Oregon Territory teacher and pioneer teacher Mary McLench in her Tualatin classroom (circa 1852).
Mary Almira Gray was born in the Green Mountains of southern Vermont, the oldest of four children. Mary had already been teaching students to read and write at a one room school house in the village of Grafton, not far from her home. As a young woman, Mary helped her siblings with their lessons, and when she was old enough she decided to turn her knack for teaching into her profession.
Although she had never ventured far from her home town, Mary was full of pioneer spirit. She was 25 years old in 1850 when she ventured into the Wild West to teach on the frontier of Oregon Territory. She was one of five young women from all over New England that had been recruited for this work by Vermont Governor William Slade. In addition to serving as governor, Slade was an agent with the National Board of Popular Education. The organization was created to train and sponsor teachers and encourage them to go West.
In April, 1851, Mary finally arrived in Oregon Territory after a long and arduous sailing to Panama, a grueling overland trek to the Pacific Coast, and then another sailing north to her final destination. At the time, Oregon Territory included what is now Oregon, Washington, and Idaho, and the total population was only 14,000 people. Mary was assigned to inaugurate a school in Tualatin, a town 13 miles south of Portland. There she taught five terms.
While teaching in Tualatin, Mary met and married Benjamin McLench in 1852. Through the Oregon Land Donation Act, the couple established a farm on 160 acres of land in the Willamette River Valley. There they raised their children, along with wheat, apples, onions, potatoes, and honey bees.
You can read more about this pioneer teacher in the book Frontier Teachers: Stories of Heroic Women of the Old West by Chris Enss. The volume is available on amazon. You can also read an online article published in Cowgirl Magazine, also written by Enss.
