Week 36 #52Ancestors: School Daze

Reading, writing, and arithmetic isn’t something easily found for my East Tennessee ancestors.  Since many were involved in farming then I would think there was an emphasis on having enough education to get by as it applied to the business of farming.  All family members had responsibilities for the work to be done on the farm.  Some of my ancestors were educated as they also served as postmasters, lawyers, or church clerks but these occupations weren't reflected on the census.  Perusing old newspapers, I found many articles regarding education in Hawkins County.  This article was published in 1890 showing a breakdown of children eligible for free schools.

Article published in The Herald (Rogersville, Tennessee), 03 Sep 1890. Source: Newspapers.com

By the early 1900’s families were leaving the hollers of Tennessee to seek gainful employment.  Many children of these families were attending school longer as families no longer farmed for a living.  My great-grandparents had moved away from Tennessee before 1900 but farming continued to be their main source of income in Fannin County, Texas and none of their children appeared to have attended beyond the 7th grade of school.  For the times they are a-changin' (oops that's a Bob Dylan song) my grandfather, Lewis Sutton, broke with tradition and began his career in the oil industry in Seminole County, Oklahoma.  Dad said they lived in a small community known as Snowmac; a town created by the oil boom and named after the developers, Snowden and McSwenney, who drilled a discovery well.  According to the American Oil and Gas History Society, Seminole grew from a town of 894 people to a boomtown of 25,000 to 30,000 residents around 1927 and became the world’s largest supplier of oil.  In fact articles refer to this area as "crude and lawless" and it became the "mecca of the fortune hunter and job seeker" (source: Bowlegs High School Yearbook, 1939).  I can’t fathom how the communities dealt with the radical growth and how it impacted every aspect of life from transportation, housing, food, and education.   A history published in the Bowlegs’ yearbook mentioned that there were hundreds and hundreds of children to be educated and my father was one of them.

Traffic jam in Seminole, Oklahoma.  Source: AOGHS.org

Wolf was another small town the family moved as my father said his brother and sister attended school there.  A school census verified that his oldest siblings, Doyle and Nina, attended Wolf School.  I had hoped to find some school photos of them but only discovered a group photograph at the Oklahoma Historical Society.  My aunt Dottie said Lyle Boren was one of Nina's teachers at Wolf. This teacher went onto to become a democratic member of the U.S. House of Representatives for Oklahoma.  His son, David, would go onto to become an Oklahoma governor.  

 

Wolf Public School photo.  Source:  Oklahoma History Center

In 1940 the Sutton family was living in the town of Bowlegs, Oklahoma which is about 5 miles south of Seminole.  This was five years after my grandfather's death.  My grandmother had become a beauty operator (a short lived career for a reason, in my opinion, as she cut my hair once) and Doyle was a roustabout for Carter Oil. There are very few photos of the family during this time period because many were lost in a house fire.  To my amazement, I discovered photos in 2014 of my father and two of his younger siblings, Myrt and Dottie, published in The 1939 Yahnseh yearbook (unbeknownst to them).  This yearbook included a history of the Bowlegs school district’s development that I found interesting.  Just nine years earlier "Bowlegs had become the largest Union Graded school in existence with an assessed valuation of nearly five million dollars.  Enrollment had passed the 2,000 mark.  A teaching staff of 38 instructors offered work including a full four-year high school course with 26 units accredited by the State Department of Education.  Four school buses transported the students above the sixth grade to the central plant.”

Bowlegs School District's grade schools.  My father and sisters attended Taylor Elementary. Source: Ancestry.com

Dad disliked school and dropped out sometime after the sixth grade.  The school photo I discovered in this yearbook is most likely his last.  He had obviously fallen behind in school by 1939.  Dad mentioned that kids made fun of him there because he didn't have a father and whatever else would get his goat.  It was a blessing that his father had taught him how to shoot at a young age because his mother wasn’t a good money manager.  He found himself providing meat for the family by shooting squirrels and the occasional rabbit.  There was also mention of an occasional neighbor’s chicken that would go missing.  One of his first jobs as a teenager was making deliveries on a bicycle for the local drug store.

Paul Jones "PJ" Sutton

Myrtle Alice "Myrt" Sutton

Dorothy Jean "Dottie" Sutton

Despite dropping out of school, Dad found his way in life as a truck driver for various companies and settled with Safeway Supermarkets earning a steady income and retirement.  I believe three siblings completed high school – Nina, Myrt, and Don.  His youngest sister Dottie completed her high school equivalency by passing the GED exam.  I don't know about Doyle but I know he liked to write articles and had a few published in The Oklahoman newspaper.  My uncle Don would go one step further and become a college graduate.  

As I think about the various educational paths taken by Dad and his siblings, this John Dewey quote rings true, “Education is not preparation for life; education is life itself."