The second photo, obviously posed, has been a family treasure for as long as I can remember.  All photos show a side of Myra, alone and independent, that we never knew as she lived in later life, although in a few photos of her in her seventies and eighties she has that same radiant smile.

Myra taught in or near Sidney, Montana, which lies on the broad northern prairie just across the North Dakota border, from 1906 through at least 1908. 

View Larger Map

We have her teacher's certificate dated March 1908 and good for one year, specifying Dawson County, which in 1908 included present day Richland County, wherein is found Sidney, but we don't know if she continued to teach there or in another town.

The family largely remembers that Myra taught in Miles City, which is even farther southwest along today's Interstate 94, but that would appear to be only for the 1909-10 school year:

View Larger Map

The Myra Photo Album (link above for downloading) shows photos of one or more school house, but since none of the photos is labeled, we don't know its town.

(A photo collection may be found online taken by a professional photographer working in Miles City in that period.)

A great story comes to us from that time -- some of the details of which differ between Richard Bates and me -- with some details emerging only recently, and consequences of which echo down to the present day:  While in Montana, probably in late 1907, Myra fell in love with someone described to us as a cowboy.  We've known and agreed on that much for as long as I can remember.  Now only with emergence of the Jackson papers have we learned more.  Chester Jackson wrote daughter Myra January 18, 1908:

Amon Brown looks like a sensible, honest man and has brains I should think.  If he is dead gone on you then you have a conundrum to handle; but don't think of taking him for good and all on that account.  An honest man's love is not to be despised on the other hand.  He is no fakir one can see, I think, and looks like one who would be constant & agreeable, and that's lots.  He is a bit older than you -- maybe 5 years, but that cuts no figure.  It is 10 times better than even aged & 50 times than to be younger than you.  I was 35 when I married.

He may be divorced, or he may have deserted some one.  You would need to know his antecedents.  If he has insanity in the family drop him quick, for it will crop out somewhere or somehow or sometime in somebody of yours, and take the salt out of your life -- all of it.  His business would have a good salty flavor about it always and enough change to drive monotony away which is necessary, almost, to your life.  You are not so formed as to stand the dull round.  It would be a life peculiarly pleasant to me and I know of no one woman who would like it, or who would adapt herself to it better than yourself.

I guess Amon sees it, too.

This is the first and only mention we have of Myra's fiancé's name.  Certainly some of the photo's in Myra's Photo Album (again, above) must show him.  A little research on Ancestry.com shows an "Amon Benjamin Brown," born in 1881 (so a year older than Myra), who as of the time of the 1900 Census was 18 and lived in Maine (where he was born), and then in 1910 lived in Idaho.  Eastern Montana is certainly on the way to Idaho.  By 1920 he's still in Idaho, married, and with a six year old son.  Further research shows he received an engineering degree from University of Maine in 1907.

What happened to the engagement?  We know it was broken, but we have two stories as to why and how, one that I heard from someone when young:  When Myra returned to Ovid, Lizzie (her mother) told her that "no daughter of mine is going to marry a cowboy," and forbade her returning to Montana. 

Richard Bates (her nephew) writes, however:

Don't know where that story came from:  I've never heard it.  The cowboy in Montana broke the engagement and Myra kept his ring in revenge -- Bethany has it.  Even had Myra married, there would still be Beulah [to later care for Lizzie]; furthermore, Lizzie wasn't the sort to plan for anyone ever to take care of her. 

If we assume that Myra's "Amon" was in fact "Amon Benjamin Brown," he may not have been a cowboy at all, but instead a freshly-minted engineer hired for a large project in eastern Montana several photos of which appear in Myra's Photo Album.  On November 17, 1907, Chester wrote Myra:

Am glad that you saw the great works on the ditch [may be referring to photos of construction in Myra's album].  Only wish I could get away next spring and come out & see that wonderful country.  It would take me back to the 70s when I used to go up in Minnesota back of Red Wing on the big rolling prairies where liberty sat & twirled her thumbs.

This potentially answers a question I've had since viewing the Album:  why would Myra take several photos of this large construction project.  We may now know the answer.

In any case, what we do know is that my daughter Bethany has that engagement ring, now over 100 years old.  The story of how she came to have it is interesting in its own right:  When my wife was pregnant with Bethany, we visited Ovid and stopped in to see Aunt My.  As we were about to depart, Aunt My took Patricia aside and said, "you will have a girl, and she will be born on my birthday."  Both happened exactly as she foretold, so, when we next visited Ovid a month after Bethany's birth, Aunt My gave Patricia the ring to keep for Bethany.

We have one of Myra's recollections of her time in Miles City, writing Emily in January 1935:  "Am glad to hear you spent such a jolly New Year.  It sort of makes up for the quiet Xmas.  When I taught in Montana (Miles City) I spent Xmas day all alone in my room sick with the mumps.  The only person I saw was the landlady who brot [sic] my meals to me.  How's that!"

We do not have a date for Myra's resignation from her Miles City teaching and return to Ovid, but I suspect it was after the 1909-10 school year.

According to Richard Bates, after her return Myra taught in St. Johns for a while and substitute taught in Ovid, including to the Bates children, thereafter. 

Jump to:

• Beulah's teaching years

• Myra and Beulah's trip to Yellowstone and Glacier

• Beulah's vacations

• Myra and Beulah's lives together with Lizzie in Ovid

• Myra and Beulah after Lizzie's death in 1949