Vintage School Supplies

Whether school in 2020 is at a school building or at home distance with online education, there were very important vintage school supplies need decades ago by our ancestors.

Here are some vintage school supplies not used for years.

The use of a quill pen with a metal writing tip and the feather at the top of the handle. These were fairly inexpensive and the metal tip could be replaced easily. This pen would be dipped into an ink well to have ink to write on the tip.

Replacing the quill came the wooden handle pen with a metal writing tip at the end. That tip was easy to remove to replace or put in a different style tip. This style today is used for calligraphy writing – very stylist.

If your ancestor had a leaking fountain pen, the males especially like having a pocket protector. Made of leather or plastic this in a man’s shirt pocket held the pens and if any ink leaked it went into the protector not the shirt. These pocket protectors were used even when ball-point pens became popular.

Many of the frontier schools needed to have each student with a small slate board and chalk, instead of a pen and paper. Being reusable saved money.

Your ancestor used a rectangular wooden box to hold their pencils for school.

Long gone are the traditional black and white composition notebooks. Added to the inside of many composition notebooks were charts in the front with conversions for distances and measurements, the times tables, and grammar rules.

Photos: School classroom of 1940s-1950s; Quill Pen; Pocket Protector; Slate Board and chalk; and Composition Notebook.

Related FamilyTree.com Blogs:

School Life

School Lunches

Ancestors Back to School