The Principal Who Wasn't a Man: Esther C. Perry
Esther Clarinda Perry, Long-time Principal at West Middle School, Hartford, Conn.
Everett Geer, school board member, wanted Esther Perry out. She was well-regarded as the principal of West Middle School on Asylum Hill in Hartford, Connecticut. It was a fashionable and well-to-do neighborhood, home to famed authors Mark Twain and Harriet Beecher Stowe, in one of the wealthiest towns in America. Esther was acknowledged to be an able administrator with 36 years experience in education. But she was a woman, and Everett believed a man should serve in the leadership position.
Rumors of his plan to depose her caused a stir. At the June 17, 1896 school board meeting of the West Middle School District, 25 women, including renowned women’s rights leader Isabella Beecher Hooker, attended. A close friend of Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella was also a member of one of the most accomplished and famous American families at the time, the Beechers. (1) In 1871 with help from her husband, prominent attorney John Hooker, Isabella drafted a bill giving married women the same property rights as their husbands. She presented it to the Connecticut State Legislature in 1871 and every year thereafter until it passed in 1877. Firing a woman just because she was a woman did not sit well with Isabella.
Everett S. Geer was from a prominent family himself, the son of General Elihu Geer, his title derived from years of service in the Connecticut State Militia. The senior Geer served in the Connecticut State Legislature and established the Hartford Printing Company. He founded several newspapers and led his company in specializing in city directories. Everett and three of his brothers carried on the family business. (2)
Esther Clarinda Perry wasn’t lacking in the distinguished family department either. Born in Canton, Connecticut in 1842, she was the daughter of Franklin Perry, at one time a probate judge in Canton, and Clarinda Barbour. Three of her mother’s brothers held prominent positions. Sylvester Barbour was a judge in Hartford; Henry Stiles Barbour was a state legislator. Heman Humphrey Barbour was elected to the Indiana State Legislature, later returning to Hartford where he served as a probate judge. Great-uncle Rev. Heman Humphrey, was the second president of Amherst College. Her brother Wilbert Perry, valedictorian of his Yale class at age 19, was assistant state attorney and state legislator.
Esther’s Earlier Life
Esther was about nine years old when her father took a position as inspector of grinding at the Collins Company, an ax manufacturer. This necessitated a move to the village of Collinsville, a company town with employee housing, a bank, hotel, retail stores and a Congregational church along the banks of the Farmington River. An increasing number of Collins buildings sprawled along the river over the years. The railroad was a recent addition to the town when the Perry’s arrived, and a factor in the Collins Company becoming the best-selling manufacturer of edge tools in the world. Company owner Samuel Collins had the paternalistic beliefs of most creators of company towns and banned the use of alcohol among employees. This probably met with the approval of the Perrys.
Esther attended the New Britain State Normal School in New Britain, Connecticut, graduating in July 1860. Founded in 1849, it was the first training school for teachers in the state. (3) She was only 16 miles from home.
Normal schools at that time provided an equivalent to a high school education and provided preparation for teaching at the primary and grammar school level. A historian called them the “pioneers of higher education for the people,” and this was especially true for women. (4) Esther was accepted to the school after passing a written exam in basic arithmetic, grammar, geography, U.S. history and spelling. The goal of the state was to gradually increase the standards for admission, in a virtuous cycle with the school supplying better teaching in the public schools, leading to better-prepared normal school candidates. Students could only enter after signing a statement that they intended to teach in Connecticut public schools.
New Britain was coed and offered a three-year program with free tuition and textbooks. The only cost was boarding with local families. The course emphasized the art of reading, history, literature and grammar, and included vocal music, drawing, and light gymnastics. Additionally, methods of instruction were taught. Like all schools at the time, the schedule was regimented (lights out no later than 10:30) and the course of study was the same for all students, with no electives.
