At 17 she was a reluctant rough rider on uncharted Kansas plains. She taught school in a leaky, one-room dugout cut into a hillside near Lincoln, lived with school patrons in one room dugouts, gave her pay to "papa" to help keep the family going, and campaigned for her father when he ran for 6th district congressman on the Populist ticket and was elected. All that was a long time ago. Today, at 90, Mrs. Florence Woody, 301 South 4th, laughs it off. It was no laughing matter, however, that spring day 73 years ago when she found herself dashing off to a school she didn't want to teach anyway, one hand clutching her hat against the snorting Kansas wind, the other grabbing the sideboards of a light wagon. The fact that the team of colts was just half broken and plunged on recklessly didn't add any to the calm of the girl from the east who suddenly found herself a part of the pioneer west.
"Flora", William Baker had said to his daughter the day before, "I've got you a school".
The girl protested. She wasn't through school herself. She couldn't teach others. Her words were wasted. Baker was having trouble making a go of life in the raw west and he let it be known his seven children were going to help. Flora's part was to teach school. She did. Her first schoolhouse was a dugout a few miles from Lincoln, She had 10 students, "one of them lots bigger than I was". Their seats were rude chunks of wood and their desks were home-made benches. There was no seat for the teacher.
In one corner of the dugout was a hole filled with water and inhabited by a "water puppy". The girl from the east was uneasy. The hole was kept filled with water that drained to it through ditches around the cabin-like room whenever it rained. Eventually that roof drove the teacher out of her job. Rains set in and the hole wouldn't hold all the water that leaked into the dugout. When the students - "scholars", they called them then - and their teacher found water of wading depth in the dugout one day school was adjourned, indefinitely. Flora Baker had taught two and a half months. Her pay? A pink calico dress and a pair of shoes. The rest of what she earned went to "papa". Her salary was supposed to be $10 a month or its equivalent. It was paid by the school patrons and was apt to be in wheat, corn, vegetables, other produce or meat.
Just as the school patrons paid the teacher, they took turns boarding her and she learned much about the families. Her first place was with Ephriam Choate, member of a family which for years has been in newspaper business in Lincoln, and still is. Mr. Choate had to step outside while the teacher got ready for bed. Then the lights were turned out, his wife called "Eph", and he returned to the cabin.
From the Choate dugout the new teacher went to a family so poor the father walked several miles into Lincoln each day for work to help keep his children alive. Even then they were often so hungry they dug wild onions out of the yard and ate them, Mrs. Woody recalls. That dugout in a high bank cut near Lincoln launched Flora Baker on a school teaching career and incidentally into romance. The very first Sunday in her new school the Choates took her to the Josiah Woody home. Woody home. Woody was a Baptist minister, had been a Confederate, and was the postmaster. the settlers went for church service in the Woody home and stayed to eat. Alfred Webb Woody, son of the postmaster, was sitting along the wall of the room when the Choates arrived with the new teacher.
"He just sat there pretending to read and pretty soon he got up and went out. I didn't think he had seen me at all", the little 90 year old Salina woman admits. Discussing it as she sat in her wheel chair and told some of her early experiences, Mrs. Woody suddenly smiled, cast a down-right coqueltish glance at her visitor, and came out with a sparking [missing text]
"He told me later he did see me, though".
From the special permit her father obtained she went on to study a normal school, got a certificate and taught eight terms of school under varying conditions. Once she held school in the basement of a home. There were only half windows and the light was never good. One of her students was a part-Indian who was about half blind. "So I let her go and stand by the window where she could see to better advantage."
Twice Flora Baker taught in Sylvan Grove, and one term she taught in Ellsworth county. She taught one term in a house where the woman used to school room as a kitchen until patrons objected. She admits the practice had been disquieting to say the least both for students and teacher. A term of school in those days was sometimes in winter and again in summer so eight terms didn't mean eight years.
Dan Cupid, who had walked late into the four room Woody home that first Sunday Flora Baker taught school, caught up with her and Alfred Woody when she was 21. They were married March 11, 1883, and lived together 67 years. Mr. Woody died last February.
The young Woodys of the 80's moved into their own home, on their own land. Soon it was complete with orchard, cows, chickens and children. The eastern girl who came to the wild west and taught in a leaky dugout became the mother of eight. One of them is Mrs. Charles Shaver, 17 Crestview Drive, Salina. The others are Mrs. Florence Jackson of Manhattan; Harold of Chicago, Wayland of Tulsa, Oscar of Laramie, Wyo., Alden of Topeka, and Carl of Victor. One is dead.
