Grandmother's Education

 

 

           Grandmother, Victoria Rosser, and Sister Ada (standing)   

          This is the oldest picture I have of Grandmother, at age 16 or 17?

Grandmother didn’t have much in the way of formal education. She mentioned in a letter that her older sisters Kittie and Lillie got to go to school in Hyde Park,  Arkansas. They stayed with their oldest sister Cora who was married and living there, but Grandmother and her younger sister Ada were too young, so they were home schooled by their mother. 

In 1889 the family moved to Indian Territory. They settled on an acreage north of Pauls Valley, in an area that would later be known as Klondike. At first, Grandpa sent the girls to school in Pauls Valley, where they had the teacher with the big ears, described in the following paragraphs that Grandmother wrote many years later – I guess kids will always make fun of their teachers. 

The first public funeral home must have been built in 1890. It was the first public school in the Territory. The first superintendant was J W Wilkerson a small stoop shouldered man and wore a derby hat pulled down so that it made his ears stick out. The building was a square building with an upstairs & the advanced pupils was upstairs. The low grades down stairs. & we drew the water that we drank from a well. Waded mud shoe top deep. There were no sidewalks in town. It was at first a pay school. In 1896 the principal was D W McKee. He was a Quaker. Was a great educator. His wife taught us music. Miss McDaniels taught elocution & was also a primary teacher. & a Miss Ramsy from Virginia primary grade teacher. D W McKee also taught short hand & typing, was great on giving lectures to the students.

At that time there were no pavements or sidewalks. We had a Methodist Church a wood building & an old Presbyterian Church that had been moved here from Cherokee town. That is about 2 miles from our depo. We had one store C J Grants & Snede later on & then Kendal. Blacksmith shop. An opra house. One Hotel. Across the railroad known as the McClure House. & one known as the Commercial House owned by a widdow campbell. We hada no shows only what the school put on. & some time troops would come here. Our first carnival was in 1903. Our first Mayor was in 1899. Pauls Valley was incorporated in 1899. We had a beautiful park. All pecan down below the depo free Bar bque and free bakers bread. Large loaves 4 times the size that we have now. Purk Bruce had a drug store & in his drugstore a lending library that was a boon to everyone. 

According to the interview from 1937 cited in my Nov. 7 post, Grandpa and some others hired a teacher and had a building moved from Pauls Valley to Klondike so the girls would have a school closer to home. 

During the next couple of years Grandpa and Grandmother’s older brother Tom worked to try and make their acreage profitable. They grew cotton and probably other crops and the railroad went through Pauls Valley so they didn’t have far to go to sell their crops. The country was still pretty wild, and having the railroad near didn’t help. It was during this time that grandmother swore Grandpa had a visit from members of the Dalton gang. Here’s what she wrote: 

1894 J T Rosser planted 125 acres of cotton Hands were hard to get. day labor was cheap but scarce. one evening late two young men rode up into the yard. they had opened wire gates & rode thru the field. & said How Dad do you want two bad boys to chop cotton. papa hired those two young men. & they worked 10 days or 2 weeks. they were quiet had excellent manners. good choppers for cotton seemed to know good farming. Rode good horses had a pair of pistols strapted to their sadles were short shot guns. they did their work well ask for their wages & took their departure. late one eve. shook hands with papa. thanked him for giving them work they were evidently members of the Dalton gang that had just raided Coffeville Kan. 

In 1890, Grandmother’s mother, Emily Bass Rosser, died, of a tumor growing in her abdomen. At that point, Grandpa sent the girls to live with their older sister Cora again. Cora and her husband had divorced or separated – I don’t know any details of when or why. At that point, she was living in Wynnewood, about 7 miles south of Pauls Valley, and was the proprietor of a millinery shop. She made hats. There’s conflicting information about the time of Emily’s death. It might have been as late as 1894. 

I doubt if Grandmother had much schooling after her mother’s death. She started dating my grandfather shortly after that, and Grandpa sent her to Georgia to stay with his mother for a while in hopes that her feelings would cool off. Actually it did the opposite. Grandmother and her grandmother, Susan Whitehead Rosser Lumpkin, really hit it off. They shared a passion for gardening, and Grandma Lumpkin was fascinated by Grandmother’s stories of Indian Territory and of her Chickasaw beau. 

To be continued.