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“Lady Teachers” and the Genteel Roots of Teacher Organization in Gilded Age Cities

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 February 2017

Karen Leroux
Karen Leroux*
Affiliation:
Drake University
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      May the work of the L.T.A. go on ever upward and onward-gaining ground year by year; so that in future it will have its voice in the community, not low & sweet-but clear and resonant showing power and strength; may it gain that strength by increased membership, held together by strong bonds of love.
      Let us then be up and doing,
      With a heart for any fate;
      Still achieving, still pursuing
      Learn to labor and to wait.1

Miss Ophelia S. Newell believed that teachers occupied a public office of unappreciated responsibility. As the secretary of the Lady Teachers' Association (LTA) in Boston, she penned these hopeful remarks as a coda to her 1875 annual report, borrowing the last stanza of a popular Henry Wadsworth Longfellow poem. For Newell and her fellow teachers, “learn to labor and to wait” underscored their steadfast commitment to the schools. They founded the association attempting to bring women teachers “nearer together in sympathy and friendship and also for a mutual benefit in debate and parliamentary rules.” Frustrated with being “accused of a lack of enthusiasm in our profession,” they hoped such criticism could “be remedied by an organization of this kind.” Honing their debating skills represented one of the women's objectives, but they aspired to do more than polish their chances for professional advancement.

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Articles
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History of Education Quarterly , Volume 46 , Issue 2 , Summer 2006 , pp. 164 - 191
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Copyright © 2006 by the History of Education Society 

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References

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33 Newell, O.S., Report of the Secretary, February 1876 and 1899 engraved invitation, Folder 1876-1899, Box 1; and minutes of meetings: 10 June 1875, December 1875 and January 1876, Volume I, Box 2, LTA; Louise Hotchkiss, “Teachers as Social Beings,” Journal of Education 8 April 1876: 171; Minutes p.2, Volume 1898-1901, Series VI, Box 9, StPFT. Quoted phrases are from Helen A. Emery to Miss Haskell, undated, and Mary E. Perkins to Miss Haskell, 23 November [no year], Folder: undated, both in Box 1, LTA and Colburn, “Lady Teachers’ Associations,” 254. Similar phrasing also appears in minutes of meetings, 11 March 1875, Volume I, Box 2, LTA.Google Scholar

34 Hopkins, Louisa P., “The Primary Teacher: Her Work, and Her Fitness for It,” Journal of Education, 17 June 1880: 388; Rev. Smith Baker, “The Dignity of the Common School Teacher's Mission,” delivered to the Minnesota Educational Association December 1891, Minutes of Annual Meetings, page 384, Minnesota Educational Association Records, Minnesota Historical Society [hereafter MEA].Google Scholar

35 See original constitution, February 1874, and revised constitution, January 1879, in Volume I, Box 2, LTA. The Boston Primary Teachers Association, founded by LTA members in 1895, specified similar requirements for membership. See Bissett, “Fifty Years;” and Boston Primary Teachers Association Records, Massachusetts Historical Society. 11 November 1886 entry, Volume: Nov 1882-Apr 1887, Records of Meetings Box 1, Woman's Education Association records, Massachusetts Historical Society. See also: “St. Paul Federation of Women Teachers,” p. 1, Folder 1, Box 2, Series II, StPFT; Baker, “The Dignity of the Common School Teacher's Mission,” 384, MEA; Margaret J. Evans, “To the Women's Clubs of Minnesota—”, September 1895, Box 1, Minnesota Federation of Women's Clubs Records, (hereafter MFWC); Minnesota Historical Society Minutes of meetings, November 1875, Volume I, Box 2, LTA records; “Learning Self-Respect,” Woman's Journal, 20 November 1875: 369.Google Scholar

