Pageant on Central School Lawn, 1917

Pageant on Central School Lawn, 1917

This photo was previously named Graduation on Central School Lawn
School children of various ages are seated in front of Central School (now City Hall) 121 W. Calhoun St.
A large number of the girls are dressed in white with white bows and some boys are dressed in black robes. Small children parade in front carrying stars on sticks while a woman plays the piano.
Flags are draped from the windows and some spectators sit in the open windows. One woman on the left is holding a May pole.
The audience of parents and siblings sit on chairs or in open cars at the back of the picture.
The date was first determined by the Illinois license plate number--six numbers were assigned from 1916 to 1922 and the car looks like a Dodge Brother Roadster of 1916 or 1917. The date on the right corner of the license looks more like a 7 than a 6. This allowed a search for an article in the newspaper:

Woodstock Sentinel June 5, 1917 p1

PUBLIC SCHOOL CHILDREN WILL GIVE PAGEANT

First Six Grades to Give Entertainment on School Grounds Friday

Mother Goose Characters By Little Tots

HOUSE THAT JACK BUILT

The first six grades of the Woodstock public schools will take part In a Mother Goose entertainment to be given on the high school lawn next Friday, June 8, at 3 p. m. "The House That Jack Built" is the title of the en­tertainment, it being an arrangement from the operetta for children as written by Riley and Gaynor.
"The House That Jack Built" will be in the nature of a pageant, the principal, or Mother Goose charact­ers, to be taken by the little people of the first and second grades. The children will be seated in bleachers to be raised on the school lawn, and the rest of the grounds will be ap­portioned in sections for spectators, seats to be arranged in the fore­ground for mothers of the children, and older people; back of that, inside the curbing, standing room, and last­ly outside the curb a parking place for automobiles. The street will be closed so that autos may be parked to front on the curb.
Miss Garnett, the popular and effi­cient supervisor of music in the pub­lic schools, is directing the pageant, which promises to be a novel and highly enjoyable entertainment. Out- of-door school entertainments are ex­ceedingly popular, and will be some­thing of an innovation in Woodstock, this being, we believe, the first of the kind ever to to given by the school children here.
The cast of characters follows:
Mother Goose Darlene Kennedy
Old King Cole John McConnell
Queen of Hearts Hazel Getchel
Knave of Hearts..... Joseph Bartell
Little Bo-Peep ......Vivian Erickson
Little Boy Blue.....Clarence Rogers
Little Tommy Tucker.....Albert Lee Jagers
Jack Spratt ....Raymond Sweetland
Mrs. Jack Spratt Hazel Thomas
Jack and Jill..... Carleton Billings, Margaret Stametz
Crooked Man James Brink
Old Woman Who Lived In a Shoe... Emma Nicolai
Little Miss Muffet,…..Dorothy Hokanson
Man All Tattered and Torn ....Haydwin Kiel
Maiden All Forlorn ... .Mary Doolittle
Priest All Shaven and Shorn......Irwin Brewer
Man In the Moon ….. Harley DeWolf
Pipe Bearer to Old King Cole …..Lawrence Francis
Bowl Bearer to Old King Cole...... Clifford Gregory
Fiddlers Three ....Donald McNamara, Elmer Hoag, Elmer Sonderberg
Three Crows.....Eugene McShane, Carl Zimmerman, Kenneth Krull
Fairies, Brownies, Blackbirds
May Pole Dance, Red, White and Blue, by Pupils of Miss Hallisey's Room
Large Chorus
There will be a chorus of 120 girls’ voices, from 4th, 5th, and 6th grades. Another feature of the entertainment will be the folk-dances.

Sesqui scan

1917