WANDERINGS FROM YOUR PRESIDENT
BY GAYLE STUART
One of the most difficult things to give away is kindness; it is usually returned!
We are now coming to the end of another school year. It doesn’t seem possible, but the saying goes that “The older we get the faster time flies.” How many of us went to country school and can think back on what some of our favorite teachers did for us? This issue has a sample of what an eighth grade promotion test was like in the late 1890’s.
How many of our teachers helped us get through our tests? I’m sure there were some students that went back and thanked the teacher for helping them. This was, I’m sure, a kindness that the teacher felt good about. The country students felt this test was unfair, because students in the town schools did not have to take it.
There are not any of us that go back this far, but it is fun to think about how school was different from this modern world that we now live in. There is no wood to carry in for the heating stove, water to carry, or cleaning the chalk erasers, plus many more things that had to be done to help the teacher keep the school in order and ready for students.
This same thing happens when we do genealogy. If other people know what we are looking for, they can share what they find, or we may spot something that we know someone else is wanting. Leo had this happen recently. I had been looking for a marriage of one of his great uncles; Janice Murphy Brandt, whose family is of the Adams line of ancestors, found it. Donald Stuart married Eliza Ann Good Adams in Omaha, Nebraska. Both were from Walnut, so I had assumed that this was where they were married. Janice also sent two death certificates of this family to us. Now I will return the favor with some Stuart family pictures that I got from Oklahoma.
Think of what that you have done for someone and what they did for you in return.
gbs