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43 Minutes of meetings, 8 June 1897, p. 104, Volume II, Box 2, LTA, and minutes of meetings, 11 May 1908, p. 82, 1903-1915 Volume, Box 9, Series VI, StPFT. There is no record in their minutes that St. Paul teachers changed their decision to resign or that they attended any MFWC meetings after 1902, but they continued to be listed in MFWC directories for several years. The Minneapolis Teachers’ Club also resigned in 1908. See Yearbooks, Box 3, MFWC.Google Scholar

44 “South Boston Suffrage Club,” Woman's Journal, 21 April 1877: 125. David B. Tyack argues that reverence for character in “A Psalm of Life” correlated with the self-image of nineteenth-century male school superintendents in “Pilgrim's Progress: Toward a Social History of the School Superintendency, 1860-1960,” History of Education Quarterly 16 (Autumn 1976): 259. For useful critical discussions of “A Psalm of Life,” see Matthew Gartner, “Becoming Longfellow: Work, Manhood, and Poetry,” American Literature 72 (March 2000): 59–86; and David R. Peck, “Let us then be up and doing,” ANQ 16 (Summer 2003): 30–35.Google Scholar

45 Bissett, “Fifty Years,” 24, 25; Minutes of meetings: 20 March 1874 and 16 April 1874, Volume 1, Box 2, LTA. Martha H. Verbrugge, Able-Bodied Womanhood: Personal Health and Social Change in Nineteenth-Century Boston (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 101–2, 114, 120-23, 126; Edward H. Clarke, Sex in Education, or, A Fair Chance for the Girls (Boston: James R. Osgood, 1874). For a similar argument about women's employment from a medical perspective, see Azel Ames, Jr., Sex in Industry: A Plea for the Working Girl (Boston: J.R. Osgood, 1875).Google Scholar

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47 As early as 1868, the Odd Fellows established female auxiliaries called Rebekah lodges. The Ladies of the Maccabees were founded in 1892. See George Neil Emery and John Charles Herbert Emery, A Young Man's Benefit: The Independent Order of Odd fellow and Sickness Insurance in the United States and Canada, 1860-1929 (Montreal: McGill-Queens University Press, 1999), 21–22. Emery and Emery date the Foresters’ inclusion of women to 1899, but Robert L. Reid indicates that the Women's Catholic Order of the Foresters operated in Chicago from 1891. Reid's evidence suggests that, like the Ladies of the Maccabees, the Women's Catholic Order of the Foresters provided insurance for women, and may have included more unmarried women. See Haley, Margaret A., Battleground: The Autobiography of Margaret A. Haley, Robert L. Reid, ed. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982), 29 n11, 31.Google Scholar

48 Beito, David T., “To Advance the ‘Practice of Thrift and Economy': Fraternal Societies and Social Capital, 1890-1920,” Journal of Interdisciplinary History 29 (Spring 1999): 599.Google Scholar

49 “Not An Uncommon Case,” Woman's Journal, 1 November 1873, 348.Google Scholar

50 Ibid. Google Scholar

51 Minutes of meetings, 18 February 1875. On teachers’ use of the word “sister,” see minutes of meetings, 18 February 1875, 11 March 1875, 10 June 1884; Report of Executive Committee Meeting for 1879 & 1880, and M. Bragdon to Sisters Howard and Danforth, undated and loose in Volume I, Box 2, LTA records; Colburn, “Lady Teachers’ Associations,” 254; Beito, “To Advance the Practice,” 589.Google Scholar

52 Minutes of meeting, 19 June 1883, Volume I, Box 2, LTA; Minutes 4 Dec 1899, p.26, Volume 1898-1901, Series VI, Box 9, StPFT. On friendly visiting as social control, see Roy Lubove, The Professional Altruist: The Emergence of Social Work as a Career, 1880-1930 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965); Clarke A. Chambers, “Toward a Redefinition of Welfare History,” Journal of American History 73 (September 1986): 418.Google Scholar

