The Schoolmarm and the Schoolroom

By the time the West was opening for settlement, the schoolmarm was already an icon in American education, moving from east to west as the American frontier grew.  For almost a century, the schoolmarm ruled the one room schoolhouse like education dictators. 

Whether their name was Grace, Prudence or Hortense, they had a style, a look that was passed down in journals and diaries.  They were usually thought of as "plain, bony, hardened, with angular features".  Their eyes were gray, "like the sky on a bleak morning."  They were "brisk in manner, prim and even fidgety".  Schoolmarms were careful about their clothes, their money and their reputation.  The men who courted them needed to do so in a sober, serious and regulated spirit.  Of, course if the schoolmarm married, her career was over.

In that one room, all ages were taught.  The schoolmarm was also responsible for building fires, and cleaning the school. There were no janitors.  Many families close to the school would board students (along with the teacher) during the school term so that no child had to walk more than three miles to school (a bit less than the stories we heard!).

So what did the schoolmarm teach? Surprisingly in the late 1800s, the Plains states had one of the highest literacy rates in the country.  Farmer ordered books from mail order catalogs, larger towns started libraries, and if lucky subscribed to big city newspapers.  School resources included a blackboard, a Bible, a hymnal, dictionary, almanac.  If money was available they added a McGuffy's
reader, then a grammar, geography, and arithmetic book.  In the early days, there was only one copy for the entire schoolroom.  Children advanced when they could read the next most difficult book.

So as education got established (along with churches), the community could attract more professionals and families with permanent settlement plans, growing the West into civilized communities...thus America grew.

Next time...Frontier Medicine
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Today in Pioneer History:  "On September 27, 1869,  Ellis County Sheriff Wild Bill Hickok and his deputy respond to a report that a local ruffian named Samuel Strawhun and several drunken buddies were tearing up John Bitter’s Beer Saloon in Hays City, Kansas.