------------------------------------------------------------------ FORWARDED MESSAGE - Orig: 20-Nov-98 3:54 Subject: SCHOOLMARMS OF THE FRONTIER ------------------------------------------------------------------ I found this information some time ago and I don't remember where. Shame on me. I thought this might be interesting reading to some. Norma J. Miller 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, Illinois, 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. ==== Maggie_Ohio Mailing List ==== !^NavFont02F09E30007NGHHPE58ADC