Woman on the American Frontier / A Valuable and Authentic History of the Heroism, Adventures, Privations, Captivities, Trials, and Noble Lives and Deaths of the "Pioneer Mothers of the Republic"

by William Worthington Fowler

This, it should be remembered, was before railroads had brought that region within easy access from the east. That wild, primeval garden had been, as yet, redeemed from nature only in plots and patches. On the boundless prairies of Illinois the cabins of the settlers were like solitary vessels moored in a waste of waters, and between them rolled in green billows, under the wind, the tall, coarse grass. The settlers themselves were of the most adventurous and often of the roughest class. Society presented to the cultured eye a rude and almost barbarous aspect.

Man, while grappling, almost unaided, with untamed nature, and seeking to subdue her, seems to gravitate away from civilization and approach his primitive state. Everything is taken in the rough; the arts and the graces of a more settled condition of society are cultivated but little, because they are non-essentials. The physical qualities are prized more than mental culture, and the sentiments and sensibilities are in abeyance during the reign of the more robust emotions.

During the onset which the pioneer makes upon the wilderness he and his entire family bear the rugged impress which such a life stamps upon them. The wife, in the practice of the sterner virtues of courage, self-denial, and fortitude, may become hardened against the access of the quick sensibilities and tender emotions of her more delicately reared sisters. The children, bright-eyed, strong, and nimble, run like squirrels through the woods, and leap like fawns on the plain. The mother's tutelage has done much, but more remains to be done in the schooling to be had from books. After the first victory has been won over the forest and the soil, and the pioneer reposes for a season upon his laurels, in comparative ease, he discerns the needs of his flock, and craves the offices of one who can supply the place of the weary mother in schooling the children.

Out of the void that exists the appliances of education must be created; the nurslings of the plain must be brought together and taught to subject themselves to the regular discipline of the district school; and who but woman can best supply such a discipline!

Such was the condition of frontier society and education when Miss M. came to Illinois. Her immediate field of labor was a wide prairie, over which were thinly scattered the cabins of the pioneer families. There were no books, no school house, no antecedent knowledge of what was needed. But under the advice and suggestions of this intelligent young lady every want was, in a measure, supplied. A rough structure, with logs for seats, and planks for benches, was soon prepared, books provided, and the children gathered together into the comfortless room, where Miss M. made her first essay as a preceptor of the little pioneers.

The children were like wild things caught and confined in a cage. Their restlessness was a severe tax to the patience of the delicate girl. The long walk to and from the school room in all weathers, through the snows of winter, the mud of spring, and against the blast which sweeps those plains, formed no small part of her labor. Luxuries and even comforts were denied her. They gave her the best they had, but that was poor enough. Her chamber was an unplastered loft; her bed a shakedown of dried grass. The moonbeams showed her the crevices where the rain trickled in, and the snow fringed her coverlid. Her fare was of the coarsest, and her social intercourse, to her sensitive nature, was almost forbidding.

But she never swerved from the course she had marked out, nor shrank from the labors and duties incident to her mission. Her body, extremely fragile, was the tenement of an intellect of premature activity and grasp, a native delicacy, sensibility, and great moral force. She was a born missionary, and in the difficult and trying career which she had chosen, she showed courage, self-denial, tenacity of purpose, which, combined with a sweetness of disposition, soon made her beloved by her scholars and enabled her to soften their wildness, smooth their rudeness, and impress upon their minds the lessons of knowledge which it was her study to impart.

In sunshine or storm her presence was never wanting at her post of duty. On the dark mornings of winter she could have been seen convoying her little protégés through the driving sleet, or the snow, or slush, and those rough but not unkindly parents scarcely dreamed that her life was waning. The vivid carnation of her cheeks was not painted by the frosty air, nor by the scorching heat of the iron box which warmed her little charges as they gathered beneath the ethereal splendors of her eye in the school room. The destroyer had set his seal upon her, but her frail body was swayed and animated by the spirit whose energies even mortal disease could not subdue.

The discovery of the sacrifice was too late, though, all that rude kindness and unlearned thoughtfulness could do was lavished upon her in those few days that remained to her. Months of exposure, hardship, solitude of the soul, and intense ambition in her noble mission had done their work, and before the light of the tenth day after she was driven to her couch, had faded, surrounded by a score of her pupils, she passed away, and was numbered in the army of missionary heroines and martyrs.

Those brave labors and that noble life was not for nought. The lessons taught those pupils, the high example set before them, and the life expended for their sake were not lost or forgotten. Some of those little scholars have grown to be good and useful men and women, and are now repeating, in other schools, farther towards the setting sun, the lessons and example of devotion which they learned from the teacher who gave her life that they might have knowledge.