"Scattered to the four winds." Mrs. Woody remarked. "You know how families do."
She has two sisters and a brother still living. One of them, Mrs. Lena Marsh, visited Mrs. Woody a few months ago, making the trip from her home in Burbank, Calif., by plane. Now 83, she was the one who generally went with their father when he was campaigning for congress, because she was the singer of the family. Mrs. Woody's parents came to Kansas in the spring of 1878 from near Pittsburgh, Pa., drawn by the glowing literature that flooded the east and told of riches awaiting in the west. Some of that literature was from the Solomon valley and it was there that the Baker family headed. The trip west was like a gold rush, Mrs. Woody says. Railroad cars were filled with emigrants, their belongings tied in bundles that clogged the aisles. All land at Solomon was taken when the Baker family arrived, so he went on west. He finally settled in Beaver township, Lincoln county. Life was good, in spite of the lean circumstances of many of the new settlers. One of the diversions, Mrs. Woody recalls, was walking three miles once a week to the postoffice. Life has been long and she has filled it with many accomplishments but never has done exactly what she would have liked to do, Mrs. Woody reveals. She wanted to be a writer. She never has been, except for the innumerable letters she pens daily now that she can't get around as she has for the past 90 years. (The Salina Journal, January 7, 1951 -
Contributor: Gould. L.J. (47852615)
"Flora", William Baker had said to his daughter the day before, "I've got you a school".
The girl protested. She wasn't through school herself. She couldn't teach others. Her words were wasted. Baker was having trouble making a go of life in the raw west and he let it be known his seven children were going to help. Flora's part was to teach school. She did. Her first schoolhouse was a dugout a few miles from Lincoln, She had 10 students, "one of them lots bigger than I was". Their seats were rude chunks of wood and their desks were home-made benches. There was no seat for the teacher.
In one corner of the dugout was a hole filled with water and inhabited by a "water puppy". The girl from the east was uneasy. The hole was kept filled with water that drained to it through ditches around the cabin-like room whenever it rained. Eventually that roof drove the teacher out of her job. Rains set in and the hole wouldn't hold all the water that leaked into the dugout. When the students - "scholars", they called them then - and their teacher found water of wading depth in the dugout one day school was adjourned, indefinitely. Flora Baker had taught two and a half months. Her pay? A pink calico dress and a pair of shoes. The rest of what she earned went to "papa". Her salary was supposed to be $10 a month or its equivalent. It was paid by the school patrons and was apt to be in wheat, corn, vegetables, other produce or meat.
Just as the school patrons paid the teacher, they took turns boarding her and she learned much about the families. Her first place was with Ephriam Choate, member of a family which for years has been in newspaper business in Lincoln, and still is. Mr. Choate had to step outside while the teacher got ready for bed. Then the lights were turned out, his wife called "Eph", and he returned to the cabin.
From the Choate dugout the new teacher went to a family so poor the father walked several miles into Lincoln each day for work to help keep his children alive. Even then they were often so hungry they dug wild onions out of the yard and ate them, Mrs. Woody recalls. That dugout in a high bank cut near Lincoln launched Flora Baker on a school teaching career and incidentally into romance. The very first Sunday in her new school the Choates took her to the Josiah Woody home. Woody home. Woody was a Baptist minister, had been a Confederate, and was the postmaster. the settlers went for church service in the Woody home and stayed to eat. Alfred Webb Woody, son of the postmaster, was sitting along the wall of the room when the Choates arrived with the new teacher.
"He just sat there pretending to read and pretty soon he got up and went out. I didn't think he had seen me at all", the little 90 year old Salina woman admits. Discussing it as she sat in her wheel chair and told some of her early experiences, Mrs. Woody suddenly smiled, cast a down-right coqueltish glance at her visitor, and came out with a sparking [missing text]
"He told me later he did see me, though".
From the special permit her father obtained she went on to study a normal school, got a certificate and taught eight terms of school under varying conditions. Once she held school in the basement of a home. There were only half windows and the light was never good. One of her students was a part-Indian who was about half blind. "So I let her go and stand by the window where she could see to better advantage."
