Chester Jackson Family
Wilma's Abbreviated Teaching Career
Following graduation (and presumably summer at home), Wilma departed for Fairmount, North Dakota, to teach in its high school. Note that Fairmount lies just across the border from Minnesota (actually, the Red River, which separates North Dakota from Minnesota). Fairmount's early history has been written up for a web page, taking the town up until just before Wilma's arrival. W.H. Cox (Wilma stayed with the Cox family) and several other men incorporated the town's first bank. Further research may be possible in copies of the Fairmount News on microfilm at the North Dakota State Historical Society. Wilma would have arrived in Fairmount by train, which as recently as fifty years ago was serviced by a morning and evening passenger train in each direction, possibly on the Soo Line, today a division of the Canadian Pacific. A more contemporary artist's rendition of the Fairmount depot:
She taught in a two-story, multi-teacher school house that was originally located at the east end of Fairmount's Main Street (the school was moved from that location shortly before Wilma arrived), and the last photo of the three below shows Fairmount school students and teachers in front of the school, possibly even including Wilma as the photo dates from ca. 1907. (A photo in the set of photos that Wilma herself took -- below -- shows the main street approximately ten years later, after the school had been moved.)
A Fairmount resident, Mrs. E.J. Hurley, wrote the Souvenir Poem of Fairmount, N.D., 1907, which includes the photo shown just above and the lines:
Our High School, a striking edifice on every side, We may conclude from this that Wilma taught classes (perhaps with the principal Mr. Robinson) for 9th-12th grades. In a centennial volume giving history of Fairmount, Them wuz the Days, Wilma is listed first on the 1905-06 and 1906-07 school faculty after a man who presumably was the principal (a different man each year). By every indication, Wilma was not comfortable in Fairmount, and from early on wanted to return to teach in Ovid. (Some material suggests she unsuccessfully applied for the 1905-06 year in Ovid, and went to Fairmount with every intention to return to Ovid as soon as possible.) Her second year salary was $60/month (since she later took a cut to $45/month to return to Ovid, it's possible that North Dakota communities out on the frontier had to pay a premium to induce teachers to come), so her first year salary was that or less. (We have copies of contracts for three of her four years teaching.) The Fairmount contract contained language requiring Wilma to teach regarding harmful effects of alcohol and other stimulants, requiring her to instruct in:
I wouldn't be surprised if that clause survives in North Dakota contracts today, since it was mandated by statute. Does it remind you of anything? Like, for instance, laws mandating that "Intelligent Design" be taught. Or perhaps laws forbidding mention of the word "homosexual" while teaching? During Wilma's first year in Fairmount, Mary Field, a former Ovid teacher, wrote Wilma a most unusual letter, discussing prostitution, drunkenness, and police activities in very early 20th century Chicago. The letter is unusual for both its candid expressions of affection and its description of social work in Chicago (beginning p. 5), descriptions that would not have been out of place with muckraking journalists like Upton Sinclair and his The Jungle. (A curious usage you will note as you read: the author sometimes refers to herself in the first person as "M" rather than "I".) Wilma appears to have taken a number of photographs while in Fairmount (the house and home interior shots are certainly of the Cox house where Wilma lived for two years, and may have been taken by someone else; on a May 2014 visit to Fairmount, I found no evidence of the Cox house, and the house some residents pointed me to bore no resemblance to the house in the photo below):
In a later letter, Chester encourages Wilma to stop in Minneapolis on her way home to visit the Jackson relative living there at the time. In 1947 Wilma revisited Fairmount during a cross-country road trip with Bion. She wrote from Ortonville, MN, July 27, 1947:
Someone sent Wilma an anonymous letter in May 1906 while she was teaching in Fairmount, ND (misspelling rendered faithfully):
Fairmount, ND, aka "Peyton Place." No wonder Wilma wanted to put Fairmount in her rear-view mirror as soon as she could! Chester wrote Wilma in Fairmount, ND, January 24, 1907: "I've been 'settin' around a good deal lately on account of neuralgia in the face and yesterday went to [Bion] Bates & had a tooth run down & hatchelled out ready for some kind of a crown." So Chester had an opportunity to appraise Bion some time before he began courting Wilma. Chester wrote Wilma twice in February 1907, his letters containing family news and a story of a mortally ill friend in Denver, and the other with Chester's expectations for the new house he was building with funds from his sale of British Virgin Islands stamps, both replete with Chester's inimitable wit. Wilma wrote home in early March 1907. She had apparently already sent her father an application to teach in Ovid, but Chester had delayed submitting it to the Ovid school board. There must have been some urgency in Wilma's most recent letter, since Chester wrote her telling her he would submit the application immediately, encouraging her to write the board separately, and expressing joy at the prospect of having her home for the following winter. The teaching contract was signed quickly, dated March 26. Wilma taught two full years at the Ovid High School, resigning to marry Bion in July 1909, and thereafter, as Richard Bates (her son) put it, "never taught again except to the degree that we were home-schooled to supplement our woefully meager education -- and Bion was president of the school board!" Bion had begun seriously courting Wilma in December 1907, so everyone had plenty of warning! Jump to:
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