The Haddonfield library hosted some elementary-school students on July 20 so they could learn about Frederick Sutton, a borough resident who died aboard the Titanic.
Andrea Elson, an emerging technology technician at the library, got the idea for the event after seeing a post about Sutton.
“I just happened to stumble across that there’s a Haddonfield tie-in,” she explained, “and we wanted to again highlight that and mix it all – the sources – together. It was probably a year or two ago that someone had posted the memorial gravestone and a ‘Did you know?’
“And I was like, ‘No. Doesn’t come up in conversation.'”
Children visited Sutton’s gravesite at the Haddonfield Baptist Cemetery and heard from Historical Society archivist David Platt, who showed papers the facility had about Sutton from his family and old maps that pointed to where he lived in town.
Sutton was 61 and a first-class passenger on the doomed Titanic, after it was boarded in Southampton, England, headed for New York City. Last year, a UK auction house sold several of his personal affects for $227,832.
Cathy Decampli, also an emerging technology librarian, eventually found out that the only reason Sutton was on the Titanic was because he got sick.
“I had no idea this guy even existed,” she acknowledged. “It’s so cool … The woman at the cemetery was saying the only reason he was on the Titanic is because he went over to England for business, caught cold and decided to come home early.”
The students put together clips about Sutton for a video posted to the library’s Instagram page.
The Titanic, Elson noted, is appealing to everyone.
“Kids of all ages, including adults, are kind of captivated by the Titanic story,” she noted. “I think it’s dramatic, it’s interesting and it feels like it couldn’t happen to us right now. You’re not taking a big ship across the Atlantic. So just knowing that that draws people in, kids, those books are always out circulating, high readers.”
Registration for the event was full, with around nine kids present in third to fifth grade. Earlier in the year, students worked with Elson and the library to create clips of the five New Jersey signers of the Declaration of Independence, using AI to make them “talk.” Their portraits were moved from borough hall to the Haddon Fortnightly by people in Colonial garb.
Elson described the Sutton presentation and others as opportunities to meet kids working on their own projects.
“What we’ve tried to do is to use technology to kind of enhance historical learning or experiences …” she pointed out. “So the kids were in charge of that content. And it was another idea of merging technology with history, just trying to give them a little flavor of that in-person stuff, the tangible stuff.”
Decampli said part of the challenge was keeping the students engaged.
“You can just kind of see the engagement,” she observed. “Cause it’s not school, they’re not forced to be here. So you have to monitor the whole time and then you have to adjust.”
Tech librarian Andrea Elson (right) helped children create a video this year about Frederick Sutton, who lived in Haddonfield with his family. Old maps also pointed to where he lived in town
