Tag Archives: Pioneer Teachers

Schoolmarm Mary Ann Dyer: Pioneer of the Texas Panhandle

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Schoolmarm Mary Ann Dyer became known as a pioneer of the Texas Panhandle. Photo credit: Texas State Historical Associatoin

I enjoy sharing stories of intrepid educators who courageously braved the dangers faced by our early pioneers. One of these was schoolmarm Mary Ann Dyer, who has often been called a pioneer of the Texas Panhandle.

Mary Ann, who was frequently called Molly, was born September 12, 1839, in Madison County, Tennessee. Her family included prominent lawyers and government officials. When she was just a teenager, her family relocated to Weatherford, Texas. There her parents died, and the young woman was forced to raise her five brothers on her own.

Mary Ann was just a young woman when the Civil War broke out, and the elder two of her brothers enlisted in the Confederate Army. To help support the three younger brothers, Mary Ann accepted a position as a schoolmarm in the local school.

In 1870, the young schoolmarm married Charles Goodnight, a Texas rancher and cattle-driver. After first settling in Colorado, the couple established their Texas Pandhandle ranch, at first living in a sod dugout while Charles built their log house. On the ranch, Mary Ann became a nurse, homemaker, and substitute mother to the cowboys who worked for her husband. She taught them to read, patched their clothes, and hosted parties to entertain them. Over the years that followed, Mary Ann rescued and raised orphaned buffaloes. She helped establish the Goodnight buffalo herd, which became well-known all over the world. Some of her buffalo were crossbred with range cattle to produce a new breed, the “cattalo.” The breed is now known as “buffalo.”

Over time, many more settlers established homes in the Panhandle, building churches, schools, and other organizations. To help educate these newcomers, Mary Ann helped establish Goodnight College in 1898. The college was open until 1917, but closed with the opening of West Texas State Normal College in Canyon, Texas, and Clarendon College in nearby Clarendon, Texas.

Mary Ann (Molly) Dyer passed away on April 11, 1926, in Armstrong County, Texas. She was 86 years old. Her headstone reads “One who spent her whole life in the service of others.” In 1991, this Chalkboard Champion was inducted into the National Cowgirl Museum and Hall of Fame.

To read more about this amazing teacher and pioneer, see Love Untamed: Romances of the Old West by Jo Ann Chartier and Chris Enss. The volume can be found on amazon.

Innovative educator and physician Maria Montessori

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Innovative educator and physician Maria Montessori advocated classrooms offering freedom of choice, self-motivation, and student autonomy. Her pioneering ideas abut education survive today, in countries all over the world. Photo credit: American Montessori Society

Almost everyone in the field of education has heard of Maria Montessori, the Italian educator and physician who spent a lifetime working towards developing innovative methods of child-centered instruction. Her prescription for education, which includes freedom of choice, self-motivation, and student autonomy, has proven surprisingly effective for many students of all ability levels.

Maria was born August 31, 1870, in the provincial Italian town of Chiaravalle. As a young woman, she broke gender barriers when she enrolled in medical school at the Sapienza University of Rome, where she graduated with honors in 1896. She became one of Italy’s first female doctors. In this role she developed a great interest in working with children who had developmental and physical challenges, and she devoted an entire career to helping them. Little did she know that long after she had left this earth, her strategies would still be used to help all children learn.

Maria opened her first school, which she named the Casa dei Bambini (Children’s House) in Rome on January 6, 1907. In the beginning, the children who attended were difficult to teach, but before long they showed increasing interest in working with puzzles, learning to prepare meals, and manipulating learning materials that Maria had personally designed. She observed how the children absorbed knowledge from their surroundings, essentially teaching themselves. From these observations, Maria developed her pioneering theories regarding educational pedagogy.

In the years that followed, Maria traveled the world and wrote extensively about her approach to education, attracting many followers. Today, there are thousands of Montessori schools in countries all over the globe. Her progressive instructional methods are reproduced in over 22,000 schools in 110 countries in schools that are known as Montessori schools.

Maria Montessori passed away May 6, 1952, in Noorwijk, the Netherlands. To read more about this amazing Chalkboard Champion, see this link at the American Montessori Society.

Chalkboard Champion and pioneer Carrie McLain of Alaska

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Chalkboard Champion Carrie McLain of Nome, Alaska, published a slender volume of her memories in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Photo credit: Public domain

Throughout American history, there are many Chalkboard Champions who were essential in the settling our country’s wilderness territories. One of these was Carrie McLain, a pioneer teacher in the wilderness territory of Nome, Alaska.

Carrie was born on January 26, 1895, in Astoria, Long Island, New York. When she was just a child of ten, her father moved Carrie and her four siblings to the fledgling village of Nome on the ice-crusted coast of northwestern Alaska. There she grew to adulthood and became a neophyte teacher at a pioneer school on the Seward Penninsula. During those years, she also married and reared a family of one son and three daughters.

