Memoir of a Country Schoolteacher Dolly Holliday Meets the Ethnic West, 1919-1920
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Memoir of a Country Schoolteacher Dolly Holliday Meets the Ethnic West, 1919-1920 by Dolly Holliday Clark Edited and with an introduction by Paula M. Nelson In the fall of 1919, Dolly Holliday, an idealistic seven paramount. Within this culture, education was seen as teen-year-old teacher from Indiana, arrived in Mandan, unnecessary and impractical and even destructive of North Dakota, eager to assume her duties as a western family goals. Most of the German-Russian families schoolmarm. Because she had read so many of the farmed. They assumed that their children would farm western novels popular at the time, she believed that as well; the ability to do hard, physical work was all that she was about to enter a world of wide-open spaces, was necessary to fulfill this goal. Education's growing laconic cowboys, and potential romance. Dolly Holliday emphasis on innovation, experimentation, and a broad found the wide-open spaces, but there would be no view of issues that helped people see beyond the family cowboys and very little romance. She learned first hand and the locality was perceived as a threat by these that there were many kinds of "west" in the West; her German-Russian families. new home was a struggling agricultural area inhabited, Holliday, of course, came from a family that had at least in part, by a stern, hard-working population obviously given her wide latitude and had respected her whose culture and values varied quite dramatically goals and ambitions. Although she was only seventeen, from hers. they had believed her wise enough to follow her dreams Dolly Holliday was born in Indiana in 1902. Her halfway across the continent. Holliday's family had grandparents had moved to Indiana from North Caro provided a complete, town-style education for her (she lina in the 1840s because of their opposition to slavery. notes that she had never attended a one-room country Her grandfather owned a general store and ran the local school), including extra schooling at Ball State, which post office. Her parents were dairy farmers. The family would help further her career. Dolly Holliday saw a followed the Quaker faith, one of the most individual broader world beyond the farm and participated di istic of Protestant denominations. Dolly graduated rectly in the modernizing forces that were reshaping the from Cicero High School and attended a twelve-week United States after World War I. normal course at Ball State Teachers College in Muncie. When two such diverse sets of ideals came into Because she came from a progressive family with strong contact, of course, clashes inevitably occurred. Holliday middle-class values, she was unprepared for the very never did come to understand the German-Russian different world she would find south of Mandan. point of view and even encouraged one Mueller son, What was this different world like? During her first Adam, to try to break away from patriarchal authority. year in North Dakota, Holliday lived in a German The results were dreadful for him. The German-Rus Russian community, whose religious, family and edu- sians, for their part, never accepted Holliday. She . cational values were profoundly different than hers. remained an outsider throughout her stay in the com The locals were Catholic and heard most services in munity. While she loved the children she taught and their native tongue. As German-Russians, they main believed she provided them with a taste of a softer, less tained an authoritarian family style once common utilitarian world, she was glad to leave that area when among farming groups in Europe and the United States, her year was up. During her second year in North but it was a system that was gradually giving way to a Dakota, she lived among people more like herself, but more flexible and democratic structure in many re found that to have its own complications. Part Two of gions. In the German-Russian family, the children the memoir (to appear in the spring 1992 issue of North served the needs of the group, rather than following Dakota History) will describe those. their own wishes; they owed an obligation to the family Memoir of a Country Schoolteacher is a frank and until they reached age twenty-one. Individual happi realistic account of a young woman's sojourn into rural ness was not as important as the good of the family as North Dakota early in the twentieth century. It illus a unit. The wishes of the family head were always trates some of the hardships rural teachers faced, not in 30 31 the schoolrooms but after hours, when the system of taught her to cope with the exigencies of life. Her North boarding limited privacy and created complicated per Dakota teaching career built her courage and her sonal relations. It is illuminating, amusing and strength. heartrending all at once. Dolly Holliday admits to learning important lessons during this hard year. The *The names of the families in this memoir are fictional. struggle she faced in a world so different than her own Heading West of the time I was not sure what I was eating, but it was all very delicious. A colored waiter at my elbow most The year was nineteen hundred and nineteen. The of the time was, however, a little disconcerting. rear platform of the train was windy and dirty. My At Chicago I had to change stations. I had a wait of clothes, face and hair were full of smoke and cinders several hours and it was ten o'clock before we pulled which were belching from the engine of the coal out. Excitement had kept me awake most of the night burning train as it thundered westward over the tree before, and by the time I had settled in my seat I less plains of North Dakota. realized I was very tired and sleepy and regretted not It was late afternoon. The month was early Septem taking a berth. Fortunately, when I inquired of the ber and there was the feel of autumn in the air, conductor if there was a vacancy, he was able to find although the temperature was very balmy and pleas me a lower berth, and I am sure by the time my head ant. I was gazing at the most beautiful sunset I had ever hit the pillow I was asleep. beheld so, ignoring the cinders and soot, I reveled in the I awoke several times during the night. From my beauty of the western sky. The clarity of the atmo train window, the world looked so strange and eerie. sphere amazed me. I could see for miles across the The train made a few stops and, as I watched the rolling prairie. passengers getting off and others boarding, the scene At midnight I would reach my destination-Mandan, gave me a sense of unreality. North Dakota. And although there would be no one to When I arrived at Mandan, the station was dark and meet me and I knew nothing of the town, its size nor deserted. However, another woman who looked poor hotel accommodations, I wasn't in the least concerned. and honest had gotten off the train with me. I asked her To a naive, seventeen-year-old girl who had never about a hotel and she suggested the Nigey. She said traveled more than thirty miles from the small central most of the teachers stayed there when they were in Indiana community where she grew up, this was, town. It was a respectable middle-class hotel, such as indeed, a storybook adventure. It was the realization of teachers at that time could afford. We went together to my lifelong ambition to be a schoolteacher. the hotel where she introduced me to Mr. Nigey, who Why North Dakota? I will tell you. I was an avid was at the desk. He carried my bags up to my room. I reader of the works of Zane Grey and Harold Bell undressed, bathed, and crept into a comfortable clean· Wright. They were writers of western novels, at that bed. I went to sleep at once. time current best sellers. In many of their books, the heroine was a schoolteacher fresh from the east. My A New World secret desire was to go west to teach, but my hopes of attaining my desires were slim. The next morning, Sunday, I slept late. I was awak Then I heard there was a shortage of teachers in ened by someone whistling "I'm Forever Blowing North Dakota. That, although not exactly Grey nor Bubbles," a popular song of that day. I was very much Wright territory, was near enough for me. surprised. I supposed myself to be in the "Wild and Now my dream was coming true. There I was, with Woolly West" where all one would hear were cowboy a high school diploma and twelve weeks of Normal songs. I had been concerned because I didn't know how School behind me, heading for that land of enchant to square dance, supposing that kind of dance was all ment so vividly described by my favorite authors. they knew. Since it was dark when I arrived and all that What could be more exciting or romantic? interested me was finding a hotel, I had not noticed At last, a cool evening breeze drove me inside. I was what a modern little city Mandan was, with its around greeted by the singsong voice of the porter calling, four thousand souls. "Last call for dinner in the dining car." The conductor I dressed and went down to the desk to inquire about met me and invited me to dinner as his guest.