Martha Wick when she was Marta Aresvik Putnam (1920s???)
[a major misspelling in title fixed and some table display problems improved and an author's name added but I continue to work of formatting, Tuesday, May 11, 2010]
If you haven't noticed, it is 2010 and so the United States is trying to count all the citizens and residents of the United States. I'm sure David Letterman has done a 10 top ten reasons why answering the census matters. If I were to do it, it would probably have as number 8 so we could determine how make people tried to name the president with his name, misspelled it and number 1 would be taking best on how long it takes Metro (the Washington Area metro transit authority) to take the advertisements down in the buses.
But for us who like to look at the past, the Censuses are very useful to finding out who lived where and who they lived with. And even more fun can be figuring out who they lived near. In my family we tend to know the family history, but the whole point of writing is to put the family in some context. Now there is going to be some frustration in this blog. One of "challenges" of getting to the Census is that though the people can see them 70 (or 75 years) after the US collects them, "see them" for free in this case, means you have to be at a National Archives branch, or be at library that subscribes to Ancestry.Com (or pay yourself),** or dig through some resources at various Free Our Records sites rootsweb.com (closely associates with Ancestry) or FamilySearch.org.
Okay, enough about that. Let's get to some family stories gleaned from the census. In this case, it will be a census taken by the Minnesota state government and currently available at the Minnesota Historical Society for free and with a decent search interface. Many states took censuses in the middle of the decade so they could keep track of population changes, especially as immigration jumped in their state. The least represented (in English) member of my paternal family is the adventurous Martha Moller Wick (later Marta Aresvik Putnam). Her family came to Minnesota from Norway in [family time line needs to be consulted]. And in 1905, the state of Minnesota counted her and her family living in Jackson County, Minnesota.
Fifth Decennial Census of Minnesota Population Schedule
Fifth Decennial Census of Minnesota
Schedule. Population Enumerated by me in the City
of Pipestown from 2 day June 1905 to 3 rd day June
inclusive. J. J. Bessard.
Schedule. Population Enumerated by me in the City
of Pipestown from 2 day June 1905 to 3 rd day June
inclusive. J. J. Bessard.
Last | First | Loc | Sex: | Age: | Race | Place of Birth | Place Father Birth | Place Mother Birth | Yrs. in MN | Yr. in dist. | Job | ID |
Wick | Thomas | [village] | M | 58 | W | 18 | 18 | Day Laborer | 5542810 | |||
Wick | Kjerstin | “ | F | 63 | W | 16 | 16 | [blank] | 5542544 | |||
Wick | Kristin | “ | F | 28 | W | 18 | 18 | Teacher | ||||
Wick | Peter | “ | M | 26 | W | 18 | 13 | Lumber Dealer | 5542746 | |||
Wick | Martha | “ | F | 21 | W | 18 | 18 | Teacher | 5542626 or 5542620 | |||
Wick | Dora | “ | F | 19 | W | 18 | 18 | Teacher | 5542242 |
+ Headings have been changed.
*Don’t know why it is crossed out
*Don’t know why it is crossed out
Census information is from Ancestry.Com and transcribed by Lucy G. Barber
Now this little snippet tells us some interesting things. Clearly, the girls were all becoming schoolteachers. Indeed Martha Wick was counted twice in this census since she was also counted at her school in the County of Pipestone along with her other teachers who were propbably all teachers at the Pipestone Indian School.
The Census for the town of Pipestone in Pipestone County was collected on the same days by the same enumerator as the one for Pipestone Village in Jackson County, but Mr. Bressard may not have notice the repetition or the Wick family considered Martha to be at home, even if she stayed at the School normally. Martha had only been in the district for 9.5 months.
View Minnesota Places in a larger map
The two places were not close, so I think he wrote down the wrong place and he meant County of Pipestone, or I am underestimating how far people were willing to travel. It is true that when Martha Wick marries George Rockwell Putnam in 1913, they do so in the home of her parents in Worthington, Minnesota which is in Jackson County.
