Below is one of my lectures from my online class Pioneering Women
of the West. I will be teaching this class next month at the Hearts Through History campus. In PIONEERING WOMEN OF THE WEST, you’ll learn about the
western movement, the treacherous journey hundreds of thousands people took and
of the lives of specific women who helped shape the West, intentionally or not.
Some women went looking for a better life; others followed their man into the
wilderness.
FMI and to register click
HERE.
Frontier Teachers
By Anna Kathryn
Lanier
The life of a
frontier teacher was not glamorous, but it was exciting, including the
‘getting there’ part.
Mary Gray McLench
grew up in Vermont, and taught there for several years before answering a call
from Vermont governor and National Board of Popular Education agent William
Slade in 1850 to go to the Oregon Territory to establish schools and teach. Mary agreed to go when she learned her aunt
and uncle were also moving west. Unlike her relatives, Mary decided to travel
by ship instead of making an overland trip.
The National Board gave Mary and her four travelling companions (also teachers
heading west) $350 for passage and a new saddle. They took a ship to the Isthmus of Panama,
where they disembarked and traveled by mule over the mountains of Panama. Once on the Pacific side, the group boarded
another ship bound for San Francisco.
The unmarried
women were accompanied on their trip by Samuel R. Thurston, a delegate to
congress from Oregon Territory. Unfortunately,
Samuel contracted what Mary called Isthmus of Panama fever during the trip and
died shortly after they started their journey to San Francisco. In her memoir, Mary stated that if he’d been
someone other than a dignitary, he’d have been buried at sea. Instead, his body was enshrouded in the U.S.
flag and he was buried in Acapulco once the ship reached that port.
Two other
politicians traveling on the ship offered their services as escort for the
women. After traveling 5,000 miles and
spending a month at sea, the women reached San Francisco on April 23,
1851. The city, according to Mary, was
both expensive and considerably busy. The
teachers only stayed one night before continuing on to Oregon. A steamer ship carried them up the Columbia
River to Portland, Oregon. They stayed
in the small town for six days before boarding a flatboat, covered with an
awning, for Oregon City. What should
have been a short journey turned into an adventure when the boat ran
aground. The boat was tied to a tree and
the crew made ready to spend the night, though the lights of Oregon City could
be seen ahead. Although the crew had
food to eat, the women had none and evidently, weren’t offered any of the
crews’ food. The captain did have some
mattresses he rolled out for the women to use for the night.
When the sun rose
the next morning, provisions were sent down the river to the stranded
women. Once refreshed, they disembarked
where they were stranded and walked through a stumpy bushy pasture to Oregon
City. Mary liked the small town much
better than Portland. It was here that the teachers were given their
assignments. Three remained in Oregon
City, one was sent to Durham, one to Forest Grove and Mary went to Tualatin, 13
miles south of Portland. Mary taught for
five terms before she married Benjamin McLench and settled into the life of a
farmer’s wife and mother of four.
Mary Webber
graduated from a school in Mitchell County, Kansas and took her teaching exam
in the spring of 1881. Shortly after
passing the exam, she took a teaching position at a one-room schoolhouse in
Blue Hill. On her first day, she had eleven boys and five girls…sixteen
children in a building designed for a half dozen. The furnishings were as sparse as the prairie
surrounding it. There was a chair for
the teacher and boards balanced on rocks for the students to sit on. There was no blackboard, no slates, and no
writing desks.
Two weeks into
her term, Mary writes about her situation.
“If only I had larger scholars that were farther advanced, I might like
it….If I can get to Beloit I will get me a grammar, and some kind of writing
system. But I am so far from town that I
don’t expect to get there until after school is out.” A few days later she writes, “I do wish those
seats would come!” The locals promise to
go get them, but not until after they’ve planted their corn.
On June 9th,
she writes of having to discipline a student.
The “little chap blacked his face in school-time, and made a real
jubilee. I don’t like to punish a pupil,
and I have very little of it to do.” She kept the boy after school as
punishment. Mary finished her school
term and then went on to teach at Blue Hill and in two other Kansas counties
throughout the 1880’s. In June of 1890, she joined the staff of the Kansas
Industrial School, where she headed the sewing department. That same year she met Robert H. Gravatt and
a few months later, the two married.
Mary's diary can be read HERE.
Now, an
interesting encounter happened to teacher Sister Blandina Segale. Sister
Blandina was first sent to Colorado to teach.
She also had some knowledge of healing and in addition to teaching, she
hoped to open a hospital in Trinidad to care for the Native Americans, orphans,
miners, and injured outlaws. Her
students, whose respect she had earned on the first day of school for both
standing up to them and knowing how to speak Spanish, approached her one day
about an injured member of Billy the Kid’s gang, Happy Jack. The man was badly wounded and not expected to
live.
She took the
outlaw in, cared for him and in the end, converted him. I’m sure this made the Sister very happy, as
her main goal was to save souls. She
looked after Happy Jack for nine months before he died of his injuries.
In 1876, Sister
Blandina was transferred to Santa Fe, New Mexico and a very dilapidated
school. “There were no black-boards,
charts, maps, desks, books—nothing but the teacher and the orphans.” She sent
out a request for teacher’s pay and this money was used to secure books and
other supplies. Also, she contacted
those she had known in Colorado and asked them for help. Within a few days, the
floors were replaced, windows were installed and a new blackboard was hung.
Before her school term was to begin, she
returned to Trinidad to visit her sister (also a nun) who had recently arrived
from Ohio. On the trip back, news of
stage attacks by Billy the Kid’s gang ran rampant. Her fellow coach companions busied themselves
with cleaning and loading their guns while Sister Blandina and her fellow nun
busied themselves with praying. Soon
enough, riders approached from every side and caught up with the stage. Seeing who one of the men were, Sister
Blandina adjusted her bonnet and looked Billy the Kid straight in the eye. Recognizing her in return, he “raised his
large-brimmed hat with a wave and a bow.
Before turning and riding away, he stopped to give us some of his
wonderful antics on bronco maneuvers.”
She continued to pray that the outlaw would change his way and was
saddened to learn of his death at the hands of Pat Garrett.
BTW, you can even
refer to a previously mentioned pioneer woman...Tabitha Brown…for teaching
information. Check out Oregon sites for
information on her. She helped establish
a college.
FRONTIER TEACHERS: Stories of Heroic Women
of the Old West by Chris Enss
Copyright© 2012
Anna Kathryn Lanier
Click HERE to register for the class Pioneering Women of the West, starting Nov. 1st.
