Schoolma'ams: Education pioneers of America

Our grandmothers were no slouches when it came to learning, teaching.

By MYRA VANDERPOOL GORMLEY

Los Angeles Times Syndicate

Genealogical gems pop up in unexpected places. Perhaps that is why this hobby continues to grow by the proverbial leaps and bounds.

When I visit other areas of the country to attend conferences and speak at seminars, a stop at bookstores that carry local histories is high on my wish list. In Kansas City I discovered a treasure in "Schoolwomen of the Prairies and Plains," by Mary Hurlbut Cordier (University of New Mexico Press, 1992). It focuses on the women responsible for educating children of the prairie.

Part One, "The Education and Historical Setting," a history of women in rural education, is enlightening. It contains such historical information as their salaries (similar to those of the hired girl or domestic who received room and board), teacher examinations and the living and working conditions.

"On the prairies and plains there does not appear to have been a widespread prohibition of hiring married women during the period from the 1860s to the early 1900s, but it was expected that women would leave teaching when they married regardless of the local school district policy," Cordier writes.

However, "Seeing the Context, Hearing the Voice" in Part Two examines the narratives of five schoolwomen, a term the author prefers in order to broaden and professionalize the term to include teachers, superintendents, principals, and teacher educators. It is rich in both history and genealogical material.

"The term 'schoolma'am' tends to bring to mind the nostalgia and the folklore of the frontier school ... schoolwomen identifies the women themselves, not the stereotyped fiction," Cordier explains.

Cordier successfully paints pictures of what life was like for these working women, along with genealogical tidbits gleaned from diaries, letters, memorabilia, school records, photographs and oral histories of pioneers. The five women are:

- Nancy Rebecca Higgins Gaddis, Missouri and Nebraska (1862-1942)

- Bessie M. Tucker Gilmer, Nebraska (1898-1992)

- Sarah Jane Price, Indiana, Iowa and Nebraska (1841-1920)

- Sarah Gillespie Huftalen, Iowa (1865-1955)

- Ethel Hale Russel, Nebraska, Idaho, Utah, Iowa and Michigan, (born 1895)

The book includes numerous photographs from archival and private collections, including those of dugout, sod and log schools, and white frame buildings. There are pictures of the teachers and their children --- inside and out of schoolhouses.

The author's extensive notes led me to more books and publications and to other libraries, state historical societies and museums.

A search on the Web, for example, turned up the "Kansas One-Room School House Project" and its library, which includes histories of the schools, the teachers and pictures of them and their students (http://history.cc. ukans.edu/heritage/orsh/library/).

Since 1994 this project has been actively seeking the histories of one-room schools, their teachers and pupils in order to preserve the memories as part of Kansas heritage through uncopyrighted texts and images, family letters, photographs, maps and even music.

Posted there also is "Examination for Common-School Diplomas" for rural schools dated Saturday, April 6, 1918. Questions pertain to reading, arithmetic, physiology, civics, geography and Kansas history.

I flunked the exam.

The Web has other sites as various states also are trying to obtain and preserve the histories of their teachers and these one- room schools that once dotted the landscape of America. If you have ancestors and relatives who were pioneer teachers, now is the time to interview them and preserve their histories.

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