CAMPBELLs, LUGGs, & BLACKWELLs of Nelson, PA

I applied to teach at a school north of Brainerd near Merrifield. I was accepted, so my first year was spent there. I roomed and boarded with a rural family who had three sons. The two oldest went to my school.

All was going well, until one night when I was taken with a severe pain in my right side. We telephoned for my mother and she came from my old home south of Brainerd to the home where I boarded, about six miles north of Brainerd, something like twelve miles or so between the two places.

I was in such severe pain that we surmised I probably had appendicitis. We had no idea the appendix was ruptured. Mother heated a pan of water on top of Mrs. Jordan's stove, put some turpentine in it and wrung small towels or wash clothes out of this mixture and placed them on my sore side. When they would cool, I would beg my mother to wring out the cloth again and so we kept hot towels on my pain. We learned the next [day] after the doctor saw me that we were doing the wrong thing.

Spanish influenza was raging all around our area, so the doctor we called had gone many miles to minister to flu patients. We could not get him in our area until about eleven o'clock in the morning. He took one look at me and said, "I should have had this girl yesterday. We will have to operate on her as fast as we can arrange it." The truth was that my appendix had burst and I was in serious condition. I was carried to Brainerd to the Northwestern Hospital and was operated on at two o'clock that afternoon. I was in really serious condition. Gangrene had set in and the doctor would give my family no real hopes for three days.

It so happened that my time in the hospital coincided with two things -- one was the usual Christmas vacation and the other was that many schools were being closed because of the influenza. Well, God was good to me. I was healed and back at my job of teaching after a few weeks.

The next school year (1920) I taught [at] my old home school, where I had gone to school myself for all eight grades. Today, over seventy years later, I hear from some of the pupils I taught that year.

I think I will recount one incident which will show how experiences are linked together. One day (in 1920) a little girl, about ten years old, came to me and said, "Teacher, the big boys are teasing little Jerrold." I said "Don't tell me more. Let me go out and catch them." I went out and sure enough,the big boys (probably twelve or thirteen years of age) were tormenting six year old Jerrold. They had pulled at him, pulling at his clothing until a large button had been pulled off his trousers and lay on the ground nearby. I scolded the boys, told them to go into the schoolroom and sit in their school seats. I also picked up the button. "Now, boys," I said, "You should be ashamed of yourselves. What you have been doing is not good fun and certainly is not good clean sport. I want you to remain after school and think about what you have been doing. If you behave like this as boys, you will grow into manhood such that no one will really like you. Furthermore boys, I want you to sew this button back on Jerrold's trousers." I handed them needle and thread and the button. The boys sewed it back in place. I kept the boys after school for several nights. Then, on Friday night, after giving them another "talking to" I dismissed them. They came to the door and said "Goodnight Mary."

I should have told you that because all of the children in this school had grown up with me, they knew me as "Mary." I refused to be called "Teacher" and I though[t] it foolish for me to insist they call me "Miss Hughey" since we had been friends and neighbors for many years. I said "Goodnight, boys." and so we parted as friends that afternoon. Today Jerrold and his wife Myrtle, are among my best friends.

We had many wonderful times in our neighborhood that school year. At Christmas time we gave a really good program for the entire neighborhood. Later on that same year, we put on a play, getting older young people in the neighborhood to take part. The name of the play was " Hans Von Smash." Maybe it is yet remembered by old timers.

My next term of teaching was in a consolidated school in the town of Deerwood where my sister's home was. I taught intermediate grades, the third and fourth, in that school and I also taught penmanship in some of the other rooms.

By that time I had "saved," with the idea of going on to further education. So, the next fall found me in Moorehead, Minnesota at Moorehead State Teacher's College. I graduated from that institution the spring of 1922. Before I left M.S.T.C. I had been accepted as a teacher in Dickinson, North Dakota. I had planned to teach in Minnesota, but the director of the training school at M.S.T.C. had insisted on my applying for the work at Dickinson. The superintendent in Dickinson had asked Moorehead Teacher's College to supply a teacher and i was urged to apply. I taught in Dickinson for two years.

Next, I applied to teach in Minneapolis and to my surprise and satisfaction, I was chosen without a personal interview, contrary to the usual custom. I taught only one year in Minneapolis for circumstances seemed to indicate that I should stay for a year or so with my family in Brainerd.

My brother Harry had broken his engagement with the girl we thought he would marry. It was an upsetting thing for him and for my mother. My father had died March 29, 1923 and Harry had been trying to carry on the work on our farm. Mother, of course, depended on Harry.

That year I stayed home was a busy one for me. I organized the girl and the young women of our neighborhood into a club we named "The Daughters of the Soil ." We tried to promote a varied program. Some of it was an attempt to learn more about things a farm wife should know, such as canning or preserving farm products. We learned about producing a good breed of chickens and their care. We gave a Mother and Daughters' Banquet. I remember that as being a great way to learn a number of things. We put on a play in the town hall that was enjoyed by the entire neighborhood.

I decided to get back into the role of teaching, so I applied to the city of Brainerd and was hired. I taught in the Brained Schools for three years.