Danbury Normal School
In 1903, a Connecticut educator named John Perkins sat in a popular restaurant on Main St. in Danbury with the Normal School Committee celebrating the State Senate’s vote that would lead to the creation of what would become known as WestConn. Despite the fact that no facilities yet existed for a school, Perkins quickly recruited students and hired faculty and classes began in September of 1904.[i] Among the forty or so first class of students was the 19 year-old Katherine Butler. Perkins appears to have made no issue of Butler’s racial background and Butler’s application is no different from other students in the class[ii]. The new students’ education began with Butler and her classmates being crowded into the attic of Danbury High School because the sole building that would house the school for a number of years, now known as "Old Main," was still under construction. It would not be until September of 1905 that John Perkins would address the entire student body he had been so instrumental in bringing together under that roof.
[i] The Danbury Normal School was founded in 1903, but 1906 was the first class of graduates from its then 2-year program. A student who had maintained a standard of conduct befitting a teacher, attained the required standard of scholarship in every prescribed subject, exhibited a fair degree of skill in teaching and governing children, passed the state examination and secured at least an elementary certificate would be awarded a diploma. Besides John Perkins, there were 16 teachers, 8 of whom were in the lab schools in which the DNS students were required to teach and of the 43 seniors, 34 received diplomas and another 6 received certificates in 1906.
[ii] There is no note of Butler’s race on the application card or on her transcript. Routinely, municipal and census records indicated whether a person was white, black or mulatto.
![RG8_1906_detail[1].jpg](https://archives.library.wcsu.edu/omeka/files/fullsize/Western_Connecticut_State_University_Photographs_and_Miscellanea_RG8/2091/RG8_1906_detail[1].jpg "RG8_1906_detail[1].jpg")
In Butler's two years at the Normal School, Butler excelled in drawing and the “the art of teaching.” However, her education was likely marred by the fact that beginning in early 1905, her father, Nelson, began to suffer from dementia[iii] and finally died of "manual thrombosis of the heart" after being treated for 3 days in Middletown, CT. Her father was just short of 66 years old and his children were left with an 8-acre farm on Clapboard Ridge. Nelson James Butler was buried in a family plot where no markers are still standing in Danbury’s Wooster Cemetery.[iv] Katherine and her siblings transferred ownership of the farm to their mother in 1906, and Mary Jennie Butler retained the property until 1912.
[iii] Butler’s Death record states that he was under treatment for "organic dementia" for 18 month prior to his death.
[iv] Nelson is buried with his wife "Mary",~1850-1939; two of his children: Minnie F. Wilson (Butler), and Howard N. Butler, 1902-1969; his sister in-law Francis Parish Christian, d. 1894; and a 1 year-old infant named Austin F. Green, 1903-1904. Nelson purchased the lot for $240 in the 1890s.
Burchia graduated from the Danbury High School class of 1915 where her nickname was “Burch” and she was thought to be studious and ambitious to make her mark.
Stewart was accepted to the DNS in 1915 where she received her degree in 1917. After graduating, she taught school in the Danbury area through the 1920s.[i] Burchia and her sister Alpha both were registered Republican voters in Danbury and voted regularly in elections through the 1920s. In 1924, Burchia was accepted at Columbia’s Teachers College and was pursuing a BS in education as of 1926. At the same time, she took a teaching position in Trenton, NJ at the recently constructed New Lincoln School – listed at the time as a "negro-only" junior high school. The school still stands today.
Burchia Stewart did not complete her degree at Columbia probably due to the fact that she contracted tuberculosis in November or December of 1928. She passed away of "Pulmonary Tuberculosis" in May of 1929 at age 34 in Danbury. Tuberculosis was prevalent at that time and schools were recognized as likely places where transmission of the disease could take place. Though, nothing is known of her treatment regimen, methods used in the 1920s could also be brutal and primitive.[ii] Burchia was buried in Wooster Cemetery but no stone marks her grave. According to her obituary, her funeral was well attended by her family, DNS classmates, teaching colleagues and members of the Danbury Advent Church (located on Madison St.). Burchia’s mother, Lucy, died two years later in 1931.[iii]
[i] No record was found that showed which school employed her but her vocation in the Danbury directory is listed "teacher."
[ii] See: Fevered lives : tuberculosis in American culture since 1870 by Katherine Ott. 1996, Harvard University Press. Ott describes treatment for TB as well as how many whites believed TB emanated from the living conditions of immigrants, the poor and African-Americans (pg. 120).
[iii][iii] In the 1930 Danbury directory, Lucy is listed as a widow; however, Frank had bought and was living in a house on Rowan and Walnut Streets and died in June of 1935 – four years after Lucy.