Normal Schools

"Wanted Immediately: A Sober diligent Schoolmaster capable of teaching READING, WRITING, ARITHMETICK, and the Latin TONGUE... Any Person qualified, and well recommended, will be put into immediate Possession of the School, on applying to the Minister of Charles Parish, York County."
The Virginia Gazette, August 20, 1772

If you’ve read historical fiction or watched Little House on the Prairie, you’ve probably heard of the term “normal school.” But what exactly is that?

Early schoolhouse. Note that some of the children are barefoot

A normal school is an institution created to train high school graduates to be teachers by educating them in the norms of curriculum and pedagogy (most commonly understood as the approach to teaching, refers to the theory and practice of learning, and how this process influences, and is influenced by, the social, political and psychological development of learners). That’s quite a mouthful. It simply means they were taught how to teach primary school. Normal schools were intended to improve the quality of the burgeoning common school system by producing more qualified teachers. 

From colonial times and into the early decades of the 19th century, most teachers were men. There were, of course, career schoolmasters, but, especially in smaller and rural schools, the people who stood in front of the classroom might well be farmers, surveyors, even innkeepers who kept school for a few months a year in their off-season. The more educated and ambitious schoolmasters were young men who made the schoolroom a stepping-stone on their way to careers in the church or the law. The connections they made with local ministers and school committees in securing teaching jobs often helped them when they moved on to their real professions.

"The grammar schoolteachers have rarely had any education beyond what they have acquired in the very schools where they have to teach. Their attainments, therefore, to say the least, are usually very moderate." 

James Carter, Education Reformer, 1826

Horace Mann

Reformers like Horace Mann had agitated to make schooling more democratic, universal and non-sectarian. But as new public schools, called Common Schools, sprang up everywhere, there simply were not enough schoolmasters to staff them. Mann and his fellow reformers like James Carter, Henry Barnard, and Catharine Beecher saw that the schools needed not only more teachers, but better teachers. Many of the most promising young men continued to be siphoned off by more prestigious professions, as well as by new industries and the lure of the western frontier. So where would the army of new teachers come from? There was, of course, another ready source of labor, if reformers could convince the public to accept it. Women were poised to take over the schoolroom.

  

The inside of a Normal Schools looks much the same as a regular school room

The first public normal school in the United States was founded in Concord, Vermont by Samuel Read Hall in 1823 to train teachers. Sixteen years after Columbian School had been founded in Vermont, the first state-funded normal school was founded in the neighboring state of Lexington, Massachusetts on the northeast corner of the historic Lexington Battle Green. It later evolved into Framingham State University, and it is recognized as the oldest, continuously operated public normal school in the United States.

Lexington School

The State normal school in New Britain was founded in 1849. It was the first training school for teachers in the state of Connecticut. The school is now Central Connecticut State University.

The first normal school west of the Appalachian Mountains in the United States was the Michigan State Normal School, now Eastern Michigan University. It was created by legislative action in 1849 and opened in Ypsilanti, Michigan.

Salem Normal School, now Salem State University, was founded in 1854 as the fourth Normal School in Massachusetts. In 1853, the General Court authorized the founding of a normal school in Essex County. Prior to the founding of the normal school, Salem women had few opportunities to receive teacher training and the Salem school system was replete with funding, attendance, and teacher compensation problems. It was assumed that by training women as teachers, they could be hired at a lower salary than male teachers, thus alleviating the city's public school budget and teacher compensation challenges.

First graduation class Kansas State Normal School

One of the first Normal Schools in the Midwest was founded In 1863, when the Kansas Legislature passed an act to establish the Kansas State Normal Schools, starting with the first in Emporai, KS, which eventually became Emporia State University Teachers College. From 1870 through 1876, Leavenworth Nornal School operated in Leavenworth, KS, and from 1874 through 1876 Concordia Normal School operated in Concordia, KS, but the "miscellaneous appropriations bill of 1876" caused Leavenworth and Concordia to close and consolidated operations at the Emporia location. Other normal schools were opened in Kansas including in 1902 the Wstern Branch of the Kansas Normal in Hays, KS, eventually becoming Fort Hays State University.