Twice Flora Baker taught in Sylvan Grove, and one term she taught in Ellsworth county. She taught one term in a house where the woman used to school room as a kitchen until patrons objected. She admits the practice had been disquieting to say the least both for students and teacher. A term of school in those days was sometimes in winter and again in summer so eight terms didn't mean eight years.
Dan Cupid, who had walked late into the four room Woody home that first Sunday Flora Baker taught school, caught up with her and Alfred Woody when she was 21. They were married March 11, 1883, and lived together 67 years. Mr. Woody died last February.
The young Woodys of the 80's moved into their own home, on their own land. Soon it was complete with orchard, cows, chickens and children. The eastern girl who came to the wild west and taught in a leaky dugout became the mother of eight. One of them is Mrs. Charles Shaver, 17 Crestview Drive, Salina. The others are Mrs. Florence Jackson of Manhattan; Harold of Chicago, Wayland of Tulsa, Oscar of Laramie, Wyo., Alden of Topeka, and Carl of Victor. One is dead.
"Scattered to the four winds." Mrs. Woody remarked. "You know how families do."
She has two sisters and a brother still living. One of them, Mrs. Lena Marsh, visited Mrs. Woody a few months ago, making the trip from her home in Burbank, Calif., by plane. Now 83, she was the one who generally went with their father when he was campaigning for congress, because she was the singer of the family. Mrs. Woody's parents came to Kansas in the spring of 1878 from near Pittsburgh, Pa., drawn by the glowing literature that flooded the east and told of riches awaiting in the west. Some of that literature was from the Solomon valley and it was there that the Baker family headed. The trip west was like a gold rush, Mrs. Woody says. Railroad cars were filled with emigrants, their belongings tied in bundles that clogged the aisles. All land at Solomon was taken when the Baker family arrived, so he went on west. He finally settled in Beaver township, Lincoln county. Life was good, in spite of the lean circumstances of many of the new settlers. One of the diversions, Mrs. Woody recalls, was walking three miles once a week to the postoffice. Life has been long and she has filled it with many accomplishments but never has done exactly what she would have liked to do, Mrs. Woody reveals. She wanted to be a writer. She never has been, except for the innumerable letters she pens daily now that she can't get around as she has for the past 90 years. (The Salina Journal, January 7, 1951 -
Contributor: Gould. L.J. (47852615)
At 17 she was a reluctant rough rider on uncharted Kansas plains. She taught school in a leaky, one-room dugout cut into a hillside near Lincoln, lived with school patrons in one room dugouts, gave her pay to "papa" to help keep the family going, and campaigned for her father when he ran for 6th district congressman on the Populist ticket and was elected. All that was a long time ago. Today, at 90, Mrs. Florence Woody, 301 South 4th, laughs it off. It was no laughing matter, however, that spring day 73 years ago when she found herself dashing off to a school she didn't want to teach anyway, one hand clutching her hat against the snorting Kansas wind, the other grabbing the sideboards of a light wagon. The fact that the team of colts was just half broken and plunged on recklessly didn't add any to the calm of the girl from the east who suddenly found herself a part of the pioneer west.
"Flora", William Baker had said to his daughter the day before, "I've got you a school".
The girl protested. She wasn't through school herself. She couldn't teach others. Her words were wasted. Baker was having trouble making a go of life in the raw west and he let it be known his seven children were going to help. Flora's part was to teach school. She did. Her first schoolhouse was a dugout a few miles from Lincoln, She had 10 students, "one of them lots bigger than I was". Their seats were rude chunks of wood and their desks were home-made benches. There was no seat for the teacher.
In one corner of the dugout was a hole filled with water and inhabited by a "water puppy". The girl from the east was uneasy. The hole was kept filled with water that drained to it through ditches around the cabin-like room whenever it rained. Eventually that roof drove the teacher out of her job. Rains set in and the hole wouldn't hold all the water that leaked into the dugout. When the students - "scholars", they called them then - and their teacher found water of wading depth in the dugout one day school was adjourned, indefinitely. Flora Baker had taught two and a half months. Her pay? A pink calico dress and a pair of shoes. The rest of what she earned went to "papa". Her salary was supposed to be $10 a month or its equivalent. It was paid by the school patrons and was apt to be in wheat, corn, vegetables, other produce or meat.
Just as the school patrons paid the teacher, they took turns boarding her and she learned much about the families. Her first place was with Ephriam Choate, member of a family which for years has been in newspaper business in Lincoln, and still is. Mr. Choate had to step outside while the teacher got ready for bed. Then the lights were turned out, his wife called "Eph", and he returned to the cabin.