Classes of children from public schools were brought in daily so students could practice teaching in front of the rest of the normal school students. They also visited classrooms in city schools to observe. (5)
Esther began her teaching career at age 18 in Ansonia, an industrial center along the Naugatuck River in New Haven County, and at “several” rural schools. In 1863 in the midst of the Civil War, she began her long career at the West Middle School District in Hartford. It was a big step up from the one-room schoolhouses of a rural district. It was the elite few who taught in big city schools and high schools. Here she surely found intellectual stimulation and the company of other “normalites,” as normal school graduates were known, and of college graduates. To keep such a position, she had to stay single. Interestingly, while the average rate of marriage for women was 90 percent, for normal school graduates it varied between 40 and 65 percent. (6)
West Middle School District
When Esther came to West Middle, she joined a district that already had a long history. West Middle School District in Hartford, once on the outskirts of town, was organized in 1814 at the request of parents. A one-room frame school-house opened in October with a huge fireplace, 27 students, and a male teacher who boarded ‘round. The next year the district invested $19 in a iron-box stove which paid for itself in that first winter in the amount of fuel saved. The school board also saved considerably by employing a woman teacher at lower pay who lived in her parents’ house. (7)
In 1842, a two-story brick school-house was constructed with a single classroom and closets on each floor. In 1846 the board voted to employ a male and female teacher; with two-thirds of the school budget going to the man’s classroom and one-third to the woman’s. So many parents wanted their child in the male teacher’s classroom that the board was taken aback. They solved the problem by hiring two female teachers instead and starting graded schools with a ten-month school year. In 1850 the board voted to eliminate Saturday as a school day. (8)
Within ten years of the little brick school, a new building was needed. A temporary frame building was constructed in 1854. New standards came with the new school. A headmaster was hired, a more thorough course of study introduced, and innovations such as a school library, scientific apparatus and a piano were purchased. Music and drawing instruction began.
In 1859 a new building for primary children was built on the same lot. In 1863, agitation began for a school to replace the “temporary” frame one. Esther started at West Middle in this frame building on Asylum Hill - so named because of the location of the state asylum for the deaf there.
The residents of the district were “well favored in matters of wealth and refinement,” as an 1870 article in the Hartford Courant said. Attorney John Hooker, Isabella’s husband, and his brother-in-law Francis Gillette, bought a farm with the intention of residential development and built large, elegant homes on the property. They sold lots to friends and family. Prominent leaders, reformers and writers moved to the neighborhood, such as Isabella’s sister Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1864. An art colony that became known as Nook Farm was established as a result. In the 1870s Mark Twain built his house in the neighborhood.
Esther’s first principal at West Middle may have been Mr. C.E. Willard. Certainly, she worked with him. Mr. Willard departed the school in January 1870, with gifts from the faculty of the Goethe Gallery and the Schillar Gallery “elegantly bound” in Russian calfskin, and an illustrated copy of Lucile, a novel in poem form, by Owen Meredith.
The new principal was Mr. David P. Corbin, a Brown University graduate (Class of 1860) and a former captain in the Union Army. Esther would work under his leadership for a decade.
Mary Clarissa Cone
In 1870, another new face arrived at West Middle School. She was Mary C. Cone, fresh out of Mt. Holyoke College. She was from Winchester in Litchfield County, seven years younger than Esther and the daughter of a scythe maker. Mary may have started out as a classroom teacher, but she became the school music teacher and later the vice principal. What the precise nature of their relationship is cannot be determined today, but Mary and Esther became more than professional colleagues.
By at least 1897, though probably sooner, she and Mary were living together once Esther’s parents passed away and she built her own house. (They were jointly assessed for a sewage tax at Esther’s address.) The 1890 census records were destroyed so it is unknown who Esther lived with then. In 1900, Mary lived with her, as did Mary’s bachelor brother John, a pharmacist. Interestingly, Mary’s relationship to the head of household - Esther - is identified as “partner,” and John is identified as “brother.” Normally, “boarder” would be the designation for non-related people sharing the same house. (9) Clearly, there was a special and close relationship. In early July that year, the two sailed for Europe together. A newspaper item said they would be gone about two months. (10)
Could theirs have been a “Boston marriage?” Of course it is possible. They were, at the least, very good friends, and partners at work.
At West Middle
In the years after Esther joined the faculty, Hartford grew and so did West Middle School. There were 172 students in 1866, 383 in 1869 and 447 in 1870. Each year there were proposals to build a new school. There were disagreements with those who thought an addition should be added to the current structure, and those who supported a new building but could not agree on the location. In 1871 Principal David P. Corbin spoke about serious overcrowding and a concern that out-of-district kids were attending West Middle without paying tuition. The board finally approved construction of a new school that would house 800 scholars.
In early July 1873 there was a reunion of current and former principals and teachers at West Middle before a move into the new building expected that fall. Esther and Mary were probably among the teachers who gathered, celebrating the recent end of another successful school year, the anticipation of a wonderful new building, and camaraderie with colleagues. There were musical performances, speeches and refreshments.
