CAROOTS-L Archives

From: Rose Terry <>
Subject: SCHOOLMARMS ON THE FRONTIER
Date: Mon, 23 Nov 1998 11:33:29 -0800

Here's something fun I wanted to share that I found on the
OHROOTS-L mailList:

SCHOOLMARMS ON THE FRONTIER

GO WEST YOUNG MAN-was also heeded by a virtually unnoticed group of
women.

Nearly 600 single young women from Northern New England and upper New
York State, sponsored by the National Board of Popular Education,
participated in the Westward Migration in the decade following 1846. It
is estimated that probably close to a thousand single women teachers
journeyed from the East to teach in the West and South before the Civil
War.

EVEN earlier in the 1830s, 88 teachers from Zipah Grant's Female
Seminary in Ipswich, Mass. answered the call to start schools in the
West and South.

Grant established an association in 1835 to lend money to teachers who
wish to train at Ipswich for teaching positions in the West. Her plan,
combining specific training and financial aid with placement in the
West, is said to have been a model for the National Board's program a
decade later.

IT is not unusual for a genealogist to discover an ancestor who was a
teacher "out west." Then out west may have been Ohio, Michigan,
llinois, Indiana or Missouri in the early 19th century. Although the
women sent by the National Board pledged to teach for only two years in
the West, a search revealing the subsequent lives on nearly 40 percent
of the teachers shows that 2/3 rds. of them made a permanent transition
from East to West. A majority of them made homes in growing towns from
Indiana west to the border of Nebraska Territory, and a few became
pioneer settlers of Oregon and California.

NEARLY 80 percent of the women teachers who have been traced married and
became pioneer settlers. Those who remained single either continued to
teach or worked in the developing social-service professions. Several of
the pioneer teachers responded to the call to teach the newly freed men,
women, and children in the South in the 1860s.

THE picture painted of the schoolmarm from the East-moral,
self-sacrificing, discreet, dedicated to the welfare of children,
capable of bringing out the best in men and unconcerned with personal
goals or needs-is, of course, a stereotype. Letters, reminiscences and a
diary of women teachers who traveled to teach on the western frontiers
before the Civil War are extant, and these documents tell remarkable
stories. Manuscripts pertaining to nearly 200 such women survive and
are the basis of an engaging book called "WOMEN TEACHERS ON THE
FRONTIER," by Polly Welts Kaufman. There are pictures of the teachers,
and maps and pictures of the old schoolhouses. There is also a list of
women, when and where born, places they taught, names of their husbands
and when and where they died.

--
\\\|///
\\ ~ ~ //
( @ @ )
-oOOo-(_)-oOOo-
Rose CAUDLE TERRY, Washington state
BILYEU Listowner/Listmother (genealogical) & Proud RootsWeb Sponsor
or
http://www.genealogy.bilyeu.co

This thread:

• SCHOOLMARMS ON THE FRONTIER by Rose Terry <>