53 Minutes of meetings, February and March 1878 and 14 December 1880, Volume I, Box 2, LTA. McDonough, p.3, Folder 1, Series V, Box 8, and Minutes 18 May 1898, p.1, 20 March 1899, p.11, 4 December 1899, p. 26, 7 May 1900, p. 34, 2 December 1901, p. 54, 3 March 1902, p. 59, 5 May 1902, p. 65, 29 September 1902, 68, Series VI, Box 9, StPFT.Google Scholar

54 Entries dated 6 November 1899, p. 26; 3 March 1902, p. 59; 5 May 1902, p. 65, 2 March 1902, p.72, Minutes 1898-1901 volume, Series VI, Box 9, and “Yearbook, 1905-1906,” Folder 7, Box 1, Series 1, StPFT. See also entry dated 14 October 1907, p.69, Minutes, 1903-1915 volume, Series VI, Box 9, StPFT.Google Scholar

55 Minutes of meetings, 15 September 1896, p. 96, Volume 2, Box 2, LTA Beito describes how fraternal orders’ reverence for mutuality also included “constant reminders of the sad fate suffered by those outside the reciprocal fraternal family.” Beito, “To Advance the Practice,” 589. In contrast, teachers repeatedly took up the cause of nonmembers. Murphy, “From Artisan to Semi-Professional,” 161; Minutes of meetings, 9 June 1885, 15 December 1885, and 27 September 1886, Volume I, Box 2, LTA.Google Scholar

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57 “Salary of Teachers,” Woman's Journal, 28 June 1879: 207, reprinted from “The Teachers’ Profession,” Journal of Education, 15 May 1879: 313.Google Scholar

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59 Lincoln quoted in Richard Hofstadter, The American Political Tradition and the Men Who Made It (New York: Vintage, 1973), 133; Petition addressed “To the Honorable Board of Education,” and petition addressed “The Board of Education,” Folder: March-May 1879, Box 1, Minneapolis Board of Education Meeting Files, Minnesota Historical Society (hereafter MPLS Ed).Google Scholar

60 Petition addressed “The Board of Education,” Folder: March-May 1879, Box 1, MPLS Ed; Minutes of meetings, 22 May 1878 entry, Volume I, Box 2, LTA; Kaufman, Boston Women, 84; Petition, 11 June 1878, Box: June-July 1878, Petitions, 29 March 1881, Box: March 1881, Petitions, 14 February 1882, Box: Jan-Feb 1882, BSC.Google Scholar

61 “Teachers’ Salaries,” Journal of Education, 1 June 1882: 345; Untitled item, Chicago Teacher September 1873): 133; Solitude's Letter to the Editor, Chicago Teacher, December 1873: 191; “‘Pauper Teachers’ in Natick,” Woman's Journal, 16 January 1875: 23; “Reducing the Pay of Teachers,” Woman's Journal (30 October 1875): 345. On Jennison's membership in the Teachers’ Club see Yearbook, 1897-8, Box 3, MFWC.Google Scholar

62 “The Looker-On,” Journal of Education (8 April 1880): 234–235. For a similar comparison of postbellum sickness policies in which schools emerge as punitive toward women, see “Our Boston Letter” Journal of Education (29 May 1884): 345. On status and contract relations, see Amy Dru Stanley, From Bondage to Contract: Wage Labor, Marriage, and the Market in the Age of Slave Emancipation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998).Google Scholar

63 “A Plea for Justice,” Journal of Education, 17 July 1875: 39; “The Women Teachers of Boston,” Boston Herald, (21 January 1896): 6; “Wages of Women Teachers,” Woman's Journal (9 August 1879): 256.Google Scholar

64 “The Necessity of Self-Culture,” Journal of Education, 31 March 1881: 212; Mrs. Esther W. Matthews, “Sanitation and Education,” Journal of Education, 18 October 1883: 244; Mrs. Eva D. Kellogg, “The Health of Teachers,—Who is Responsible?,” Journal of Education 9 October 1884: 228.Google Scholar

65 Quotation is from Marjorie Murphy, Blackboard Unions: The AFT and the NEA, 1900-1980 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990), 63.Google Scholar