The classmate who tutored May
… and a short review of Northcutt "Normal School" education
Letter #49, Postmarked May 8, 1962, Addressed Mrs. Douglas Green, East Lansing, MI
Sunday night late
Dear Green girls, all three,
I forgot about my letter writing entirely until just a few minutes ago. I was restless this afternoon and you know how my sovereign remedy is to do something with my hands so I fixed the neck and hemline of a dress. The neck has always been hot, and since the sleeves were short - quite short - I only use the dress in warm weather so this afternoon I fixed it up a bit by cutting the collar off and making a round, bound neckline. I had a too deep hem, so I took a part of that for the binding and I think I like it much better - I’ve had it several years so if it only proves to be a utility dress I must not weep. I hope Marie suggests a Quincy trip for Saturday. I must have a graduation dress and it’s easier when you can get out to State Street and the Town and Country shopping center in a car. Unless Marie has changed her mind, she was coming directly from work Friday. That gets her to LaBelle by dark at this time of the year.
I’m sorry you girls are so swamped with schoolwork, but I remember twice it happened to me. Once I entered late -then if we could make up the work, there was no “law“ against late entries. I had a tutor for make up in Trig and there were two Latin courses. I’ve no idea what the other was but I know how I sweat that term. Elmer McKay tutored me in the Trig I’d missed and we really went after it for a few weeks.
We really saw ghosts walking at the church this morning. Lloyd Gregory came walking in with Thelma looking quite like himself. He is thin and of course not tanned like most farmers this time of year. Thelma says people look as if she is crazy when she tells them Lloyd is getting better. He has been driving his car. He has never suffered only occasionally, so maybe a miracle has happened.
I went down to the Young sale awhile yesterday afternoon. There was an awful lot of stuff there, but none of it in very good condition and all of it old. The blankets and quilts hadn’t been washed, the beds looked clean enough and comfortable, but the rugs were pretty well worn. There was a big crowd out – one of our really pretty days, and all the mothers with little children had them out in the sun. I didn’t stay long.
Penny, I enjoyed your letter, but you are mistaken in the West family. The ones in the grocery store are Edith and Bill and it was Corby who died. I went down and helped serve lunch to the family and their guests on Monday. We served in the church basement. It made things much simpler for Edith than doing it at her house. I went to club Wednesday and the rest of the week I worked at home – yard, that is flowerbeds, garden, and house cleaning. I’m trying to get the bulbs done this week. Tomorrow I’m doing the dining room – I’m not doing too much in the front bed room. The windows have been washed in there and clean curtains up and I should get the living room done before Marie gets here. The big closet I do in the summer and later I’ll wash the paint under the front porch and side porch. I’ll have to begin hoeing soon. I’ve been over the tomatoes”a ready”
I love all of you. Mother [May Emma Northcutt Hinkson]
If you haven’t figured it out by now, I’ve learned to use small comments (bolded items) and insights within my great-grandmother’s letters as a thread or jumping off point for research and exploration. Normally May’s letters don’t give me much to go on, unless of course you’re interested in the reporting on small town funerals or the decline of May’s contemporaries. At age 80+ there’s unfortunately a lot of this in her letters.
But every once in a while she gives me a small gem that I can grab onto in the form of a memory that is worth a trip down a rabbit hole. But sometimes, the rabbit holes present themselves to me all by themselves as I’m researching something else. That is the case with this chapter.
After stumbling across the annual course catalogs from The Missouri State Normal School I did a reverse search back through the letters I had already read. And lo and behold found a small gem that I had overlooked in a letter from 1962. This provided me with the perfect jumping off point for a deeper dive around my great-grandmother’s ‘normal school’ education.
In the 1800s, the term ‘normal school’ referred to a college established to specifically train teachers for educating elementary and secondary students. In essence, they were the first “education colleges” which set them apart from the Harvards and Cambridges of the day that focused more on academic subjects than on the science of teaching.
Founded in 1867 by Joseph Baldwin in Kirksville, MO, the Missouri State Normal School of the First District was the first public institution in Missouri to prepare teachers for the rapidly expanding public school system. Locally it was often referred to as the Kirksville Normal School or just “Normal School.” Today the campus is known as Truman State University.
My great-grandmother’s decision to pursue a teaching degree was most likely influenced by both her father and older cousin Mary (also known as Mamie). In 1895 May was among the very few (perhaps even the first handful) of students to become a second-generation attendee of the “Normal School.”
To provide a little more information about this claim, I need to revisit some of May’s family history, specially around her grandfather, the Rev. Benjamin Franklin Northcutt. This biographical sketch of him can be found in the History of Knox County Missouri published by Godspeed Publishing Company in 1887. I’ve highlighted the passages that relate to education and the family’s attendance at the Kirksville Normal School, but the full bio is also very informative.
