Saturday, July 23, 2022

1920s School in Kearny, New Jersey

Black and white photograph of school children in the 1920s.

Someone showed me this picture and asked if I could shed some light on its origins. She suspected that it was from her mother's photo collection. Her mother was born in 1915 and attended school in Kearny, Hudson County New Jersey. The girls in the photo are wearing loose-fitting dresses and all have bobbed hair, so the 1920s fits as the timeframe when this image was probably captured.


In faint pencil on the reverse of the photo is printed, "5th Grade Nathan Hale School." "Home Room Teacher Miss Schad."

A search on Google revealed that Public School Number 2 was renamed Nathan Hale School in 1919. In 1954, the building was demolished.


The photo is not in crisp focus, but if you zoom in on the writing on the blackboard, you can make out most of the names. I listed them below with their dates of birth and death as I could find them. Those with entries on FindAGrave are linked. They were born mostly in 1914 or 1915, making them contemporaries of the suspected original owner of the photo. These were ten students with perfect attendance; 28 students are in the photograph.

Andrew Dick (1914-1976)

Everitt Jarvis (1914-2003)

Peter Kaminskas (1912-1992)

William Weiler (1915-1941)

William Winn (1914-1971)

John Pullins (1915-1990)

Anna Campbell

Josephine Inzano (Inzana?) (1915-1988)

Secrada Nurtz (maybe not spelled this way)

Ruth McAllen (1915-2006)

The teacher could be Pauline Schad (1905-1984) who lived in North Arlington, which is a mile north of Kearny. In 1930, she married Arthur Lehn.



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