Fortitude was a standard requirement for one-room school teachers in Kansas during the late 1800s and early 1900s. Instructors were often female, unmarried, and in many cases, only a year older than some of the students in their classroom. Challenged with limited resources and rudimentary rooms and supplies, rural school marms generally had minimal teacher training too. Most were recent graduates of normal schools which in this area of Kansas amounted to a one-week crash course to prepare them for the classroom. These young women were not only responsible for teaching all grades in a single room, but also performed custodial duties, served as counselors, and administered first aid. They were charged with maintaining the classroom, hauling water for drinking and washing, and were responsible for hauling wood (or cow chips) and kindling the fire. Teachers had to be at school early to get the wood-burning stoves started to warm up their rooms before the arrival of their students.
Veturia E. Boyd taught at the Deerfield school in the winter of 1887-1888. Miss Boyd walked back and forth to her school each day as she boarded with Ada Oliver, a single woman who lived in a dugout three-quarters of a mile north of the schoolhouse. The school board told the young teacher that if a blizzard ever arrived to never send the children home but to keep them at the schoolhouse until help arrived. On December 19, 1887, a blizzard arrived during school hours and unleashed its fury. Somehow, Miss Boyd got all the school children dismissed safely, and she started for Miss Oliver’s place in the middle of the afternoon. Starting was about all she got done. For nearly two hours, she walked around in circles and asked the good Lord for help.
She eventually stumbled upon the dugout door of a young bachelor named Dayton Loucks. Hearing a loud noise and wondering what it was, Loucks pried opened his door and in dropped Miss Boyd. Both were quite surprised to see one another; nonetheless, Miss Boyd was thankful to have found shelter. She was a shy and modest woman and spent the night in her wet clothes, sitting in front of the fire for warmth and to dry her clothing. Outside, the blizzard howled on, but the next morning dawned bright and clear. Miss Boyd thanked Loucks and walked a quarter mile south to the Neil Beckett farmstead where Mrs. Beckett gave her some breakfast and fixed her a lunch to take to school for her dinner. Miss Oliver, worrying that Miss Boyd had not made it home the night before, went to the schoolhouse and found the educator there getting ready for her students and another day of teaching.
Boyd’s story is not atypical of the young women who taught in rural schools. Many a night was spent inside a schoolhouse because of severe weather, sometimes with charge of students and little (if any) food. Occasionally these young female teachers were left in their schools to battle the forces of nature all alone. Their grit was unmatched.
Miss Boyd was born in 1862 in Indiana and came to Kearny County in the spring of 1886 to take a claim near Lakin. She also taught at Lakin and in Finney County before she returned to the Midwest where she taught in a Chicago suburb. She later became a doctor of osteopathy and often led five-mile nature walks and hikes in the Chicago area. Miss Boyd never married, and she returned to Lakin on more than one occasion to visit friends she had made during her time here. She died in 1935 at Chicago.
Kearny County Museum tips our hat to Veturia Boyd and other teachers like her who left their mark on history and in the hearts of the students they taught. And that’s a rap for Women’s History Month! We hope you’ve enjoyed the stories we’ve shared this month about some of the remarkable women of Kearny County, Kansas!
SOURCES: History of Kearny County, Vol. I; archives of The Lakin Index, Kearny County Advocate, Garden City Herald, Chicago Tribune, and Warrick Enquirer; ancestry.com and findagrave.