Carrie tells the fascinating story of her provincial life in Alaska in Pioneer Teacher: Turn of the Century Classroom in Remote Northwestern Alaska. Anyone interested in learning more about her rugged existence on the frigid Alaskan frontier would be interested in reading the slender volume  (it’s only 70 pages, including photographs). The book, published in 1970, can be found on amazon at this link: Pioneer Teacher. She also wrote Gold Rush Nome, which is only 46 pages in length, published in 1969, can also be found on amazon. This book offers a first-hand account of the Alaskan Gold Rush and how it influenced the growth and character of Nome. In addition to Carrie’s text, the volume contains 23 pages of black and white photographs.

This amazing Chalkboard Champion passed away on May 30, 1973, at Palmer Pioneers Home, and was buried in Nome. The of Nome dedicated a community museum in her honor.  The Carrie McLain Museum highlights the history of Nome and Western Alaska. Many of the institution’s more than 15,000 artifacts are relates to gold-rush days, including racks of mining equipment, historical documents, and photo albums.

Isabelle Salmon Ross: Settler and Pioneer for PE

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Isabelle Salmon Ross: Settler and pioneer for physical education for women and special education students. Photo credit: BYU Library

Many wonderful teachers were also pioneers in their time. Such is the case of Isabelle Salmon Ross, who was not only a settler in the Utah Territory in the 1800s, but was also a pioneer of physical education courses for women and special education students during her lifetime.

Isabelle Salmon was born on November 1, 1867, in Perry, Utah Territory. Her parents, William Weir Salmon and Margaret Hay Hunter Salmon, had immigrated from Scotland. Isabelle earned her Bachelor’s degree in Education at the University of Utah. She also attended Harvard University. After college, she became a physical education teacher in the public school system in Salt Lake City, at Brigham Young College, and at the Utah State School for the Deaf and the Blind in Ogden, Utah.

Isabelle was a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. She served her church in the general presidency of the Primary organization. While working in that capacity, Isabelle met and fell in love with fellow Mormon Charles James Ross. On September 29, 1897, the pair married in the Salt Lake Temple. Her husband was from Ogden and was a member of the general board of the Deseret Sunday School Union. He also served for a time as the manager of Ogden Tabernacle Choir.

In her later life, Isabelle suffered from coronary heart disease. Sadly, she passed away on December 28, 1947, in Salt Lake City. She was 80 years old. She is interred at the Salt Lake City Cemetery.

North Dakota’s Laura Eisenhuth Alming: Teacher, Pioneer, Politician

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Laura Eisenhuth Alming: Teacher, pioneer, politician

Many talented classroom teachers also find success as politicians. One of these is Laura Eisenhuth Alming, a 19th century educator who was elected Superintendent of Public Instruction for the state of North Dakota.

Laura was born on May 29, 1859, in Blenheim, Ontario, Canada. She was just a toddler when her family moved to DeWitt, Iowa. As a young woman, she completed college courses and then accepted a teaching position at DeWitt High School.

The young educator first traveled to Dakota Territory in the summer of 1885. There she staked a claim on 160 acres of land near the town of New Rockford. She continued to live and teach in Iowa for the next two years, returning to her Dakota homestead for the summers. In 1882, the pioneer teacher married Willis Eisenhuth, a fellow teacher who had moved from Pennsylvania to Carrington, North Dakota. In Dakota he established and operated a drugstore.

After her marriage, Laura, already a veteran educator with 11 years of experience under her belt, accepted a position as a temporary teacher in Carrington. There she taught 80 students in a one-room schoolhouse. The next year she was re-hired, but fortunately the townspeople acquired an assistant to help with instructional activities.

Carrington’s citizens were so impressed with Laura’s work in the classroom that they elected her Superintendent of Schools for North Dakota’s Foster County in 1889. During the years she held this office, the innovative educator organized and oversaw a series of teacher-training institutes to improve public school instruction.

In 1892, Laura was elected her state’s Superintendent of Public Instruction. In this period of history, women in the United States enjoyed very few voting privileges. In North Dakota, women could vote only on school issues. In her position as Superintendent, Laura continued to emphasize professional development. She also championed improved hygiene in schools and supported the introduction of fencing into the curriculum.

When Laura’s husband became very ill, Laura resigned from her office to focus on helping him recuperate. She found employment as a teacher and an Assistant Principal of Carrington High School. Her husband passed away in 1902. Five years later, Laura married Ludwig Alming, and the newlyweds moved to Jacksonville, Oregon. Laura lived the rest of her life there.

This amazing Chalkboard Champion passed away on September 30, 1937, in Medford, Oregon. She is interred in Siskiyou Memorial Park.

To read more about Laura Eisenhuth Alming, see this article printed in the Bismarck Tribune.