Naper Settlement to care for Indian Prairie School District 204's archives
Naper Settlement recently received Indian Prairie School District 204's historic archives, which will be stored in the museum's climate-controlled Collections Care and Storage Facility. The 46 boxes of archival materials include items dating back to the late 1800s and the early 1900s, decades before Indian Prairie became a unit district in 1972.
Naper Settlement President and CEO Rena Tamayo-Calabrese said, "Indian Prairie School District 204 has been our community partner for many years and we are so pleased to care for their historic records. Naper Settlement saves the past for future generations, so we don't lose those stories and we can ultimately share them with our 135,000 annual visitors."
Indian Prairie's records are being inventoried and re-housed in acid-free boxes. Acid-free folders and mylar sleeves in which the items will be kept, help to stabilize the books, photographs, slides and papers, which will be given accession numbers and cataloged.
Contents of the boxes include historic photos of students with their classes in one-room schools, as well as attendance registers and salaries. There are examples of how the District 204 logo has changed over the years and samples of district publications from the 1970s until now. Multiple scrapbooks are filled with pages of news articles cut from local newspapers.
Superintendent Karen Sullivan said, "It's fascinating to look through the collection and see a slice of education history from our community. We are extremely grateful that this historic material will have a safe home in the archives of Naper Settlement."
Indian Prairie School District 204 was formed in August 1972 when the residents of Wheatland Elementary District 40, Indian Plains Elementary District 182, and Granger Elementary District 90 voted 359 to 44 to merge into a single, unit district. The district educated its kindergarten through eighth-graders in its four original schools: Wheatland, Indian Plains, the original Granger, and Longwood. High school students attended Naperville Central and Naperville North until the completion of Waubonsie Valley High School in 1975. Waubonsie also accommodated students in grades seven and eight until Thayer J. Hill Junior High opened in 1981. Today, the district serves 28,500 students who attend 33 schools.
About Naper Settlement and the Naperville Heritage Society
Naper Settlement is a nationally accredited, award-winning outdoor museum set on 12 magnificent acres in the heart of Naperville, where history comes to play and community comes to connect. The Naperville Heritage Society is the administrator of Naper Settlement. With a commitment to the community and a focus to the future, the mission of the Naperville Heritage Society is to collect, document, preserve and support the history of Naperville, Illinois, past and present. For more information, visit napersettlement.org or call (630) 420-6010.
About Indian Prairie School District 204
Indian Prairie is the fourth largest school district in Illinois, encompassing 46 square miles, including portions of Naperville, Aurora, Bolingbrook and Plainfield.