Robert Frost removed his coat to show the ruffians at Methuen's Second Grammar School he wasn't someone they should mess with.

It was 1893, a time when it was common for teachers to strike unruly students. According to historians, that's what the 18-year-old rookie educator did.

But Frost's plan backfired. It enticed the 11- to 17-year-old boys, and some cheered and took off their coats and sweaters, ready for a fight, according to Michael Hughes, a retired Methuen, Mass., High School history teacher who has researched the incident.

"He hadn't realized until that moment that some of the boys were taller and bigger than he was," Hughes wrote in "Robert Frost and the Numbskulls," a three-page, unpublished article about the iconic poet's violent run-in.

All hell broke loose in the classroom, and a student named Johnny Howe pulled a knife on Frost. Frost twisted Howe's wrist until he dropped the weapon, then Frost flailed Howe with a switch, according to Hughes.

Hughes came across this story about 20 years ago when he was teaching a local history course at Methuen High School. He read the tale in Lawrence Thompson's book, "Robert Frost: The Early Years, 1874-1915."

Teachers have long been required to take attendance. In Frost's time, they had to write the students' names by hand and sign an attendance register. Hughes realized the high school had registers on file in the school's media center dating back to around the 1870s, so he went looking for documentation of Frost's class.

"Lo and behold, in his own handwriting, there was this class," Hughes said last week. "His name was up at the top — 'Robert Frost.' It corresponded almost perfectly to what Thompson wrote in his biography about how he dealt with these kids."

The document shows attendance from Jan. 2 to March 24, 1893, and Frost's signature is on it. The 16th student listed is John Howe, and it shows that he was 12 years old.

Hughes wrote his article and hoped to have it published, but that never happened. He stored the register with other artifacts in the basement at the Masonic Lodge on Broadway, and didn't make a big deal about the find.

Hughes, now the chairman of the city's Commission on Housing and Preservation of Historic City Archives, recently mentioned the register to Matthew Kraunelis, chief of staff for Mayor William Manzi. Kraunelis is a Frost fan and a poet himself.

Kraunelis asked the city's historic planner, Lynn Smiledge, to retrieve the document. Smiledge found it in the lodge's basement in June, 2 feet away from the floodwater that plagues the building.

Another flood soaked the basement at the lodge a month after Smiledge retrieved the book; the water would have damaged the piece if it was still there, Kraunelis said. The register is now being kept in a safe at City Hall.

The attendance register — a bound book in good condition — could be valuable.

"Anything with his signature on it is worth a lot of money," Kraunelis said. "To Methuen, it's priceless because it is really a physical document of his time here."

Auctioneers on the Internet say items signed by Frost are worth thousands. For example, a copy of "North of Boston" with, "To John Adams Lowe from Robert Frost in all friendliness" written on the cover is worth an estimated $3,000 to $4,000 on the Web site liveauctioneers.com. A hand-written and signed poem titled "Evening in a Sugar Orchard" is valued at $800 to $1,200.

Kraunelis and Manzi said they hope to put Frost's attendance register on permanent public display. Kraunelis showed it at the 12th annual Robert Frost Festival in Lawrence, Mass., on Oct. 25, where it was seen by James Sitar, archive editor for the Poetry Foundation in Chicago.

"I know it's an important record of Frost's early life," Sitar said. "It's something that should be preserved, and it's something, to my knowledge, that wasn't known of before this discovery."

Frost attended Dartmouth College after graduating Lawrence High School. He left after a semester and came to Methuen to help his mother, Bell Frost, a teacher who was having trouble with her students.

Second Grammar School was located at the corner of Lawrence and Park streets, which is now the parking lot for the Methuen School Department's administrative offices.

The Rev. Charles Oliphant, minister at the First Church Congregational, was the School Board chairman and a Frost family friend. He agreed to get the board to hire Frost to substitute for his mother. The younger Frost planned to straighten out the students so his mother could resume teaching at a lower grade level with less stress, according to Hughes.

Frost lived at 635 Prospect St. in the early 1900s. He temporarily left teaching after his stint ended in March 1893. He took a job as a light trimmer at the Arlington Woolen Mill on the Methuen-Lawrence line and saw some of his former students working there. The youths attacked him one winter night when he was walking home. They knocked him down and beat him until someone came to the rescue, Hughes said.

"One can only speculate on what would have happened to the young man who would become America's favorite poet if that good samaritan hadn't rescued him from the clutches of the 'numbskulls' formerly of Methuen's Second Grammar School," Hughes wrote in his article.