Artifact of the Month – June 2004

Richard "Dick" Peters, former principal of Healdsburg Elementary School, recently donated a brass school bell engraved with the words "William Booth School District 8-6-1897." On the back it is engraved with "7-1-1917." According to Peters, the bell sat in a case in the office of Healdsburg Schools Superintendent Byron Gibbs for many years along with other historic artifacts from Healdsburg schools. Peters rescued the bell from going to the dumpster, but did not know specific details about its history. The bell serves as an intriguing historical focal point on many levels.

Who was William Booth? William Booth, born in Nottingham, England in 1829, was the founder of Salvation Army. At the age of 13 he was apprenticed in a pawnbroker's shop to help support his mother and sisters. He did not enjoy his job but it made him aware of the poverty in which people lived and how they suffered humiliation and degradation because of it. Booth became a minister and along with his wife Catherine formed "The Christian Mission" in 1865 in London’s poverty-ridden East End. In 1867, Booth had only 10 full-time workers. By 1874, the numbers had grown to 1,000 volunteers and 42 evangelists. While the converts spread out to the east end of London into neighboring areas and then to other cities, it was not until 1878 when The Christian Mission changed its name to The Salvation Army that the organization truly captured the public’s imagination. The idea of an Army fighting sin attracted interest and the Army began to grow rapidly. Incorporating paramilitary ranks and uniforms, Booth’s movement spread throughout the British Isles. By 1912 when Booth died, the Salvation Army was at work in 58 countries. The Salvation Army is now established in 80 countries and has 16,000 evangelical centers and operates more than 3,000 social welfare institutions, hospitals, schools and agencies. Many of these institutions were named after William Booth.

In 1880 the Salvation Army arrived on the United States’ East Coast when Booth sent a delegation of missionaries to New York. In only three years, operations had expanded west to California. Conditions around San Francisco's Barbary Coast begged for a religious revival. Some Christians in Oakland, feeling that Booth's organization was needed, asked for officers to be sent there to form their group into the first corps in the West.

In October 1904, the Salvation Army purchased the Lytton Springs property, just north of Healdsburg, which it still owns today. Because of its seltzer water, the property was formerly used as a health resort and sanatorium. The Salvation Army planned to use the property to house an orphanage. At that time the Army decided to combine the Golden Gate Orphanage in San Francisco with the Amity Colorado Land Colony for Children, under the title of the "Boy’s and Girl’s Industrial Home and Farm." Children would live at Lytton from 1904 until 1959. Salvation Army estimates that over this time 11,000 children were cared for in the home, with as many as 250 children living there at one time. Today the facility now operates as a Salvation Army Adult Rehabilitation Program.

The Lytton School District was created between the pre-existing Independence and Manzanita Districts. Although the first reference in local periodicals to the Lytton District was in February of 1898, it is possible that the "8-6-1897" date on the front of the bell corresponds to the creation of the Lytton District. According to a June 1898 Healdsburg Tribune, it cost $800 to construct and furnish the Lytton School which was located on half an acre of the Lytton Springs tract, near the junction of the Geyserville and Dry Creek Valley roads. In its early years the Lytton School was one of the largest country schools in Sonoma County because it educated the children of school age at the orphanage as well as the regular students of the district. The school already had multiple teachers by 1906. The Lytton District existed until 1945 when it joined the Healdsburg Unified District.

Salvation Army meanwhile created its own school district out of the Lytton District for the grammar school children at the Boy’s and Girl’s Home. This new district was originally called the Home School District, but on July 1, 1917 the name was officially changed to the William Booth School District. (This corresponds to the "7-1-1917" date on the back of the bell.) Salvation Army provided the school building and classrooms, while the county provided the teaching staff. In 1923, a youth who "wanted a vacation" burned the school down, and it was rebuilt. The William Booth School, considered to be one of the progressive schools in the county, taught sewing, cooking, home nursing, manual training, music and art, as well as traditional subjects. In 1924, Miss Louise Clark, the county superintendent was quoted as saying that "the orphans are going to have a chance with their more fortunate neighbors, and be educated along lines to suit each individual tendency." The Booth School District existed until the late 1950s when the Boy’s and Girl’s Home was discontinued.

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The above was researched and written by Whitney Hopkins