I missed last week, the theme was “Education.” Several of my family members have been teachers. After the Civil War, my second great-grandfather, Joseph Castle “Joe” Stephens, was a school teacher near Southwest City, Missouri. In an old letter, one of Joe’s niece’s related the following story:
I have a memory of a taking on a rebellious school. He [Joseph Stephens] went to a school where no teacher had been able to last. He went in with a gun strapped to him. He unstrapped it and laid it on the desk and he said something like this, ‘Now, I’m going to teach this school.’
Joe had no further trouble with the unruly boys. In another letter, this story was shared:
I have a faint memory of a youthful Joe Stephens arming himself to quell a rebellious school, according to your story. I do know he had not studied algebra, but to help an ambitious student, bought a text and saying nothing to the boy, kept ahead of him on a day to day basis.
After several years of teaching, Joe decided to move west to Idaho. Friends who had already moved west hoped that Joe would come out to teach their children, but Joe had had enough of that and wanted to farm, so that is what he did. He taught his own children at home. Joe’s youngest daughter, Ida (my great-grandmother) once said that she and her siblings did their schoolwork at home, and if they had company, they could only come out to pay their respects but then had to go back and finish their studies.