Tag: Sheldon, Iroquois County, Illinois

My ancestors first came to Sheldon, Iroquois, Illinois in 1857 with the arrival of Thomas Reynolds from England. In 1860, the Goosey family arrived, also from England. Then, in 1876, the Schlotman family came to the Sheldon area. Much later, some of my dad’s family lived there, with his 2nd great-grandfather Anthony Wayne Earl living there from at least 1900 until his death in 1913.

Posts mentioning Sheldon, Illinois…

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Nancy Jane Hull McCarty, abt. 1905

A monotone portrait of a seated aged woman with white hair and a mourning gown
The full Nancy McCarty portrait including Meier Studio mount, abt. 1905
The photo

This matte collodion print shows my 3rd great-grandmother, Nancy Jane Hull McCarty (1832-1908) in about 1905. The photo was taken at Meier Studio in Sheldon, Illinois. I have been unable to find any information on this photographer.

She is seated in a wicker photographer’s chair (a.k.a. posing chair) which has been placed on a floral rug. The same chair appears in other family photos of the time. The backdrop is mostly plain, but a flowering plant is painted on it at one side.

The card mount has a base of the common grey board but has a textured overlay which transitions from grey to black. I suspect that the grey is due to sun fading, but I can’t be sure of it. If it was originally solid black, it might have been chosen for mourning reasons.

A grainy portrait of a mustached man of mature years is set in a plain round jewelry setting
Nancy’s mourning pin shows a portrait of her husband, James, who died in 1902

Nancy is wearing a piece of jewelry showing a portrait of her husband, James S. McCarty (1825-1902). I have compared it to the two known photos of James, and it doesn’t appear to be the same.

Nancy’s dress is very dark, possibly black, with a bit of white lace or light fabric trimming her collar. It was expected that a widow would wear mourning clothing and adhere to customs for at least a year after the death of her husband. While this might be considered a mourning gown, many elderly widows didn’t adhere to the standard mourning timeframes and just wore black for the remainders of their lives. So, this photo wasn’t necessarily taken within the year following her husband’s death.

A cropped version
The back, labelled by Nancy’s granddaughter, Clara Light Schlotman
Her life

Nancy Jane Hull was born on Christmas day in 1832 in Hampshire County, (now West) Virginia to William and Rebecca Hager Hull. She married James S. McCarty on the frozen Potomac River on 15 January 1852.

After having their firstborn, William Thomas McCarty (1852-1919) at home in Virginia, the couple moved to Greene County, Ohio where they had six more children. James worked as a farmhand.

At some point between 1833 and 1866, the family moved to Iroquois County, Illinois, settling in Concord Township near Bunkum, which later became the town of Iroquois (Nancy’s father and some siblings moved to a different area of Illinois at an unknown time). Three more children were born in Illinois to bring the final number to ten (known) children born to Nancy and James.

By 1880, the McCartys had moved just across the Indiana state line to Washington Township in Newton County. After James’ death in 1902, Nancy lived with her son Luke in Effner, back in Iroquois County, Illinois.

Late in life, Nancy suffered from several health problems, but was able to keep house until just before her death. Nancy died 16 August 1908 at age seventy-five. She was buried next to her husband at Morris Chapel Cemetery near Donovan, Illinois. She left ten children, thirty-eight grandchildren, and thirteen great-grandchildren to mourn her loss.

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Clara Light, Country School Teacher

In this sepia-toned head-and-shoulders portrait, Clara wears round glasses, bobbed and finger-waved hair with bangs, and a dress or blouse with a lace collar and a bow at the neckline. She looks into the camera and, though she looks pleasant, she isn't smiling.
Clara Light
Sheldon High School
Class of 1925

My great-grandmother, Clara Marie Light Schlotman (1905-2001) had a short career as a country schoolteacher in the mid-1920s. After talking to her daughter (my grandmother) in 2021, I did a little research and was able to put together this information.

