T. L. Ballenger (1882–1987) lived in the area around Tahlequah, Oklahoma, for sixty-eight years and died at the age of 104. He taught for many years at Northeastern State College, where he established the Department of Special Collections, which houses over one thousand documents on the tribal history of the Cherokee Nation.

The Cherokee National Female Seminary eventually became Northeastern State College, then Northeastern State University. In his book Early History of Northeastern State College, Ballenger drew on the published catalog of the school, as well as documents composed by teachers and students at the institution. Below are four student selections: a description of a typical week at the seminary, a piece entitled “A School Girl’s Complaint,” a quotation, and a poem.

Monday morning, long before daylight, when all are profoundly sleeping, enjoying the most delightful dreams, the loud ringing of the rising bell arouses us from our slumbers to prepare for the duties of the day. The rattling of shovels and tongs, and the rolling of wood, show that the fires in our rooms claim our first attention.

When breakfast is over, and the school bell calls us to our recitations, we find our teacher occupying her usual seat, looking rather dubious, for Monday [is] often a blue day in our school calendar; out by evening if everything goes off pretty well, she appears as serene as any New England lady …

Group of students at Cherokee Female Seminary in Tahlequah, Oklahoma after it was rebuilt

COURTESY OF WESTERN HISTORY COLLECTIONS, UNIVERSITY OF OKLAHOMA, BALLENGER COLLECTION, #7

Tuesday is washing-day, and some of our most industrious ones are up even before the rising bell. Stumbling over chairs and through the dark halls, they descend to the wash house where a roaring fire scatters the darkness, and reveals tubs, wash-boards and boiling kettles, which are soon put in active use by these early risers, so that their domestic duties may not interfere with more intellectual pursuits.

… [Wednesday] is composition day. One third of it is generally done before the wide-ranging, unwilling thoughts can be collected in a speed sufficiently small to compose a dozen lines that will harmonize with the subject selected. The most appropriate name for this dark day would be, I think, the Babble of Sentiments.

By Thursday—every mind has become calm—smiles are displayed on the countenances of both the teachers and pupils; difficult lessons are mastered, and by evening all feel “happy and free.” Friday is another pleasant seventh part of a week though mingled with more of stir and bustle; besides lessons to review, every room in the house must be put in order; and then when night comes all impatiently wait for the mail, expecting letters from home—from absent friends (or perchance from some strange admirer.) A reading circle closes the day.

Saturday, our recreation day, is highly prized by each one. Its hours speed swiftly away in amusement, visiting, extra study, or in the use of that little, shining implement, the needle.

Then comes the Sabbath and its calm pleasures, its sacred duties and its holy lessons, [to] close up a week in our Seminary Home.

Oh! What a hard time school girls have! It makes me shiver now, to think of rising before six o’clock those cold, dark mornings, washing our faces in ice water and going down to breakfast before we get our eyes half open.

But I could be patient with those things if we had had not such long lessons to learn. Now just think of studying hour after hour on one of those long demonstrations of Geometry—then when I am sure I can prove to the satisfaction of all that the sum of any two sides of a triangle is greater than the third side, I go to the board and take the A.B.’s for B.C.’s or the B.C.’s for A.C.’s, and finally prove nothing to my teacher and … I come very near being a blockhead.

Or perhaps my Latin is to be learned, I study it over and over, and think I have at last got it nicely, but when I go to recitation, behold, my teacher reverses my translation, makes all my nouns verbs, and changes my verbs to participles. Now is it not discouraging? If I complain to my teachers they tell me to study more and my classmates give me only the same advice—I suppose it is all right—but very often I cannot help thinking Geometry ought never to have been made for the school girls to learn, and Latin should be translated by wiser heads than mine.

“Some persons mistake their friends, others their foes—some mistake their talents and calling, but the worst of all is, to mistake our moral character, and think we are something, when we are nothing.”

Farewell Sisters—Fare ye well;

Mid your kindness and your love

We no longer here may dwell

May we reach the nest above

There the chorus glad to swell

Where there comes no fare ye well.¹

ENDNOTES

¹ T. L. Ballenger, “A Week at the Female Seminary,” in Early History of Northeastern State College, 18–22, typescript at Special Collections, John Vaughan Library, Northeastern State University, Tahlequah, Okla.