Who is my granddaddy?

1872 ……….RULES FOR TEACHERS.

When the Anderson household was full of children with NO school house for them in La Junta, Colorado, what do you do?  Simple, you build a log cabin school for your children.  Providing for this building was no challenge for our Great Grandfather Albert Anderson and his son William.  They were used to building log cabin homes when they lived in Texas, near the military forts.

 Top picture of the original La Junta school built by Albert Anderson and son.  Bottom picture is a replica of the school built for the La Junta, Colorado museum.

 Actually, building the school was the easy part, hiring a teacher was the hard part!

Most of the teachers in the late 1800’s were un-married women.  If they got married they could no longer teach, they were told “not to keep company of men”.  The average salary for women $25.99 a month and men $31.52.  The following is taken from the Colorado publication, UP THE HEMLINE, which lists the rules for teaching in 1872.

1. Teachers each day will fill lamps, clean chimneys.
2. Each teacher will bring a bucket of water and a scuttle of coal for the day’s session.
3. Make your pens carefully. You may whittle nibs to the individual taste of the pupils.
4. Men teachers may take one evening each week for courting purposes or two evenings a week if they go to church regularly.
5. After ten hours in school, the teachers may spend the remaining time reading the bible or other good books.
6. Women teachers who marry or engage in unseemly conduct will be dismissed.
7. Each teacher should lay aside from each pay a goodly sum of his earnings for his benefit during his declining years, so that he will not become a burden on society.
8. Any teacher who smokes, uses liquor in any form, frequents pool or public halls or gets shaved in a barber shop,  will give good reason to suspect his worth, intention, integrity and honesty.
9. The teacher who performs his labor faithfully and without fault for five years will be given an increase of twenty-five cents per week in his pay, providing the Board of Education approves.

 If the above rules were not enough to discourage potential teachers, they would be told to arrive at the school early to start a fire in the pot belly stove and prepare a hot meat for the students.   Women were not under any circumstances dye their hair and their dresses must not be any shorter than 2 inches above their ankles.

 WHERE WAS THE COLORADO TEACHERS UNION IN 1872?

    GREAT GRANDPARENTS ALBERT & NANCY ANDERSON

 On February 15, 1836, Albert Jackson Anderson was born to Henry M. and Sarah Anderson in Caddo Cove, Garland County, Arkansas.  He was the sixth of eleven children. Albert would be our branch of the Anderson tree.

Albert Jackson Anderson

 Sometime before Albert’s 12^th birthday, the family moved from Arkansas to Williamson County, Texas Republic. The  move was 360 miles and was made by covered wagon. Some of Alberts life experiences  after the move;

In 1850, by age fourteen, he knew he wanted to be a  rancher, like his                             father, Henry M. Anderson

 In 1855 the lure of millions of longhorn cattle in west Texas found                                    the family moving to Young County, west of Fort Worth.  For protection                         from the raiding Comanche Indians, they ranched near the Military Forts                      built along the  Brazos River.

In 1861 Albert’s brother, James Anderson, was caught stealing his brother’s                 cattle. Local rumor indicates that John and Mitchell Anderson hung their                     brother.                                                                                                                                                 

1861-4 the Civil War found Albert enlisting in the Confederate Army, First             Frontier  District, Young County Texas.  Their duty was to patrol northwest                 Texas, between the Red River and the Rio Grande. He also served as a scout.

In 1864, after the Civil War, Albert and most of his brothers became                              Texas Rangers,   His brother John Henry was on a Indian search and was                       shot in the arm by an arrow.

  On September 20, 1865, Samuel Newcomb, a teacher at Fort Davis, wrote in his diary “Albert Anderson got in from Weatherford (Texas) this evening and had not been to long until it was reported around town that he was going to get married in a week or two”.  He was correct in that Albert married Nancy Alveria Wilson on October 1, 1865.  His brother John Henry married Nancy’s sister Martha Erma Wilson.

Nancy Alveria Wilson

 In 1867, Albert and Nancy had their first child, William Henry Anderson.  There were no doctors at Fort Davis, so they traveled to Weatherford Texas, where William was born.  While living in Texas, Nancy had three girls, Sarah (died as infant), Melinda  and Martha Ellen.

 Perhaps the  memories of Albert’s previous cattle drives up the Goodnight Loving cattle trail to cool Colorado, led him to move his family to La Junta, Colorado. They traveled through Oklahoma Territory to Kansas, where they boarded a train with all their possission and moved to La Junta, Colorado. 

The year they arrived in Bent County, Colorado, the town of La Junta was being built at the end of the rail spur owned by the Kansas Pacific Railroad.  La Junta was the last camping ground along the Arkansas River for the Santa Fe Trail.  From La Junta, the trail turned south and set forth over the desolate trail to Santa Fe, New Mexico and on to California.

Nancy and Albert Anderson

 In La Junta, four more children were born. They then had 9 children, William H., Sara E, Melinda E., Martha E.,  Minnie (died as infant), Albert Calvin, May Emmaline,  Nancy Belle and adopted Ada.

 Albert, like his father, was a rancher and horseman.  He made a living by gathering wild horses (Mustangs), breaking them and driving them down the Goodnight Loving Trail to Texas.  His granddaughter, Noma Anderson, said “he had 1100 head of horses on the free range” (Comanche grassland).  The demand for these horses in Texas was high, as each cowboy needed several horses for their cattle drives up the Chisholm Trail to the Kansas rail heads.  Supply and demand……Colorado was short on cattle, Texas needed horses.  Albert would drive the horses down to Texas and return to Colorado with cattle.

Nancy Wilson Anderson

After leaving Colorado, Great Grandmother Nancy ran a hotel in Laurel, Montana,   (while Albert was out looking for gold in Wyoming).  When Albert thought his time was near, he went back to Cheyenne, Oklahoma where he wanted a Baptist funeral! Nancy was a Methodist and Albert wanted to have his funeral in a Baptist Church.  Nancy died June 12, 1919 and had a Methodist funeral in Laurel, Montana.