Using School Records in Genealogy

Sugar Grove School, Henry County, Indiana, 1923. Don’t they look thrilled to be going back to school?

Sugar Grove School, Henry County, Indiana, 1923. Don’t they look thrilled to be going back to school?

As students across Indiana return to school, the Genealogy Division would like to highlight an often-overlooked genealogical resource: school enumeration records. Although an individual student’s records are protected by privacy laws, school enumerations functioned as a type of census and are therefore not private. School enumerations were created by local governments to document the number of school-aged students. Enumerators went from house to house, inquiring about the number of students in each household. Unlike the federal census, these enumerations took place every year in most areas. Continue reading