Bowie State University

In 1865, established by The Baltimore Association for the Moral and Educational Improvement of the Colored People, School #1 opened on January 9, 1865 in the African Baptist Church in Crane's Building on the corner of Calvert and Saratoga streets. In 1867, with the aid of the Freedmen's Bureau, the Quakers of England and others. The Baltimore Association purchased and renovated the Old Friends Meeting House at the corner of Saratoga and Courtland streets to house the Baltimore Normal School for Colored Teachers. The school moved to Bowie, MD in 1911, changing its name to the Maryland Normal and Industrial School at Bowie in 1914. Today, this school exists as Bowie State University.

Many other normal schools were established all across the United States and in other countries. These schools were a critical part of settling the western states in the U.S. and educating teachers, who in turn, taught a multitude of students. Maybe one of your ancestors attended normal school. If so, please tell us about him or her.

The Hand-Me-Down Husband

Vickie McDonough

Ellen aims to take her sister’s baby back to St. Louis to raise as her own. Tessa’s father isn’t about to let that happen.

Ellen Stewart despises Lance Garrett. If not for him dashing into Isabelle’s life and stealing her heart and filling her head with his dreams, her little sister would still be alive and safe at home. When Ellen receives Lance’s letter requesting help with one-year-old Tessa, she rushes to Silver Springs, intent on taking charge of her young niece. A rugged ranch in the wilds of Texas is no place for a motherless baby. But Lance may not be so willing to let his daughter go. 

Free on KU. Click here to purchase

Vickie McDonough is the CBA, EPCA and Amazon best-selling author of 50 books and novellas. Vickie grew up wanting to marry a rancher, but instead, she married a computer geek who is scared of horses. She now lives out her dreams penning romance stories about ranchers, cowboys, lawmen, and others living in the Old West. Vickie’s books have won numerous awards including the Booksellers Best and the Inspirational Readers’ Choice awards. When she’s not writing, Vickie enjoys reading, doing stained-glass projects, gardening, watching movies, and traveling. To learn more about Vickie’s books or to sign up for her newsletter, visit her website: www.vickiemcdonough.com

Those Amazing Beechers

Thomas Beecher among Elmira notaries

In the Nineteenth Century, a certain form of Biblical progressivism rapidly changed the dynamics in regards to women's rights, abolition of slavery, and many other social causes. As I researched several of my stories from The Abolitionist's Daughter, set in a Civil War town where women could get the same college degree as a man in the mid1800's, to my newest Barbour novella project involving school teachers, one family's influence kept coming up over and over, and that is the Beecher Family.


I've previously written about Thomas K. Beecher, a beloved pastor and influential figure in my hometown of Elmira, NY. Members of his congregation were active on the Underground Railroad and committed to Abolition. Reverend Beecher himself ministered to Confederate Prisoners of War at Elmira Prison camp, and served the community for decades, creating a true community where the church extended beyond the walls of his Independent Congregationalist building. He enjoyed people, and loved life, and valued education, and it showed. He helped organize baseball teams in town, led parties to the local observatory and planetarium, participated in croquet, billiards, target shooting, cricket, and encouraged community activity and relationship building with other faiths. He could often be seen riding a three wheeled bicycle through town, wearing his straw hat, waving and calling citizens by name. He organized a library in his church building with his own collection of books for community use. He was a devout man of the Word, and his sermons are filled with inspiration, clearly a man motivated to love others because of a passionate love for the Lord. He had the privilege of officiating the marriage of Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain, to Elmiran Olivia Langdon. He himself was married to the granddaughter of Noah Webster. Beecher helped sponsor and raise up two different regiments of recruits in Elmira during the Civil War--NY 107th and NY 141st, and served briefly as chaplain for the latter.

I was delighted to learn some time ago that Thomas was brother to Harriet Beecher Stowe, the renowned author of Uncle Tom's Cabin. She wrote 30 books, none as successful as this record-setting novel about the perils of slaves after the Fugitive Slave Law, a book which most scholars argue was a catalyst to the Civil War. The book sold more than 300,000 copies in the US and over a million in Great Britain. It was made into a play which ran in New York City. Stowe was received by President Lincoln in 1862, where it is alleged he greeted her as "the little lady who started this great war." Stowe was active in education and in abolition and the Underground Railroad with her husband.

