Fun Facts About Schools in the 1800s - by Jo-Ann Roberts

 

I have a Christmas book in the works...shh...but I can't reveal too much information just yet. Tentatively, it involves a widower and his scheming seven-year-old daughter who believes her pretty new schoolteacher is the perfect choice to become her mother. Of course, all this can change as the characters decide what they want to do rather than me telling them what to do!

While doing a bit of research on schools in the 1800s, I came across a few fun facts that I'm sharing with you today. 

For most students in the U.S., late August or early September marks the start of back to school. But let's take a look at what American schools were like in the 1800s might convince them how much tougher it could be...and just how good they've got it.

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In the 19th and early 20th centuries, one-room schoolhouses were the accepted norm in rural, country areas. A single teacher taught grades one through eight together. The youngest students--were called Abecedarians, because they would learn their ABCs--sat up front, while the oldest sat in the back. The room was heated by a single wood stove.

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How many of you heard your parents or grandparents complain about walking five

miles uphill to school? There is some truth to that myth. Most schoolhouses were built to serve students living within four or five miles, which was considered close enough for them to walk.

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At some schools, boys and girls entered through separate doors. They were also kept apart for lessons. From my own elementary school days, boys and girls had recess on separate playgrounds. I guess the nuns thought we might get the cooties or something similar from the boys! Do I remember the screams from the girls when a boy stepped on our side to retrieve a ball!

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Rather than the 180 days (which is standard these days), the students attended school for about 132 days depending on when they were needed to help their families harvest crops. Attendance was often sporadic. School days typically started at 9 a.m. and ended anywhere between 2 p.m. - 4 p.m., depending on the area of the country. There was one hour for recess and lunch, which was called "nooning".

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Forget Trapper Keepers©  and gel pens. In the 19th and early 20th centuries, students made do with slates and chalk.

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Students might help the teacher teach, meaning the older students learned lessons directly from the teacher and then taught the younger students.

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Teachers taught reading, writing, arithmetic, history, grammar, rhetoric, and geography. Students would memorize their lessons and then would have to recite what they learned in front of the whole class.

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No cafeteria-type lunches were available to students in the 1800s. Instead, students

brought their lunches to school in metal pails. Every student drank water from a bucket filled by the older boys using the same tin cup! Can you imagine today's parents allowing this practice?

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Teachers often lived with their students' families in a practice called "boarding round", and it often involved the teacher moving from one student's home to the next as often as every week.

"I found it very unpleasant, especially during the winter and spring terms, for one week I would board where I would have a comfortable room; the next my room would be so open that the snow would blow in, and sometimes I would find it on my bed...But the most unpleasant part was being obliged to walk through the snow and water. I suffered much from colds and a cough."

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If students stepped out of line in the 1800s and early 1900s, they could expect a detention, suspension, or expulsion. Often, it could result in a lashing, too. Here's an excerpt from the Board of Education in Franklin, Ohio, from 1883.

"Pupils may be detained...when the teacher deems such detention necessary for the commitment of lessons or for the enforcement of discipline. Whenever it shall become necessary for teachers to resort to corporal punishment, the same shall not be inflicted upon head or hands of the pupil."

In some areas, teachers could use a ruler or pointer to lash a student's knuckles or palms. Other punishments included holding a heavy book for more than an hour and writing "I will not..." do a certain activity on the blackboard 100 times.

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In order to graduate, students would have to pass a final exam. Questions might include:

"Name the parts of speech and define those that have no modifications."

 "A wagon box is 2 ft. deep, 10 feet long, and 3 ft. wide. How many bushels of wheat will it hold?"

I'm not sure I could answer these...how about you? 

 

 

 

Raising a Glass - Irish Women in America by Jo-Ann Roberts

 

Happy March! Happy Spring!  As we speak, I'm in the middle of writing my upcoming release, Olivia's Odyssey (July 2024). This is my first mail-order bride book, and admittedly, it's been a bit of a challenge to plot. Since I've never written one before, so the research on who, why, where, and when these women chose to travel hundreds or thousands of miles to marry a man sight unseen was a bit daunting.

When I finally decided on the heroine's 4w's (who, why, where, when) Olivia Glennon, an Irish American shoe factory worker from South Boston, Massachusetts emerged. With the loss of her mother, she was raised by her father, spending most of her formative years sleeping in saloons while her father lost money playing cards. The plot is still in the formative stages, so I'll stop there!

The Irish, like many, many ethnicities, had a tremendous impact on American history and culture. It is estimated that 36.9 million Americans claim Irish roots. The Irish are the second-largest heritage group after the Germans. However, the Irish were unique among all immigrant groups...

...they sent more daughters than sons to America!

Between 1820 and 1860, the Irish constituted over one-third of all immigrants to the U.S., and by the 1840s--at the height of the Potato Famine--they comprised nearly half. Even after the crisis, Irish women continued to migrate in increasing numbers. By the end of the 19th century, single women accounted for 53% of Irish immigrants.

These girls and women moved to America for the same reason as men: opportunity and freedom. They left behind hard scrabble farms where they worked as long and as hard as men to bring in a crop while maintaining homes and taking care of children. Poor as church mice, the women--many of them widows or orphans--had few employment opportunities and diminished marriage prospects as the Famine had driven many men to leave the Emerald Isle...so they, too, left for America. Determined not to work in the fields, they settled in cities where many took jobs as servants, domestic workers, or seamstresses. 

More than 60% worked as maids, cooks, nannies, or housekeepers. Living with wealthy or middle-class American families came with advantages. They exposed the Irish women to American culture speeding up their assimilation to their environment. However, the greatest advantage was financial. Not only were the wages higher than those for factory workers, but as live-in help domestics, they had no housing expenses, enabling them to save money.

Women sent money back home to support families and also paid the passage for their female sisters, nieces, cousins, and friends. They were young, most under the age of 24, unmarried, and had a desire for independence. (Think of all the mail-order bride books you've read with Irish heroines!)

These girls were literate as well, having been educated in Catholic schools in Ireland. Building on their success in Ireland, Irish-Catholic nuns and priests established scores of schools and colleges in America, adding social and economic mobility for successive generations.

Education also helped pave the way for Irish American women's entrance into the workforce. Second-generation women became teachers, bookkeepers, typists, journalists, and nurses, turning their back on servitude, preferring regular hours found in government and business.

Once in the workplace, these second-generation Irish American women protested discrimination and were among the first to organize and join labor unions, rising through the ranks in union leadership, and introducing unions to service and professional fields. They organized teacher unions to eliminate male and female pay discrepancies.

Irish American women also made their mark through literature and journalism, their choice of subject matter revealing abuse of the mentally ill, and addressing subjects like body images, alcoholism, and difficulties in marriage.

Irish women found the adventure of a lifetime in America as compelling as the economic opportunities, firmly establishing themselves as a force with which to be reckoned. Their strong bonds, formed by immigration and shared membership in the Catholic Church, nurtured a culture and pride among Irish American women that continues to this day.

Pictures Courtesy of Library of Congress

Raising a Glass to Irish American Women | National Women's History Museum (womenshistory.org)