I am going to finish this story tonight. I know it has been a long read but I hope it has given you a taste of what it would have been like to live in Aunt Kates day and time.
Chapter 19
I am thankful to be able to write that I had no failures in the fifteen years that I was there. The "not so bright" were worked with until they were able to pass on with there class. The second year I was there I had a ninth grade in addition to the regular eight grades. And I often wondered how I did it, but thankfully I did.
At the close of my last year in Eureka, I went to Stockton and applied for the Lammersville District School in San Joaquin County.
I shall always appreciate the favorable recommendation that the Superintendent of schools gave me. And another thing which will always make my heart feel grateful is the remembrance of the kind reception given to me by the trustees of Lammersville and their gracious wives. I wonder if they realize how much their warm welcome meant to me a stranger.
Lammersville, like Eureka, is a one room school, and has all the grades. When I first came here, the homes in the district were owned by the families occupying them. Now those people are no longer here and practically all of the places are rented for different periods of times, as dairy farms, thus making a floating population in this district.
As in Eureka, I had a receiving class at the beginning of each year and a graduating class at the close. Out of the fifteen graduating classes that went from Lammersville, there were but two pupils that had been mine through all of the grades.
While teaching at Lammersville, I boarded three years with a family in the district, and the other twelve years in Tracy, which is about four miles from Lammersville. I rode to and fro on the high school bus traveling around the country in morning for miles and miles before I reached my school. And then four miles back home in the evening. I enjoyed the ride and the new faces that came aboard at the beginning of each new year to take the places of the departing group.
Conclusion
Those thirty one years that I spent in the school room were very busy years. I almost always had a large school, the attendance hardly ever fell below thirty pupils and several years reaching forty five. It meant work, patience, enthusiasm, diplomacy, and then victory. I cannot describe feeling of exaltation in my soul when after months of trying, the boy of long ago, recognized his first printed word. And when Freda, a few years later, could find the word "come" among a page full of other words, it was a glorious feeling to know I had accomplished something that had seemed, to all who knew her, impossible. For all of these opportunities of the past, I am truly thankful today.
I entered the school room in 1907 at the age of forty six. I had raised a family who were now all old enough not to need my care in the same way that they had required when they were younger. I ended my teaching career in 1938 at the age of seventy seven. I have written this account of my life at the request of my friends who say that it is inspirational. To me it doesn't seem so. It has been doing my best from day to day with the best of my ability and in the most part trying to avoid feeling sorry for myself. There are thousands of other women who have done and are still doing Life's Work as it comes to their hands.
I do not say that my work is finished. No one's work is ever done until the call comes to close Life's book. When that call comes for me I hope to be able to say in the words of the old hymn, "I have fought my way through. I have finished the work Thou dids't give me to do." May my ears not be too dull to hear the blest words, "Well and faithfully done. Enter into My joy.”
Daniel Hackett Pillsbury and Bridget Delia Curley were my Great Great Grandparents and the first Pillsbury's in California.
Love,
Grammy T.
