Norwich — When Deborah Havens of Parker, Colo., decided to clean out the clutter of her home recently, she had no idea she would be digging up a mystery that would captivate her family and the 23 students in the fourth-grade class at Wequonnoc School in Taftville.

At age 60, Havens started cleaning out her home last winter, getting rid of clutter to simplify things. She came across a small, old hardcover book her father, Ronald Croft, had given her in 1979, when he was distributing some family treasures from his home in Potomac Falls, Va.

She opened the plain brown book. “Elements of Geometry,” the title page said, by Henry W. Keigwin, “Teacher in the Norwich Free Academy.” The book was published in 1897. On the opposite page was the stamp: “Wequonnoc School Library, Taftville, Conn. Not to be taken from this school without permission.”

Havens decided to look up whether Wequonnoc School still existed, and when she learned that it did, she contacted Principal Scott Fain and asked if he would want the book returned. Fain, a history buff, jumped at the offer, and fourth-grade teacher Samantha Cholewa eagerly volunteered her class to research the history of the book, how it got to Colorado and who the NFA teacher was who wrote it.

Cholewa opened the well-wrapped package surrounded by students with the anticipation of opening a present on Jan. 11. “I hope your students enjoy this little piece of history,” the accompanying note read.

For the next week, students researched the history of their school, sought information on the NFA teacher who wrote the book and prepared for an interview with Havens.

Havens spent 20 minutes on speaker phone last Friday morning answering carefully prepared questions posed by several of Cholewa’s students, and a narrative — with several possible solutions to the mystery — emerged.

Havens told the students she considered selling the book on eBay, but when she saw the Wequonnoc Library stamp, she felt uncomfortable doing that and instead contacted Fain. She was thrilled at the interest the school expressed in the book.

“I was also really glad he didn’t charge me any overdue fees,” she said to the students.

Asked how her father, who went to school in the Springfield, Mass., area, got the book, Havens said no one knows for sure. But then she outlined her own research for the students. Poring through family genealogy records and family stories, she pieced together possible answers.

Her family did indeed have ties to Norwich. Her father’s great-grandfather, James L. Beebe, was “a farmer settled near Norwich,” according to the book “The Leffingwell Record: a Genealogy of the Descendants of Lieut. Thomas Leffingwell,” a founder of Norwich. Beebe married Sarah Maria Leffingwell in 1863.

Their son, Fred Beebe, married Etta Carrol Beebe, and Havens’ father thinks he might have received the book after she died.

But the family genealogy chart showed another possible source. Fred and Etta Beebe had three sons, including Frederick Charles Beebe, Havens' father’s uncle. He married Ruth Hathaway Keigwin. “Is that name familiar?” she asked the students, and reminded them that the book’s author was Henry Keigwin. But she had no information on a possible relation.

NFA officials also searched for records or photos of the author. But NFA didn’t publish annual yearbooks until 1913 — 16 years after the geometry book was published.

Yet another possible source of the book was Etta Beebe’s sister, Grace Willey — another prominent Norwich-area name. Grace Willey’s daughter, Bernice Willey, taught school in Norwich, possibly English, and might have become a principal. But the family doesn’t know what school she taught at, Havens said.

Havens had her own questions for the students about the history of Wequonnoc School. A day earlier, the students hosted Taftville fire Chief Timothy Jencks, the unofficial Taftville historian.

Jencks told the students Wequonnoc School had consisted of two wooden buildings, one for kindergarten through fourth grade and one for fifth through eighth grades. Built in 1872, both were located on the same grounds and were torn down when the current building was constructed in the 1950s.

The geometry book, however, contains complex problems and text likely meant for older students. With the giant Ponemah Mill cotton manufacturing plant dominating the village, Jencks said many Taftville youths did not go to high school. They worked in the mill after graduating from Wequonnoc, or some in the heavily Catholic village entered religious vocations.

In Potomac Falls, Va., Croft, Havens’ father, loved the mystery and students’ interest.

“That’s an incredible story,” he said in a telephone interview last Friday.

Croft never lived in Norwich but has strong and fond memories of the Rose City, as his family often visited relatives there. The Willeys lived on Asylum Street, he said, and other relatives lived on Washington Street. He recalled that the Asylum Street house had a lot of Civil War military regalia and souvenirs. His grandmother’s father served in the Civil War in the Connecticut Volunteers, he said.

“We used to go down and visit the relatives and I remember so much about them and the town,” Croft said of Norwich. “This is a great remembrance coming back to me.”

c.bessette@theday.com