When I graduated from college in 1977, I was the first in my immediate family to do so. In fact, none of my siblings finished college, though two sisters attended community college. At the time I thought I was the first in all my family to attend college, but some of my cousins attended college, too.
Little did I know that earlier members of my family had attended college and achieved the goal of graduating. This knowledge is a result of genealogy research.
Some of my dad’s cousins attended college. Alice Irene Hork, daughter of Anthony & Mary Hork, attended Montana State University in Missoula in the 1930s. Her siblings may have also, but I don’t have that information. Another cousin, Mary Juliette Schwalen, daughter of Bernard and Urselle Schwalen, attended the University of Washington in Seattle in the 1940s. Her sister, Jo Ann, attended the same university.
Several of Anna’s aunts attended college to study teaching. Elizabeth Gleeson, Helena Gleeson, and Margaret T. Gleeson. They all graduated from Mitchell High School in Mitchell, Dakota Territory. A search for a normal school turned up Dakota State University which was founded as a school for teacher education in 1881. The campus is in Madison, Lane County, about seventy miles from Mitchell. I found a newspaper article that stated Miss Margaret T. Gleeson of Mitchell graduated from the Madison Normal School on 12 June 1895. I did not find any reference to Elizabeth and Helena attending, but they were teaching in Anaconda, Montana before 1900.
Anna’s cousin, Marguerite, daughter of Martin Gleeson, taught school in Salem, Oregon. The newspaper article announcing her position stated she was a graduate of the Madison Normal School.
On my mother’s side, no one in her immediate family went to college. I had to get to my maternal grandfather’s first cousin, Pollyanna Speed, who attended Baylor University. I have the paperwork from a genetics class she took where she recorded characteristics of different members of the family. Included in those sheets of papers were the birth and death dates for these family members, the first things I had recorded about the Hutson and Johnston families.
Also on my mother’s side were her mother’s brothers, R. D. and Wayne Lancaster. They were eight and sixteen years younger than my grandmother and had the opportunity to attend college. Wayne attended Tarleton University and the University of Texas at Austin, after serving in WWII. R.D. began college before the war, attending Tarleton and graduating in 1940. He was later commissioned in the Army and served in the Army Air Forces and later served in the Air Force until his retirement.
These were great achievements and may have been with some sacrifice for their families. It is interesting that in my father’s side of the family, it was women who attended college, all to be teachers. On my mother’s side, it was men who attended. It was also later in time, in the 1930s and 40s, while the women in my father’s family attended college in the 1880s.
#52Ancestors-Week 11: Achievement
This is my seventh year working on this year-long prompt, hosted by Amy Johnson Crow (https://www.amyjohnsoncrow.com/) at Generations Cafe. I write each week in one of my two blogs, either Mam-ma’s Southern Family or My Trails into the Past. I have enjoyed writing about my children’s ancestors in new and exciting ways.
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