Florence L. Anderson Scrapbook

Florence Lovisa Anderson (known to her classmates as “Flop”) was born in 1910 to Emil and Jennie Anderson who had emigrated to Naugatuck, CT from Sweden in 1901.  Florence would live most of her 92 years in Naugatuck. Upon graduation from Naugatuck High School, she enrolled in the Danbury Normal School in 1928 where she became the president of the Cooperative Government Association (the precursor to the Student Government Association).  According to the meeting minutes she oversaw debates over student standards and conduct, designs for class rings, the number of days in the school year (DNS was only in session 180 days while the State mandated 183), and the theft of a valuable fountain pen. Anderson and her classmates (including Davida Blakeslee Foy) documented their adventures in scrapbooks that are both held by the WCSU Archives.  Anderson inscribed Blakeslee Foy’s scrapbook with this short verse:

Despite her apparent romantic frustrations, Anderson graduated from the Normal School in 1929 and by the 1930 census, she is listed as working as a teacher and living with her parents on Park Avenue in Naugatuck.  According to the 1940 census, Anderson must have been lured away from the teaching profession for a time; "clerk" is her (and her mother's) listed profession, and her employer, a rubber company.  By 1941 Anderson had apparently returned to the  education field as that year she authored: Memorandum on the use of art and music study material, a short book published by the Carnegie Corporation (https://lccn.loc.gov/42014994)

In the years following World War II, she, according to numerous mentions in the Naugatuck Daily News, worked for Naugatuck High School as a guidance counselor where she appears to have remained active until the 1970s; in 1954, she was vice president of the Naugatuck Teachers’ League.  Additionally, she was chairman of the AAUW (American Association of University Women) and was active in the organization through the 1970s.

This exhibit is a virtual representation of Anderson's Danbury Normal School scrapbook from 1929.  To preserve the materials inside the scrapbook, it had to be disassembled, but not until each page's original form was captured.  Because many pages had small photographs and folded materials pasted in, it is difficult to "experience" in digital form the layout of the pages.  Therefore, we designed this exhibit which shows each page as it was created with each additional element unfolded or blown up.

You may cycle through the pages in this exhibit or view a pdf of the scrapbook in its original form by clicking here. 

Sources:

• Census data retrieved via ancestry.com
• Naugatuck Daily News via newspaperarchive.com
• Single portrait image derived from the Naugatuck High School Yearbook, 1927; retrieved via ancestry.com
• Group photo: detail of the DNS class of 1929 portrait, WCSU Archives
• Davida Blakeslee Foy scrapbook, WCSU Archives
• 1928-1930 Danbury Normal School Catalogs