APRIL 1853
WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON TERRITORY
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A spring rain pattered on the shake roof of the schoolhouse near the little settlement of Cincinnati, six miles south of Salem. To Jenny, it sounded like the clapping of children’s gloved hands connecting in a steady, soothing rhythm. Jenny shook her thick curls of the mist she’d ridden through to get to the structure before her students arrived. Her first day of teaching had begun with fixing meals for boarders at her father’s inn, then riding several miles warmed by the congratulations of her sisters. Despite less than a year of formal schooling back in Illinois, she’d passed the teacher’s test and been hired. She’d board out with a district family who paid their child’s fees by offering a bed and meals to the teacher during the week. She’d ride home on Friday to help again at the inn.
Her mother would be proud. It had been her mother’s snippets of wisdom offered through the years while cornbread baked or she stitched a pantaloon that created Jenny’s educational foundation. Either due to illness or her need to be home as the third oldest child, Jenny had been less than a year inside an Illinois schoolhouse. It was her parents’ love of reading, the many books and newspapers available to peruse, and her mother’s conveying facts and figures through stories that had prepared Jenny for this day. Some of the newspapers, like the Lily that promoted women’s issues or Horace Greely’s New York Tribune that railed against slavery, were considered unusual for their frontier family to acquire, but the Scott children had all been allowed to read them as soon as they were able.
For Jenny, education was critical for boys and girls to grow to make good choices and be wise citizens too. This schoolhouse was her arena to awaken minds to the possibilities of their lives even when others appeared to control their destiny. She controlled what would happen here, the minds she’d affect, yes, but personally, this job granted her a chance to draw her own independent map. It gave her a level of freedom she never saw her mother have. Anne Scott had birthed twelve children, lived to bury two, and once told Jenny she was sorry she had brought girls into the world, as their lot was harder than the boys and would always be. It had been a warning. As a respected teacher, Jennie would chart her own course. It was one of the few professions allowed a woman outside of the home. Operating a boardinghouse or a millinery made up the only other two. That Lily editor had risked more than her design of the bloomer costume by running a newspaper. Jenny was grateful her father let that broadsheet into their house, or perhaps he didn’t realize a woman was at its head. But her mother did and she’d made sure Jenny knew it. Another snippet of sagacity perhaps.
A chill in the air moved Jenny to set the kindling to fire in the little stove. She was grateful that someone had not only chopped and stacked wood outside but had tented dry sticks over bits of pine needles and forest duff so the flame took without effort. Part of her teaching contract was that from now on, she would split the wood and stack it, start the fires, and remove the ashes as well as maintain the inside and the surrounding grounds outside, sweeping pine needles from the stairs and even the roof if necessary. Cobwebs drifted from the corners, and she grabbed the straw broom and swept them and the floors. As she worked, she remembered the interview with the board of education. She’d kept her tongue when one of the farmers asked her if she had a beau or was using this opportunity to find a husband—as though that were the only goal of a woman’s life.
None of your business, she’d wanted to say but smiled instead. “With one woman for every one hundred men in this Territory, I doubt I’d need a schoolhouse full of other men’s—and women’s—children to attract a husband. No, I’m delighted to teach little minds and to have a few coins to call my own.” She thought her mother would be proud of her for controlling her sometimes intemperate tongue. Truth was, she was torn about marriage. She liked the idea of falling in love, being swept away, but only wished to marry a man who saw value in a partner and not just be a “hand” in the drudgery of women’s work that took so many women’s lives at such a young age. Her parents had loved each other, she felt sure—but she’d wished her father had paid more attention to her mother’s needs and waited a little longer before remarrying after her death. But he ruled the roost, as her mother often said. And because she’d let him, she accepted their journey west and it had taken her life.
Marriage could wait. Jenny had brushed off a few offers already, determined that they were more land-based than promising love. If an Oregon man married within a year of reaching the territory, his new wife could bring 160 acres into the marriage in her own name. Of course, as soon as she married, the control of it became her husband’s. But it did expand the spouse’s holdings. She made light of most of the proposals, encouraging them to seek a less willful mate. She didn’t want to offend, but she certainly wasn’t interested in expanding a man’s wealth without at least a little love to go with it.
Dawn pushed its way into darkness, announcing she had time yet to scan the lessons she’d prepared using the one primer she’d snuck along on the journey west. Her father had restricted what the women could bring—including books and dishes—and never knew until they arrived that her sister’s beau had bought their auctioned dishes—a set of Spode—and given them back to Fanny before they left. With tears, Fanny, her oldest sister, had sewed the butter plates, dishes, and cups into a feather bed so their father never knew that he slept on them. Jenny’s book had survived, buried in the barrel of corn meal. A woman needed a little piece of home. At least their father hadn’t broken the dishes when he discovered they’d defied his orders, as she’d heard some men had. He hadn’t complained about the schoolbook, either.
Jenny rubbed her hands to warm them at the flame, reset the combs in her hair to control the curls. She counted the slates piled on the crude table that served as her desk. There were six, so if all the children attended, they’d have to share. With her first paycheck she’d buy two more. She’d have the students work on writing their names today so she could learn who they were and assess their skills. She planned to tell them stories and weave the lessons into them to hold their attention. It worked for her siblings. It had worked for her.
The sound of stomping boots on the pine stairs took her from the primer. Must be an older student. She straightened her back, ignoring the pain that lived in her spine.
She expected twelve students. At least that’s what the board had told her she’d be responsible for, though she remembered one man’s caveat. “Some days you might have more, if they bring a little brother or sister usually too young, but maybe their ma is sick and there’s no one to look after them at home. Can you adapt?”
“I’ve six younger siblings—no, only five now.” She swallowed. Willie had died in the Blue Mountains the year before. “Like any good western woman, I can corral them without a rope.”
Today she’d see if that was true. If students arrived this early, she’d have to rise at 4:00 a.m. to stay ahead of them in their lessons.
“Welcome,” she said as the door opened. Now she’d see what a day in her domain would hold and what kind of a creative map she could draw.