Chester Jackson Family

Wilma's Abbreviated Teaching Career

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Following graduation (and presumably summer at home), Wilma departed for Fairmount, North Dakota, to teach in its high school. 



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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,
   In the educational cause is making quite a stride.
The number of diplomas granted has been quite a few;
   This is an evidence of the work our school can do.
Of normal graduate teachers we have six,
   Who ably keep the schoolboys from cutting up tricks;
And the youthful minds with knowledge store,
   Until to high ideals and heaven they soar.
And we think the parents all should find,
   Time to help the teachers make the pupils learn and mind.
All should keep the golden rule,
   And be careful not away their time to fool.
Who are teaching in our school perhaps I ought to tell
   For every one wants to know the names of those who are doing their work well.
The popular principal is Prof. Chas A. Robinson,
   And it won't be well for you if you bob in late son.
He is ably assisted by Miss Wilma Jackson,
   And here is where the scholars have to work some.
The 7th and 8th grades are well guided by Mrs. E.L. Baker, nee Miss Ethel Bliss.
   When she goes her pupils will her miss.
Miss Mabel Beldon is quite an elocutionist on the stage. 
   And that she is also an excellent teacher, the 5th and 6th grades will wage.
Miss Blanch Paul as 3rd and 4th grade teacher, pleasingly does her part,
   And quickly won entrance to each pupil's heart.
Why before she had taught the eleventh hour,
   The little ones were planning to give her a fruit shower.
Miss Olive Libby, as popular primary teacher, a third year stands.
   And the deserved love and respect of all her pupils commands.

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:

physiology and hygiene, giving special instruction concerning the nature of alcoholic drinks, stimulants and narcotics, [and their] effect upon the human system; physiology and hygiene and the nature of alcoholic drinks, stimulants and narcotics and their [effect] upon the human system shall be taught as thoroughly as any branch is taught, by the use of a text book to all pupils able to use [a text] book, who have not thoroughly studied that branch, and orally to all other pupils.

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):

Possibly Wilma - possibly Fairmount ND - undated Unknown couple - possibly Fairmount ND - undated Unknown girl - undated Unknown girl - undated - 2
Possibly Wilma - possibly Fairmount ND - undated.jpg Unknown couple - possibly Fairmount ND - undated.jpg Unknown girl - undated.jpg Unknown girl - undated - 2.jpg
Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 2 Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 3 Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 4
Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated.jpg Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 2.jpg Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 3.jpg Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 4.jpg
Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 5 Unknown scene - undated Unknown schoolgirls - Fairmount ND - undated Unknown town - possibly Fairmount ND - undated
Unknown residence - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 5.jpg Unknown scene - undated.jpg Unknown schoolgirls - Fairmount ND - undated.jpg Unknown town - possibly Fairmount ND - undated.jpg
Unknown woman - possibly Fairmount ND - undated Unknown woman - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 2    
Unknown woman - possibly Fairmount ND - undated.jpg Unknown woman - possibly Fairmount ND - undated - 2.jpg

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:

I found my little Fairmount [North Dakota], left behind for forty years, drove right past the Cox house where I lived without recognizing it and came to the for-a-while unfamiliar Main Street. What changes a 40 years that encompassed the advent of the automobile will bring! I finally located the two bank buildings, the Cox one no longer used, and built my memory street around these. Hotel was gone, big general store where I pointed out to Bion the second story windows that one blizzard reached in drifts, was halved to provide a movie house. Little depot was intact -- and Bion felt a deep pity for any 21 year old girl who was set adrift 'mongst strangers on a lone pra-ree like this. We, in those days, were so dependent and I the lowest of the low. How did I ever live thru the ordeal? Bion went to the P.O. where he pulled out Barb's telegram, a card from Aunt Dede, a long letter from Emily, and I, to the printing office. .... The little girl here could give me the name of only one residenter who sounded familiar, Mr. Weatherbee, father of curly-headed Luey who now lives in Illinois. Cox children had all moved away. I located their home, now with a large stone porch & the Ballard house next door, Mrs. Cox's brother, where I ate my meals that first year. They were both Normal graduates from Minnesota and 'our kind'. No one at home in the Cox house. Mr. Weatherbee, 3d door down, was in his original house, a man of 80 I'd judge, very deaf. I saw his looks of years ago, but he didn't remember me.

He was able to tell me a little about folks I knew, but found it quite hard to understand me, so I gave up. .... [D]rove around the village trying to find familiar landmarks. The Methodist Church where I sang in the choir had been remodeled with a wide clapboard siding & new windows & made a memorial to a lady who evidently provided the funds. .... The school was of red brick, an improvement of my day when the bleak square, gray wooden structure stuck up alone on the edge of town. I could look from my windows twenty miles to the east, see nothing but the flat prairie, and dream of the home folks so many miles away. How glad I was to come home to them, finally & forever. Fairmount, once 400 in population, now boasts 717 [367 in 2010 census]! I said 'Goodbye' to the little town, feeling not homesick, just with the upsetting emotion that comes when one of age revisited haunts of childhood. That's why you [written to her mother] and Mother Bates wished to stay away. Father B. & Bion loved to recall the past.

Someone sent Wilma an anonymous letter in May 1906 while she was teaching in Fairmount, ND (misspelling rendered faithfully):

I take this means of giving you a little advice which is of too delicate a nature to tell you face to face without hurting your feelings.  I have been told that to link you name with that of Mr. Claybaugh has become quite a joke upon the street corner.  Now it does not seem to me that you are one to encourage a flirtation with a married man although his fondness for pretty faces is well known.  The advice of one who is older and possibly a little wiser in the ways of this world than you and who believes in your innocense in this matter:  is to say nothing of this for the least said the soonest mended, but to administer a nice little snub to this gentleman, to teach him not to be quite so free with a young ladies name in the future, which I understand was the beginning of it.  I have been told that his wife has heard of it, and I assure you that to cultivate her friendship would be a far more worthy occupation, than his.  From a sincere well wisher and a wife who received this information from her husband.

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!

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