After graduating from Sheldon (Illinois) High School in 1925, Clara Light attended Mrs. Brown’s Normal Training School for Teachers in Homer, Illinois. She was one of about forty students that summer. The students gathered at Mrs. Brown’s home for a group photo, shown below

Mrs. Lucy Brown is seated, fourth from the right. Clara Light is standing to her right, wearing glasses.
Mrs. Brown

From 1917 until about 1931, Lucy Stewart Brown offered training for aspiring teachers. At that time, there was no requirement of formal training to start teaching school. But the better one’s education, the better the salary one could command. Her school seems to have filled a niche for those who wished to teach with more than just a high school education but didn’t have the means or inclination to attend a university program. (This information is from a dissertation written on one-room schoolhouses and from the Facebook page for the Homer, Illinois Historical Society.)

Mrs. Brown’s payment was tied to her students’ success with obtaining certification. If a student failed certification exams after two tries, they owed Mrs. Brown nothing. But, if they passed, they owed her $25 from their first paycheck. (Carol Erb told me this. See next section for more information)

Mildred, a fellow student
Mildred Wilson in 1925

Also at Mrs. Brown’s school that summer was Mildred Wilson, later Mildred Hall.

In 2021, I conversed with her daughter, Carol, on Facebook. She identified her mother in the photo as the girl in the dark dress in the group to the far left. Before passing in 2009 at the age of 102, Mildred told her daughter that…

“…the classes were held in the old high school — that was the upper story of what is now considered the Homer Opera House at the corner of Rt. 49 and First Street in Homer. Her words were that the days were long, hot, and brain-taxing.”

Carol Erb, 2 Dec 2020, commenting on a Homer Historical Society Facebook post about Mrs. Brown’s school.
The Homer Opera House today — The second floor was used as Homer High School from around 1914 until 1928. Mrs. Brown’s students also used the space for their training in the summer of 1925. Photo from a post by the Homer Opera House’s Facebook on 2 Feb 2018.

When asked about living arrangements, Carol remembered her mother telling her that…

“…there were some small houses across the street from the Brown home that the girls in the classes lived in during the week and probably most of them went back to their homes on weekends.”

Carol Erb, 2 Dec 2020, commenting on a Homer Historical Society Facebook post about Mrs. Brown’s school.

She also said that the boys lived in the unfinished upstairs of the Brown home.

Clara Light, Country School Teacher

Her first job was near Gilman, Illinois. The name of the school was the Brooke School.

Note: Nana remembered the name of the school because, after the death of Aunt Nona’s first husband, Albert Diefenbaugh, Aunt Nona worked as a housekeeper for Ed Brooke who lived near Gilman. They were eventually married. Aunt Nona was Grandma Schlotman’s older sister.

Brooke School was located 1.9 miles ESE of Gilman (40.753925, -87.957260), northeast of the intersection of County Roads 900E and 1700N.

Nana said that Grandma lived with a family from the school through the week and would go home to her mother’s house in Sheldon on the weekend. Her brother, Darwin “Dobby” Light would drive her most of the twenty-two plus miles to her destination, but would let her out at the point that the paved road ended. Grandma would then walk the rest of the way. The roads, being dirt, could be very muddy and unpleasant to navigate.

Nana also said she remembers that most of the students Grandma taught were of German descent — that there was a German settlement in the Gilman area. This jives with the photos I found of some of Grandma’s students. One is of Margaret Habben. The label says that she was Grandma’s “7th Grade girl.” Another photo shows, “Gerhard giving Nero a ride in the wagon.” He was Margaret Habben’s younger brother.

It’s unclear at this point when Grandma began teaching. If the summer school was enough to prepare her to pass the examination required for her teaching certificate, she probably started at Gilman in the fall of 1925. That would mean that she taught two seasons.

In July of 1927, Grandma was hired to teach closer to home. She was to begin at Clark School, 2.7 miles north of Sheldon, for the 1927-28 school year. Her marriage to Grandpa in August permanently terminated her teaching career, as married ladies were not allowed to teach in Iroquois County at that time.

Questions

Do we have her teaching certificate?

Which family did she live with during the week? It might have been the Habben family. Where did they live?

What would her pay have been?

Sources

Homer High School “Panthers” at Illinois High School “Glory Days” http://www.illinoishsglorydays.com/id98.html, accessed on 3 Dec 2020.