History of the Collection
History of the Bancroft School
Founded in 1883 by former Philadelphia schoolteacher Margaret Bancroft, the Bancroft School started out with a single rented house in Haddonfield, New Jersey. Bancroft had observed that some of her students had struggles that traditional schooling did not support, and decided to found a school that was tailored to supporting unique educational needs. She founded the school at a time in history when disability was poorly understood and often demonized, with the goal of providing support and understanding for disabled children.
You can learn more about the history of the Bancroft School from their website timeline, which discusses the growth of the school after our collection's time period. Currently, the Bancroft organization has expanded beyond schools into care facilities and other programs for disabled individuals, with locations across the state of New Jersey.
Rutgers' Acquisition
The Bancroft School Collection has been at the Paul Robeson Library since 2019. It was donated by Toni Pergolin, the President of Bancroft NeuroHealth. Bancroft contacted the Special Collections at Rutgers Camden for many reasons. Our archive is an academic institution, firstly, and it has close proximity to Haddonfield, where the original school building was established. Rutgers—Camden also has the first Childhood Studies PhD program in the nation, which both parties thought would benefit greatly from such a wealth of resources about education.
The collection includes academic and medical admissions records, photographs of the grounds, the teachers, and the students, and many of the items from the school’s academic library. The items span in time from the founding of the school until its expansion in the 1930s.
The acquisition was overseen by former head librarian Julie Still, who spearheaded research efforts into the academic and medical records for the former students. She did genealogical research into the students, both to make the records accessible for everyone and to protect the former students whose information is recorded there from publicization of their medical and academic information. Each year, new records become available for researchers to use.
Why is the Bancroft School Collection important?
“A lot of our collection is just general campus history, but that we have a collection that directly ties to one of our programs, I think that’s something special about it.”
— Bart Everts, Special Collections at Paul Robeson Library
Preserving such an important piece of education history is important on its own, but Rutgers Camden has a special connection to the Bancroft School. Not only is the campus located close to Haddonfield, where the school originated, and Philadelphia, where Margaret Bancroft had the idea for its founding, Rutgers Camden is a pioneer in education as well.
Because of Rutgers Camden’s first-of-its-kind Childhood Studies PhD department, the collection is of special importance to our school. Any Rutgers student interested in local history, childhood studies, education, disability history, medicine, or psychology should consider looking into the collection.
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