The building was not completed in time for the fall opening of the new school year, however. A public ceremony did not occur until January 1874. The blackboards were elaborately decorated with drawings done by students and were among the features admired by guests taking tours of the school. There were 16 classrooms, each 33 by 27 feet with an occupancy of 800 scholars - an average of 50 students per class. There was an exhibition hall, and after the tours and speeches, a dance was held in the hall and in several classrooms.
There was little in the newspaper about the school from then until 1880; mostly there were continuous ads to purchase bonds benefitting the school. Sometime in the late 1870s Esther was appointed vice principal. She almost certainly had to continue teaching, but assisted the principal in some matters.
In March Principal Corbin died and had the kind of grand Victorian funeral expected of a man of his stature. A platoon of cadets from West Middle School marched into the Asylum Avenue Congregational Church under the direction of a Captain White. This was a new initiative unique to West Middle. The school had two companies of cadets with 40 members each. They performed military drill exercises and competitions under the direction of a captain of the city guard. Two hundred dollars were allocated for this for the boys, and for “light gymnastics” for the girls. The military drill at the funeral must have been an impressive display.
Mr. Corbin was a member of an Asylum Hill Baptist church but the Congregational church was chosen as it was larger and could better accommodate the crowd. There were “floral tributes” in the shape of a cross, an anchor, a broken pillar and a pillow, all given by the faculty. Two ministers lauded Mr. Corbin's “pure character and Christian manliness” as well as his devotion to the school, “a work to which he gave his heart and his conscience thoroughly and too much of his physical strength.” (11)
Esther was appointed acting principal of the school for the remainder of the school year. In the fall of 1880, Dr. Nathan Barrows was hired as principal. Barrows led an interesting life and was an unusually well-educated man. A graduate of Western Reserve University, he also completed a master’s degree there, then graduated from Cleveland Medical College. He served as a surgeon during the Civil War, and decided afterwards that he wanted to focus on education. He taught and served as principal at several schools in New England before accepting the job in Hartford. Barrows stayed at West Middle School for only one year, and soon after moved to Florida where he was a founder of Rollins College, a math professor there, and a fruit grower.
His resignation left the school board once again searching for a principal for the second time in little more than a year.
In a later report, the hiring committee said that after very careful inquiry and investigation in the summer of 1881, they offered the job to a Yale graduate with success in several large public schools, and excellent references. However, he had accepted another position from a district not willing to release him. The school year was about to begin. So once again, the board asked Esther to serve as acting principal, giving them time to search for another good man.
A brief item in the Hartford Courant in August 1881 said, “Miss Mary C. Cone again becomes a teacher in the West Middle School. Miss Esther C. Perry will act as principal of this school for the present.”
Teachers had no form of tenure at all, and each year they would find out at the end of the school year or in summer if they had a job in the fall. Many newspapers printed a list of the teachers hired back. The Hartford paper did not do that. Why was Mary’s name the only one mentioned as a returning teacher? Maybe it was because she was acting in the capacity of vice principal.
In January 1882, the board dropped their search for a man to lead the school. In their report they stated, “So unanimous has been the expression of approval among you that it is unnecessary to say how satisfactorily to the committee she has filled this position. It is sufficient to say that the school has never been in a more prosperous condition, as we believe, than at present. In view then, of her success, we think it advisable, and have been requested to ask the district, whether they …authorize…to fill the position of principal with a lady teacher.” (12)
Esther was now officially principal.
The Principalship and Women
Esther’s uncle, Judge Sylvester Barbour, described the mature Esther as “a woman of commanding presence, queenly in visage and bearing, always self-possessed.” (13) Although these were the words of a proud uncle, Esther moved in a world of wealthy, powerful men, and proved herself to them.
In Esther they had someone already very familiar with the school, faculty and constituents. Additionally, they could save money by having a woman principal. It was an exceedingly rare district that paid men and women the same wages. Typically, women were paid one-third to one-half of what men received. In nearby Meriden, Connecticut in the 1890s, the school board decided on a policy that any school with six or less classrooms should be headed by a woman. Secretary Hine of the State Board of Education said he thought women could do the job as well as men even in larger schools, “if the right ones were secured.” The male principals at Meriden were making $1,000 to $1,400, and the women would be paid half. Districts were increasingly run as businesses with businessmen as school board members, and it was simply cost-effective to hire women.
Esther had to function in a man’s world. Her entire career all the major decision-makers were men: school board members and all the people who voted for them. Prior to her promotion, for twenty years her boss had been a man.
