That's the theme for this week in the 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks challenge. It seems a simple enough topic, albeit one where it turns out to be all too easy to devolve into pompous blustering statements about how "education has always been of the utmost importance to our family." The thing is, do you know which of your ancestors were literate? Which ones attended school (or were tutored) as children, versus the ones that went from leading strings directly into earning their keep? I don't, although I've not given up on trying to learn more about the educational opportunities available to them, and, especially whether they made life choices based on the availability of education for themselves and their children.
In the meantime, I do have a few tidbits:
My father was a junior high school science teacher. I don't know why. I don't think it was out of a love of school; he dropped out (or was kicked out) of his parochial high school in 1942 and went to work in a Ford automobile plant that had been converted to build planes for the military. Within a year, he had been drafted into the Army Air Corps for the duration of WW II. After the war, he obtained his GED and enrolled at Michigan State University courtesy of the GI Bill. There, I think he found something he did love: science. His degree was in bacteriology but the man was crazy for all the sciences: how do things work, why do they work, what are things, anyway? One of my earliest memories is of him trying to coach me through a calculation for the number of oxygen atoms in a standard-sized coffee can - I was in 3rd grade and still struggling with multiplication tables! At least I know that my exasperation and inattention didn't bother him in the least. HE loved this stuff and, by God, I was going to learn to love it, too. I think that's why he became a teacher - it meant he could focus on science AND share the enthusiasm. And, if I think about it, that's probably exactly why I became a teacher, as well.
My maternal grandmother, Inez, also 'happened' into this line of work. Her first husband died in an automobile accident in 1919, leaving her with a one-year-old daughter and a not-particularly-solvent farm. Inez sold the livestock and land, and moved back into town, renting a house not far from that of her in-laws, Kate and James Holmes. Kate's sister, Julia Grady, lived with them. Julia was a strong-minded woman who had saved enough from her own meager salary as a teacher to fund a proper tour of the European Continent. She used her connections to help Inez find work as a teacher in the one-room country schools of Dallas County, Iowa. There's nothing like somebody asking you "but WHY is it like that?" to jump-start your own intellectual curiosity; not having the financial or social freedom to enroll in college, Inez and Julia and Kate purchased and then devoured several self-improvement schemes such as "The Delphian Course: A Systematic Plan of Education, Embracing The World's Progress and Development of The Liberal Arts." Following her second marriage and the birth of my mother, Inez went on to teach and then serve as Principle at the Woodward State Hospital School. When Julia died in 1949, she left her considerable library, in a lovely set of oak barrister bookcases, to Inez. Eventually, I donated the books -- including the 10-volume Delphian Course -- to the Hometown Heritage preservation project. I think Julia would have approved.
My grandfather, "Shug" Thomas, graduated from high school in Ames, Iowa. I found some of his grammar homework when I cleaned out the bookcases.
Inez never met the father of her second husband. George Calder Thomas died when Shug was just 13. Professionally, George was a confectioner, but it's easy to see from the memorabilia he kept and the things written to and about him that being a Sunday School teacher was very important to him. I'll be honest, this kind of baffled me until I was researching the lives of children in the early 1800s and learned that "Sunday School" was originally invented to be just that: school for children who were expected to work every day of the week except for the Sabbath. Even when school attendance became more of a norm during the 19th century, children typically attended less than 100 days a year, especially in agrarian areas like Iowa. So, using the Bible as a text, George likely used the time to try to teach as much history, math, reading and writing as possible.
This 1854 "Principles of English Grammar" by William Lennie is inscribed with the name of George's eldest sister, Rebecca Ann Thomas in fine copperplate script. Rebecca was born in 1839 on the family homestead in southwestern Ontario. When she was 17, her family moved to Fort Atkinson, Iowa, where former neighbors, Caroline Newington and Thomas Coleman had shrewdly purchased the decommissioned fort to use as a 'base camp' from which to develop the surrounding land into farms. Rebecca died in Fort Atkinson around 1857, most likely of dysentery.
Two of my father's great-Aunts were also teachers and school administrators. Mary and Loretta Sturn were the 10th and 11th children of German immigrants Bernard and Mathilda Hoffman Sturn. Both attended the parochial school operated by St. Michael's Catholic church in Monroe, Michigan, and then went on to St. Mary's Academy, which was operated by the Sisters of the Immaculate Heart of Mary. Rather remarkably, the Academy was founded in 1846 specifically to educate young women. Upon graduation, both Mary and Loretta took vows with IHM and went on to long careers as teachers in Catholic schools throughout the upper midwest. Sister Georgetta (Loretta) was a principle, as well.
This picture of Sister Bernarda (Mary Sturn) and Sister Georgetta (Loretta Sturn) with me and the Sisters' niece, my grandmother, Helen, and grandfather Erwin Feltz was taken in August 1968. The sculpture of Mary and her Son was donated to the IHM by the Sisters' father, Bernard Sturn. At seven, I'm afraid I was not properly appreciative of any of this.
The IHM Archives (thank you!) confirm that grandma Helen attended but did not graduate from St. Mary's Academy. The corresponding high school for boys, Hall of the Divine Child, didn't open until 1918 and it was Hall of the Divine Child from which my father departed sans diploma.
There was a catastrophic fire at St. Mary's Academy in 1929 that destroyed all of the early school records, so it is entirely possible that my great-grandmother, Minnie, attended the school. I wonder whether education may have played a part in Minnie's "throwing off the traces" as a putative caregiver for her aging guardians? Or did Lena and Jacob want her to take vows, and she did not feel she had been Called?
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