From the Choate dugout the new teacher went to a family so poor the father walked several miles into Lincoln each day for work to help keep his children alive. Even then they were often so hungry they dug wild onions out of the yard and ate them, Mrs. Woody recalls. That dugout in a high bank cut near Lincoln launched Flora Baker on a school teaching career and incidentally into romance. The very first Sunday in her new school the Choates took her to the Josiah Woody home. Woody home. Woody was a Baptist minister, had been a Confederate, and was the postmaster. the settlers went for church service in the Woody home and stayed to eat. Alfred Webb Woody, son of the postmaster, was sitting along the wall of the room when the Choates arrived with the new teacher.
"He just sat there pretending to read and pretty soon he got up and went out. I didn't think he had seen me at all", the little 90 year old Salina woman admits. Discussing it as she sat in her wheel chair and told some of her early experiences, Mrs. Woody suddenly smiled, cast a down-right coqueltish glance at her visitor, and came out with a sparking [missing text]
"He told me later he did see me, though".
From the special permit her father obtained she went on to study a normal school, got a certificate and taught eight terms of school under varying conditions. Once she held school in the basement of a home. There were only half windows and the light was never good. One of her students was a part-Indian who was about half blind. "So I let her go and stand by the window where she could see to better advantage."
Twice Flora Baker taught in Sylvan Grove, and one term she taught in Ellsworth county. She taught one term in a house where the woman used to school room as a kitchen until patrons objected. She admits the practice had been disquieting to say the least both for students and teacher. A term of school in those days was sometimes in winter and again in summer so eight terms didn't mean eight years.
Dan Cupid, who had walked late into the four room Woody home that first Sunday Flora Baker taught school, caught up with her and Alfred Woody when she was 21. They were married March 11, 1883, and lived together 67 years. Mr. Woody died last February.
The young Woodys of the 80's moved into their own home, on their own land. Soon it was complete with orchard, cows, chickens and children. The eastern girl who came to the wild west and taught in a leaky dugout became the mother of eight. One of them is Mrs. Charles Shaver, 17 Crestview Drive, Salina. The others are Mrs. Florence Jackson of Manhattan; Harold of Chicago, Wayland of Tulsa, Oscar of Laramie, Wyo., Alden of Topeka, and Carl of Victor. One is dead.
"Scattered to the four winds." Mrs. Woody remarked. "You know how families do."
She has two sisters and a brother still living. One of them, Mrs. Lena Marsh, visited Mrs. Woody a few months ago, making the trip from her home in Burbank, Calif., by plane. Now 83, she was the one who generally went with their father when he was campaigning for congress, because she was the singer of the family. Mrs. Woody's parents came to Kansas in the spring of 1878 from near Pittsburgh, Pa., drawn by the glowing literature that flooded the east and told of riches awaiting in the west. Some of that literature was from the Solomon valley and it was there that the Baker family headed. The trip west was like a gold rush, Mrs. Woody says. Railroad cars were filled with emigrants, their belongings tied in bundles that clogged the aisles. All land at Solomon was taken when the Baker family arrived, so he went on west. He finally settled in Beaver township, Lincoln county. Life was good, in spite of the lean circumstances of many of the new settlers. One of the diversions, Mrs. Woody recalls, was walking three miles once a week to the postoffice. Life has been long and she has filled it with many accomplishments but never has done exactly what she would have liked to do, Mrs. Woody reveals. She wanted to be a writer. She never has been, except for the innumerable letters she pens daily now that she can't get around as she has for the past 90 years. (The Salina Journal, January 7, 1951 -
Contributor: Gould. L.J. (47852615)
"Flora", William Baker had said to his daughter the day before, "I've got you a school".
The girl protested. She wasn't through school herself. She couldn't teach others. Her words were wasted. Baker was having trouble making a go of life in the raw west and he let it be known his seven children were going to help. Flora's part was to teach school. She did. Her first schoolhouse was a dugout a few miles from Lincoln, She had 10 students, "one of them lots bigger than I was". Their seats were rude chunks of wood and their desks were home-made benches. There was no seat for the teacher.
