge of each school district, played a big role in Kentucky communities.
Among other duties, he was responsible for employing a qualified teacher,
"who in no case shall be related to the trustee by blood or marriage
..."[1] If there
was a complaint against or by the teacher, he had to deal with it. In addition,
he was required to visit each school at the beginning of the year and make
monthly visits throughout the year.[2]
The job of
the trustee that interests us, as genealogists, relates to the census that was taken each April in each
school in the district. It was the trustee's duty "during the month of
April, to take an exact census of all the children then residing in such
district, who will be, on the first day of July following, between the ages of
six and twenty years ... specifying the name, age, sex and names of the parents
or guardian of each child"[3] Failure
to take this census could result in the trustee being fined. While it is great to have a date for the
school children, be aware that some years only the age of the child was listed, some times the birth year was omitted and some birth dates vary from year to year.
School
census records are found either in the county clerk's office of the courthouse
or in the school board office. They may be in bound volumes, as in Livingston
County, or as folded, loose papers, as in Lyon County. No matter what form they
are, they may provide valuable information.
Part of 1900 Census of Lola School (District 7)
Livingston County, Kentucky
Livingston County, Kentucky
[1]
Article VIII, "District Trustee," Journal
of the Regular Session of the Senate of the Commonwealth of Kentucky, Begun
and Held in the City of Frankfort on Monday, the Thirty-First of December, in
the Year of Our Lord, 1883, and of the Commonwealth the Ninety-Second
(Frankfort, KY: S.L.Major, Printer,
1884), 814; digital images, Google
Books (http://books.google.com; accessed 5 December 2014.
[2]
Article VIII, "District Trustee, 815."
[3]
Article VIII, "District Trustee, 816."
Published 29 January 2015, Western Kentucky Genealogy Blog, http://wkygenealogy.blogspot.com/
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