“What grade are you in, little girl?” asked Christopher Collier, the Connecticut State Historian and a UConn professor after having seen a monograph which Jessie, who was one of the brightest youngsters I’ve ever been privileged to have in class, had prepared on letters of the Woodbridge family written between 1792 and 1854.

“I’m in seventh grade, sir,” replied Jessie, which, of course, impressed Dr. Collier, who usually taught upper level undergraduates and graduate students.

Being a Husky supporter, his last comment was a recommendation to me that I take my small group of students to the dairy bar, which I assured him was the next stop on our agenda. Anyone visiting UConn should make it a point to visit the dairy bar run by the Department of Nutritional Sciences. It’s probably the best ice cream I’ve ever eaten, and while a UConn undergrad, I ate my fair share of it.

What prompted our trip to Storrs was “All Our Yesterdays,” a book by novelist Janet C. Robertson and her husband James, a UConn history professor. The Robertsons bought an old house in Hampton and discovered a trove of letters and documents in the attic about the original owners of the house. These formed the basis of their research on the Taintor family and the resulting book.

I contacted the Robertsons and they very graciously agreed to meet with a small group of my middle school researchers. I also made arrangements to visit with the late Dr. Collier, who with his brother James, authored a number of books aimed at middle school aged youngsters, including one set in part in Groton, War Comes to Willy Freeman, one volume in a trilogy of historic fiction books dealing with the Revolution.

Dr. Collier once explained to me that he started his teaching career as a junior high history teacher in Brooklyn. He found that if he expected his students to read history, it had to be more interesting than the typical textbooks, a finding with which I concur.

This trip was one of a few I took while at Fitch Middle School, and I thank the various administrators at Fitch Middle School for whom I’ve worked in allowing me the latitude to have kids involved in special projects and providing professional days and the funding for trips such as our UConn visit.

What Jessie and the Robertsons worked with is known as primary sources, material created during the time period being studied, the stuff of history.

A professional educator who was excited about a new concept in teaching history, the use of primary sources, once visited our middle school team to share her enthusiasm and recommend that I try it. I thanked her very much for her interest. When she left, our English teacher looked at me and said, “Bob, how did you keep a straight face?”

In an earlier article I discussed the work done by Deb and Sarah with the Barrows correspondence. In fact, the Barrows story is what I told my classes each year on the second day of school. (As most teachers can tell you, the first day is mostly nuts and bolts; class rules, fire drill and Code Red procedures, homework policy, and so forth.)

On the second day I’d relate the Barrows story, in some detail, beginning, of course, with “Once upon a time.” I’d then ask my students how did they think I knew so much about these people. They often guessed that they were family and I would assure them that I had never even met any of them. The next guess was that I read it in a book. I explained that I had seen only two sentences about Arthur Barrows in a book.

I finally would hold up a three ring binder full of letters, most of them transcribed, and tell them that this was one of several such binders. I knew as much as I did because of the research my students had done using primary sources, i.e. the family correspondence.

As time went on and the Internet grew, various websites proved useful. A couple of sites now include my students’ work.

This led into a lesson on primary and secondary sources. When asked what primary sources a historian in the future might use to write a biography of one of them in the future after they became rich and famous, the students were able to compile quite a list, the most obvious being a birth certificate. We added newspaper clippings about activities in which they were engaged, photographs, school records, medical records, baptismal certificates, baby books, photographs and many others. None of them had two great sources, marriages licenses and death certificates!

Our next class would be devoted to working with a primary source document, a letter written in Norwich in 1792 by Ephraim Woodbridge, to Timothy Woodbridge, in Colchester. I would display the original, showing how it was one piece of very good paper with high rag content, folded, sealed and mailed (though I suspect this letter was hand carried, and did not enter the mail).

When given copies of the letter, many of the kids protested that they couldn’t read cursive, but the handwriting is so good that almost everyone was able to transcribe it, after having had the two forms of the letter “s” explained.

Young Ephraim was a student of Mr. Kinne, and was probably about 14 or so, most likely studying for admission to Yale. I explained that Yale was founded to educate men for the Congregational ministry and being able to read Latin and Greek was a requirement for admission.

Many members of the Woodbridge family had been clergymen. In fact, the first minister in Groton was also named Ephraim Woodbridge, and was probably the writer’s great-grandfather.

As Jessie pointed out in her monograph, the fact that Ephraim begins the letter, “Honored and Dear Parents,” strongly suggests the relationship between Ephraim and Timothy. One line in the letter always brought a chuckle from more than one student: “I hope I am a good boy for I find that those who behave well are beloved by everybody while those who do not behave well are despised and hated.”

Ephraim’s identity is still something of a mystery. Research shows that Timothy was married to Dorothy Crary of Groton. (The Crary Burying Ground is in Old Mystic on the corner of Route 184 and Packer Road.) However, there is no online record of Timothy and Dorothy having any children, which doesn’t necessarily mean that they didn’t, but that Ephraim’s birth simply wasn’t recorded and thus wouldn’t make it into any genealogical database.

Here’s where it gets really confusing. Dorothy’s sister Hannah Crary married Abner Brownell and had a son in 1802 named Ephraim Woodbridge Brownell. Is it possible that the Ephraim who wrote the letter died at a fairly young age and that his aunt Hannah named a son after her nephew?

This is a possibility since this letter was included with a collection of Brownell family correspondence that was sold when the old twine mill in East Haddam was replaced with a newer structure. Also, Dorothy Woodbridge, who died in 1838, lived with her nephew Edward Brownell after she was widowed in 1829.

Finally, to further confuse my young teen genealogical and historical sleuths, I pointed out that it was not unusual, at least in the Colonial period and possibly after, for parents who lost a child to name the next child of the same gender after his or her late sibling. Also, last names often became middle or even first names in later generations. Crary became a Brownell given name.

Jessie wasn’t the last student to work on the Woodbridge project. Ashley also enjoyed transcribing so much that she worked on it for two school years and then took it home over summer vacation, all the while playing on two soccer teams at the same time!

As my administrators realized, in my classes kids weren’t just studying history, they were doing history, and more than a few enjoyed it. As one of my eighth graders once said, “We learn history by poking our noses into other people’s business.”

Robert F. Welt of Mystic is a retired longtime teacher in Groton Public Schools.