In one corner of the dugout was a hole filled with water and inhabited by a "water puppy". The girl from the east was uneasy. The hole was kept filled with water that drained to it through ditches around the cabin-like room whenever it rained. Eventually that roof drove the teacher out of her job. Rains set in and the hole wouldn't hold all the water that leaked into the dugout. When the students - "scholars", they called them then - and their teacher found water of wading depth in the dugout one day school was adjourned, indefinitely. Flora Baker had taught two and a half months. Her pay? A pink calico dress and a pair of shoes. The rest of what she earned went to "papa". Her salary was supposed to be $10 a month or its equivalent. It was paid by the school patrons and was apt to be in wheat, corn, vegetables, other produce or meat.
Just as the school patrons paid the teacher, they took turns boarding her and she learned much about the families. Her first place was with Ephriam Choate, member of a family which for years has been in newspaper business in Lincoln, and still is. Mr. Choate had to step outside while the teacher got ready for bed. Then the lights were turned out, his wife called "Eph", and he returned to the cabin.
From the Choate dugout the new teacher went to a family so poor the father walked several miles into Lincoln each day for work to help keep his children alive. Even then they were often so hungry they dug wild onions out of the yard and ate them, Mrs. Woody recalls. That dugout in a high bank cut near Lincoln launched Flora Baker on a school teaching career and incidentally into romance. The very first Sunday in her new school the Choates took her to the Josiah Woody home. Woody home. Woody was a Baptist minister, had been a Confederate, and was the postmaster. the settlers went for church service in the Woody home and stayed to eat. Alfred Webb Woody, son of the postmaster, was sitting along the wall of the room when the Choates arrived with the new teacher.
"He just sat there pretending to read and pretty soon he got up and went out. I didn't think he had seen me at all", the little 90 year old Salina woman admits. Discussing it as she sat in her wheel chair and told some of her early experiences, Mrs. Woody suddenly smiled, cast a down-right coqueltish glance at her visitor, and came out with a sparking [missing text]
"He told me later he did see me, though".
From the special permit her father obtained she went on to study a normal school, got a certificate and taught eight terms of school under varying conditions. Once she held school in the basement of a home. There were only half windows and the light was never good. One of her students was a part-Indian who was about half blind. "So I let her go and stand by the window where she could see to better advantage."
Twice Flora Baker taught in Sylvan Grove, and one term she taught in Ellsworth county. She taught one term in a house where the woman used to school room as a kitchen until patrons objected. She admits the practice had been disquieting to say the least both for students and teacher. A term of school in those days was sometimes in winter and again in summer so eight terms didn't mean eight years.
Dan Cupid, who had walked late into the four room Woody home that first Sunday Flora Baker taught school, caught up with her and Alfred Woody when she was 21. They were married March 11, 1883, and lived together 67 years. Mr. Woody died last February.
The young Woodys of the 80's moved into their own home, on their own land. Soon it was complete with orchard, cows, chickens and children. The eastern girl who came to the wild west and taught in a leaky dugout became the mother of eight. One of them is Mrs. Charles Shaver, 17 Crestview Drive, Salina. The others are Mrs. Florence Jackson of Manhattan; Harold of Chicago, Wayland of Tulsa, Oscar of Laramie, Wyo., Alden of Topeka, and Carl of Victor. One is dead.
"Scattered to the four winds." Mrs. Woody remarked. "You know how families do."
She has two sisters and a brother still living. One of them, Mrs. Lena Marsh, visited Mrs. Woody a few months ago, making the trip from her home in Burbank, Calif., by plane. Now 83, she was the one who generally went with their father when he was campaigning for congress, because she was the singer of the family. Mrs. Woody's parents came to Kansas in the spring of 1878 from near Pittsburgh, Pa., drawn by the glowing literature that flooded the east and told of riches awaiting in the west. Some of that literature was from the Solomon valley and it was there that the Baker family headed. The trip west was like a gold rush, Mrs. Woody says. Railroad cars were filled with emigrants, their belongings tied in bundles that clogged the aisles. All land at Solomon was taken when the Baker family arrived, so he went on west. He finally settled in Beaver township, Lincoln county. Life was good, in spite of the lean circumstances of many of the new settlers. One of the diversions, Mrs. Woody recalls, was walking three miles once a week to the postoffice. Life has been long and she has filled it with many accomplishments but never has done exactly what she would have liked to do, Mrs. Woody reveals. She wanted to be a writer. She never has been, except for the innumerable letters she pens daily now that she can't get around as she has for the past 90 years. (The Salina Journal, January 7, 1951 -
Contributor: Gould. L.J. (47852615)
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