District 202 donates records to heritage society

A serendipitous discovery of 171-year-old records has led to a coup of sorts for the Lisle Heritage Society.

Five volumes of school records, some dating as far back as 1845, were ceremoniously presented to the society last week by Lisle Unit District 202 leaders for safekeeping and eventual public display.

"It's rare that something like this happens," said Joe Bennett, society charter member. "It's fortuitous that it did. We'd hate to see it go to the dumpster."

The recently discovered archived documents include records of the district's financial dealings, bond issues, census results, school board meeting minutes and vote tallies with dates ranging from Oct. 4, 1845, to Aug. 25, 1954.

Family names such as Yackley and Riedy, families who settled in Lisle early on, are commonly found in several entries, said Jenna Engler, the district's communications coordinator.

The books were donated on Oct. 4 to coincide with the date of the earliest record found, school officials said.

An entry in one book, dated June 28, 1929, indicates how small the village's population was, with a total of 28 votes in favor and 4 in opposition to a proposal to issue $20,000 in bonds to finance a schoolhouse addition.

The books also contain the first teaching contract, dated in 1927, for Martha Schiesher, the teacher for whom Schiesher Elementary School is named.

Back then, Schiesher's permanent home was in Hampshire, but she would stay in Lisle during the week so inclement weather wouldn't keep her from her teaching duties, said society board member Cathy Cawiezel, a descendant of a family with a long history in Lisle.

"She would actually board with my grandmother here in Lisle. The house that she boarded in is a 19th century house that's still there on Main Street," she said.

Schiesher went on to serve as district superintendent, Cawiezel said.

"My mother-in-law was her secretary for many years," Bennett said.

Six Lisle Heritage Society members and Lisle museum curator Concetta Gibson gathered in the school district's administrative offices with District 202 Superintendent Keith Filipiak and several district officials to mark the artifact donation.

Filipiak said the books shed light on the lives of the early settlers and show how the relative worth of money has changed. He said one year's records reflected that the school district spent just 88 cents on books.

"A lot of things have changed, the value of what a dollar could and could not buy," he said. Other things haven't changed, he said, such as the district's mission to educate children and formulate a vision for the future.

Demonstrating technology's effects on modern life, Filipiak held up one of the yellowed books in one hand and his tablet computer in the other.

With the digital age's pervasiveness, Filipiak said, modern education stresses skill-building rather than memorization and rote learning.

Engler said the books reveal how education has changed.

"Lisle was the first school district to have special education in the state of Illinois," she said.

The books were discovered recently by Heather Buller Conroy, the district's accounting coordinator, while sorting through archives in a storage facility with the intention of converting paper files into electronic data. Illinois law requires school systems to archive files, Filipiak said.

"I found them at the Meadows," Conroy said, referring to a former school building near Route 53 and Maple Avenue.

The district has been scanning in paper documents and disposing of written records. But Conroy recognized that the earliest records of life in Lisle, most written in cursive, represent a treasure trove of historical documentation and should not be destroyed.

"She literally saved it from the 'shred' pile," Cawiezel said. "I'd like to give words of gratitude to Heather for recognizing this. And I'd like to welcome her as a (heritage society) member."

Before donation to the society, Conroy said a company was hired to make electronic records of the five volumes for the school district to keep.

"Those are all scanned in," she said.

Conroy said she isn't finished rummaging through the archives at the Meadows and she expects to find additional historically significant documents, which also will be donated to the Lisle Heritage Society.

The books, said Engler, will be housed at the Museums at Lisle Station Park.

Cawiezel said the Lisle Heritage Society also would like an electronic copy of the old records so the old volumes can be preserved and spared undue handling. How and when the records will be available for public viewing is uncertain, she said.

"We just learned about this a few weeks ago," Cawiezel said. "So we haven't brainstormed this to see how we're going to use them."