Henry Ward Beecher was another minister brother, who was also active in the Abolitionist cause. Henry was perhaps the most controversial in the family. He raised money to purchase slaves' freedom, and guns to distribute to the abolitionist militants in bleeding Kansas and Nebraska. The rifles were euphemistically called "Beecher's Bibles." Later in life he took a kindler, gentler view of social reform and the gospel, emphasizing God's love. He championed women's suffrage, and the temperance movement. But he also supported Darwinism and evolution, and was accused of adultery. The subsequent trial over his former business partner's accusation of philandering with his wife resulted in the most sensationalized court proceeding if its day, like an OJ Simpson Murder trial of its time. Despite this controversy in his later years, one can still find inspirational Henry Ward Beecher quotes in calendars and publications. His biographer considered him "The Most Famous Man in America."


Today I learned that one more sibling left a significant mark in history, in the area of education, and women's roles. I've been researching early schools and classrooms in America for a brand new collection in which I have been contracted to write a novella. As I was reading, the name Catharine Beecher appeared as one of the pioneers credited with gaining acceptance for women teachers in the classroom. I thought, no way. Couldn't be. Must be a coincidence. But sure enough, she was also born to Lyman Beecher, the father of Henry, Thomas and Harriet. Catharine grew up in a time when men led classrooms, and women were often undereducated. She achieved her own education, meaning she was self taught in the subjects not offered to girls back then, including math and Latin. She taught a private classroom in Hartford, Connecticut in 1821, and soon started a school for educating women to be teachers, Hartford Female Seminary, which grew in three years time from 7 to 100 students, and where her sister Harriet graduated and assisted. She wrote many of her own textbooks for the school.

Catharine was a crusader. She led the very first national women's political movement, which was against Andrew Jackson's Indian Removal bill. She called on women to write their congressmen and urge them not to fund the bill. Her greatest fame, however, was in her lifelong voice for women as educators. In a time when the country was pushing westward, the need for new educators was strong, and more and more qualified men were leaving the profession for better prospects. Other voices pushed for women to fill the role, especially because they were the cheaper alternative, and readily available. Catharine modeled that women were not only intelligent and capable, but argued that women were a moral force and uniquely created as nurturers to fill the role to shape the next generation. She helped establish teacher training schools in communities on the frontier, women's colleges, and had strong ideals on what the curriculum should include. Physical education, reading aloud, and studying English authors rather than classical Greek literature. She wrote and published books on women's roles in society and the classroom.




Curiously, Catharine was not a proponent of women's suffrage. She believed men and women were created for different roles, and that politics was too dirty if women wanted to retain their moral authority. She felt as instructors, women could shape politics by shaping the young men who would later serve.




Lyman Beecher, the venerable patriarch of this clan, which includes a total of 13 children, was once called "the father of more brains than any man in America." He was a graduate of Yale Divinity School and seemed to witness every major religious and social revolution of his time. From being a proponent of temperance, to favoring gradual emancipation of slaves, to finding agreement with the new evangelism style of revivalism and bucking Presbyterian tradition for the new, Lyman modeled free thought and independence. He headed Lane Theological Seminary and was called "America's most famous preacher."




To study the Beecher family is to understand many of the forces at play in our early republic. Social and religious reform, the Second Great Awakening, slavery and women's issues--all causes that seemed to be taken up by one Beecher or another. And at the center was a deep and abiding love of education. The Beechers were a smart, vital, culture-changing dynasty of America's nineteenth century.







Kathleen L. Maher has had an infatuation with books and fictional heroes ever since her preschool crush, Peter Rabbit. She has a novella releasing with BARBOUR in the 2018 Victorian Christmas Brides collection, featuring her hometown of Elmira, New York. Her debut historical, Bachelor Buttons, blends her Irish heritage and love of the American Civil War. She won the 2012 ACFW Genesis contest for her Civil War story, releasing this summer under a new title The Abolitionist’s Daughter. Kathleen shares an old farmhouse in upstate New York with her husband, children, and a small zoo of rescued animals.

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