Superintendent Home for Pipestone Indian School (now used to store records!!!) National Park Service
The fact that Martha is teaching at an Indian School is fascinating to me. During my graduate studies, I learned about these schools as agents for trying to transform the "savages" into Americans. There have both been good histories about the schools and their cultural impact:
I hade the chance to hear Philip J. Deloria talk about this book and recommend looking for it: Playing Indian (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1998).
A more recent article looks at how women schoolteachers experienced this teaching:
D Cesar, JK Smith, THE PORTRAIT OF WOMEN TEACHERS IN INDIAN TERRITORY, American Educational History Journal 2008
Full disclosure, I have not read this article, but it is available for all of us to read.
Some searching also suggests some books on the place specifically:
Eagle, Adam Fortunate. 2010. Pipestone: my life in an Indian boarding school. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press
See full disclosure above.
And then there is the wonderful woman writer whose name completely escapes me who writes about Minnesota and Plains Indians in the present and the past. Thanks to yet another Lucy relative and reader: Louise Erdrich is the writer. Lucy S. now get a free question answered. If you have a title you want to recommend put it in the comments.
The eleven teachers came from a variety of places, exposing Marta to women from around the country. Most were born in the United States: Iowa, Wisconsin, Indiana, North Dakota, and four from Minnesota. One was from Nova Scotia. I haven't checked yet, but I suspect that the women were considered federal employees and this may explain why Martha left to go teach in Washington a few years later. All the women teachers are listed together and then the male teachers.
For the family story, one of the myths I've mentioned about Martha/Marta is that she seemed so unsophisticated next to the Putnam family, but of course if she taught in these schools and met women from so many backgrounds, she learned manners, decorum, and a lot about class. I remember my dad saying that she also like Native American items, which this might explain.
Of course, as often happens with these explorations I have a list of both questions and tasks now:
- Find out if teachers were federal employees and thus look for them in guides to federal employees (and/or request Martha Wick's personnel records from National Archives
- Learn if Minnesota county divisions changed or if this was a likely mistake or ???
- Determine when Marta Wick finished her Normal School program at Menota, Minnesota
**Ancestry.Com is not popular with all people, including me, who are not fond of paying for access to public records, even if the people who do the volunteer work for them at many archives across the country are super nice people. See one Genealogy Newsletter for some explanation.
Posts
Are you thinking of Louise Erdrich? I have read a couple of her books and they are very evocative of Minn. from and Indian perspective. I had never heard of his early episode in Gram's teaching career. It is intriguing. I hope youcan learn more. Lucy S.
ReplyDeleteThanks, it was Louise Erdrich, I kept thinking of Annie Proulx, but knew that was wrong for this story. Now I can't remember the book that is the most about the boarding schools.
ReplyDeleteOh and I updated the blog to suggest you get a free questions (as if there is ever a charge), but do think of anything you are interested in.
I did find out that most of the records on Pipestone are in Kansas City, Missouri at a regional branch, but I am going to see if there are some around DC when I have a little more time.
This is great stuff, Lucy. What a fun project. It *almost* makes me want to do a little digging myself...
ReplyDeleteMarta Moller's name in Norway was Aresvik; the immigration officials reportedly suggested Wick as a more easily assimilated surname. I don't know when she reverted to the original spelling; perhaps at the time of her marriage. I think Moller was also spelled with an umlaut over the "o", but facilities for reproducing that form were probably limited at the start of the 20th century in SW Minnesota.
ReplyDeleteLucy, That's my corner of the world. I grew up in Mountain Lake, which is in Cottonwood County, about 40 miles northeast of Worthington. By the way, it probably doesn't matter much, but Worthington is (and, I assume, was) the county seat of Nobles County. Jackson County is the next one east, with Jackson as its county seat.
ReplyDelete