On this day in 1879, the first official schoolhouse in Newhall was erected near the northeast corner of Walnut and Ninth Streets – two blocks off what was then considered Newhall’s Main Street (now Railroad Avenue, not to be confused with today’s Main Street, formerly Spruce Street).

The school served grades one through eight and averaged just seven students per day. Despite 53 school-age children living nearby, daily attendance never exceeded 13.

The photograph features John Ellsworth Wright, who served as teacher and principal from 1890 to 1899. Until 1892, Newhall School had only one teacher. That year, a second position was added.

Wright was born August 21, 1863, in Ohio, to Martin Van Buren Wright and Margaret Delia Davis. He began teaching in the Los Angeles area in 1887 and worked in three districts before joining Newhall.

On August 8, 1895, Wright married fellow teacher Minnie Nancy Campbell, who had joined the Newhall School in 1894 and remained until 1898. 

They had three children: daughter Ethel Gladys Wright, born in 1897; son Glenn Ellsworth Wright, born in 1908 and daughter Grace Margaret Wright, born in 1909.

By 1900, the Wrights were living in Whittier. In 1908, John became principal at Miramonte Elementary School in South Los Angeles, where he remained until his retirement in 1936.

During the Great Depression, the L.A. School District reduced the school year from 200 to 193 days and cut salaries by 6.5 percent. Wright’s salary after the cut was $3,522.25, placing him among the top 2.9 percent of full-time district employees.

In August 1935, Wright was one of approximately 200 signers of a paid advertisement in the Los Angeles Times supporting the L.A. School Board’s effort to combat communism in public schools. Among the other signers was the Gladding-McBean company, then led by Atholl McBean, who was also president of The Newhall Land and Farming Company.

Fears of communism had persisted in the United States since the 1917 Russian Revolution and the formation of the Communist Party USA in 1919. 

That same year, California enacted a “criminal syndicalism” law targeting political radicals, including members of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), which had been active in the Newhall and Saugus areas.

By 1933, as some turned to communism as a potential solution to the economic crisis, California amended its Education Code to allow school districts to dismiss teachers for Communist Party membership. The law was extended in 1935 with a new provision allowing teachers to defend themselves in court. In 1937, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that mere membership in a political group like the Communist Party or IWW was protected under the First Amendment, unless actual subversive acts were committed.

John Ellsworth Wright retired in 1936 and passed away at age 93 on July 29, 1956. He is buried at Rose Hills Memorial Park in Whittier.

To read yesterday’s Today in History, click here.

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