For the first three years of the “Normal School’s” existence it was known as the North Missouri Normal School. So strong was the desire for Benjamin Franklin Northcutt to provide his children with a proper education (something he never had), that he sold the family farm in Colony, Missouri and moved to Kirksville in 1868. The North Missouri Normal school was established as a “teaching college” instructing educators on the practice of teaching while providing a live classroom environment for local students to also receive a quality education. May’s father, James Robert, along with three of his siblings and one adopted orphan where among the first students to enroll in the Normal School in 1868. Their enrollment is captured in the 1868 Annual Catalogue of the North Missouri Normal School as follows. I’ve added their ages for additional context:
Grammar School: Ambrose Dudley (A.D) Northcutt - age 17
Grammer school: Susannah Virginia Northcutt - age 15
Grammer School : Jennie Northcutt (I assume this must be 1 of the 8 orphan children noted in the bio above that the Northcutt family took in)
Intermediate School: James Robert (J.R) Northcutt - age 12
Primary School: Joesph Chapman Northcutt - age 9
In 1868 the published cost for a student to attend the school was $12.50/term (4 terms per calendar year). One can assume that the Rev B.F. Northcutt may have received a nice discount on enrolling five children into the school. But even with a discount, the cost of providing a Normal School education for five children for a full calendar year would have cost somewhere between $200-$240 (the approx. equivalent of $4700 in 2024 dollars).
Fast forward twenty years to the fall of 1895 when May Northcutt, oldest child of James Robert, became a second generation student at the “Kirksville Normal School.” Only May wasn’t enrolled as a primary, intermediate or grammar school student. She was enrolled as an ‘advanced degree student’ working on her teaching degree.
When May enrolled in Missouri State Normal School in the fall of 1895, she joined her cousin Lillie (A.D. Northcutt’s daughter) who was a year older than her. Both girls followed in the footsteps of their older cousin Mary Lydia (aka Mamie) who was Hosea Allen Northcutt’s only child. She had graduated with a bachelor degree in “scientific didactics” from the school as the class valedictorian in 1886. Didactics is the theory and practice of teaching and learning.
The curriculum at the Normal School was tough. Students enrolled in the ‘model school program’ also required to complete student teaching assignments. This was a relatively new concept for advanced education, but it seems to be one that appealed to lots of students and is perhaps one of the reasons for the college’s stellar reputation. I found several newspaper articles from the time boasting about their public school’s having ‘Normal School’ graduates as teachers. Apparently the school was very well regarded.
Now to the classmate part of the story…
Returning to my great-grandmother’s letter and her comment about Elmer McKay providing her tutoring assistance. I became curious to know what May’s relationship with this young man had been (if any). Obviously, his full name was familiar enough that May shared it when writing to her daughter Helen. I wondered if Helen (my grandmother) had known him as well when she was growing up in LaBelle.
As it turns out Elmer was a classmate of May’s both in Knox City and also at the Normal School. Elmer was one year younger than May so he most likely graduated a year behind her in primary/ intermediate school. The Normal School records also show him graduating a year behind May at ‘teacher’s college’. But he must have been good in math to have May lean on him for tutoring assistance in Trigonometry when she missed the start of a new term. According to the published curriculum for Advanced teachers training, May would have been required to master 20 weeks of Trig. along with Higher Algebra and “Solid Geometry.” Other required subjects from the 1898 course catalogue that I found interesting include 2 years of Latin with 30 weeks devoted to “Caesar and Composition”, 15 weeks on Elocution (the art of clear and expressive pronunciation), 10 weeks of “Moral Science”, and 20 weeks of “Mental Science.” I would love to see the distinction in topics covered by the last two.
I suspect that May’s need for tutoring was created by her delay starting the new term on time due to a student teaching assignment. I found a few small articles in the Edina Sentinel sharing that May was embarking on teaching assignments. In 1898, in the “Musser district” and in 1899 back home in Knox City. This indicate that she was student teaching before her graduation in 1900.
In June of 1900 May was one of 52 graduates to receive their Bachelor degree in Scientific Didactics. It was the largest class of teaching graduates the school had ever had and a great way for the Normal School to mark the start of the twentieth century.
In my further sleuthing through the LaBelle Star and Edina Sentinel newspapers, I discovered several small newsy items that suggested Elmer and May were more than classmates. She and Elmer, along with their siblings (Elmer’s siblings Belle and Charles; May’s sister Virginia ‘Ray’) were also close friends.
May would have been twenty-one at the time of the trip noted above. I imagine that the friends may have visited a well-off relative in Carrollton that could house such a party.
My further research about May’s friendship with Elmer revealed this small gem of a news article that appeared two summers after May graduated from Normal. It seems both May and Elmer were part of a group of young Knox City friends who organized a lawn tennis club during the summer of 1902. Apparently this was big enough news that it made the front page of the Edina Sentinel newspaper, even though it was small item at the bottom of the page. May, her sister Ray, and cousin Lillie were credited for getting the club up and running with lawn courts established at both Elmer’s and Lillie’s homes.
To close out my further research of Elmer, I learned that he came from a well respected family in Knox City that farmed and raised prize-winning horses. He graduated from Kirksville Normal School in 1901 (a year after May) and secured a teaching position in Festus, near St. Louis, MO. But he must have been disenchanted with teaching. By 1905 he was back in college, this time at the University in Columbia, MO. Pursuing what degree? I don’t know, perhaps it was Math (Trig) 😊.
What I do know however, is that the my great-grandmother May, was grateful for his tutoring assistance way back in 1899-1900, during her ‘Normal School years.’ Enough so, that she remembered and noted it in a letter to her daughter some 60 years later.