The principal position – originally denoting the principal teacher – evolved by “organizational incrementalism” in the nineteenth century. (14) Early administrators did not have job descriptions, legal guidelines or professional support. As the administrative framework developed, school historian Rousmaniere wrote, there was jostling over who had the right to hire and fire teachers, make purchases and control building maintenance. An 1892 study found that principals’ responsibilities ranged from being basically an attendance clerk to being “lords and masters” of their schools. (15) In Esther’s district, by law men controlled decisions such as hiring and promotions, and how money was to be allocated.
However, being a school principal was one of the few ways women could hold paid leadership positions in the nineteenth century. As a middle manager, Esther had to manage the art of making a lot of people happy. Her uncle called her career “extraordinary.”
The Principal Years
Attending high school was for a privileged few in the nineteenth century. Only the most promising students even had a chance to continue their education. There was only one Hartford High School, down the hill from West Middle, and students had to pass entrance exams and have certificates of good character and deportment to get in. The newspaper printed statistics on the acceptance rates from various schools and the highest test averages. In 1880, 203 candidates applied for admittance, with 174 being accepted. Thirty-nine of 42 West Middle School applicants got in.
In April 1882 under Esther’s leadership, all 28 West Middle students who applied scored high enough to be accepted. The school could boast of the highest test average in the city, and the student with the highest score out of 190 test-takers. (This time 165 were accepted to the high school.) Of course this may have been because of a more advantaged population, with many professional fathers and even college-educated mothers, but it reflected well on Esther.
So it was that she was rewarded a month later. This was when the school board finally acted to name her principal. The article in the Hartford Courant is as follows:
The school committee of the West Middle district (Asylum Hill) have chosen Miss Esther E. [sic] Perry as principal of the school. Miss Perry has been acting principal since last fall, and previous to that had been for some time vice principal. Her promotion is a proper recognition of her eminent fitness for the position and is made in conformity to the very generally expressed wishes of the district. The school is in excellent condition as is shown by the fact that every one of its applicants for admission to the High School succeeded this year. The only objection to Miss Perry’s promotion for some time has been based on the fact that she was not a man. [emphasis mine] She has, however, demonstrated that a woman is capable of filling the place, and although the selection of a woman for the principalship of a large district school is an innovation, it is one for which the committee in this case is certainly to be commended.
It was indeed an innovation to hire a woman principal for a large school. It was nearly 20 years later when Meriden, Connecticut would adopt its cost-saving policy of hiring women for small schools of six classrooms or less, and when the member of the state education board said there were a few, carefully-selected women who could handle a large school.
Esther had few women peers. But she was a member of the Connecticut State Teachers Association where she could network with others, and beginning in 1884 she was elected to leadership positions as recording secretary and correspondence secretary. There were over 500 members of the association.
As for her personal life, Esther lived with her parents until her father’s death in 1878, and continued to live with her mother afterwards. The late principal David Corbin and his wife were reported at various watering holes on vacation, and Esther was too. For example, she accompanied her brother Oliver and his family to Saratoga in late summer of 1885. After her mother’s death in 1886, she stayed at the Summit House on Mount Washington in July. Saratoga was one of the most fashionable of destinations; Summit House was adventurous. Both places were patronized by the wealthy.
Built in 1852, Summit House was just feet from the tallest point on the New Hampshire mountain. The average temperature in July in the 15 years preceding Esther's stay was 48 degrees; rarely were nights above freezing. The season was short, from June to the stoppage of the railroad on October 1st. Just getting there, on a smaller-than-normal train making the ascent, sounds frightening. Guests were greeted by an enthusiastic St. Bernard named Medford. At the hotel, guests were awakened by a clanging bell at 4:30 each morning, and typically rushed outside to see the spectacular views, if the mountain wasn’t shrouded in fog. Her choice of a stay there indicates an adventurous nature.
In 1888 Esther and Mary presided over the commencement ceremonies for West Middle’s 41 members of the class. Mary had been promoted to vice principal. The class chose salmon and silver-gray as their colors (each class chose their own colors in those days rather than having school colors). The class presented Esther with a “handsome” lamp and Mary with an “elegant” oak rocking chair.
In 1891, Esther bought a lot on Beacon Street. She would build a charming Victorian house, still standing today. Soon, the house would be filled.
A Special Aunt
Esther’s younger brother Wilbert, ten years her junior, was the pride of the family. A prodigy, he graduated as valedictorian of the Yale Class of 1867 just before his twentieth birthday, winning prizes in nearly any academic competition he took on. He entered Columbia Law School and soon passed the bar in Connecticut. He became assistant state attorney, went into private practice and in 1882 was elected to the Connecticut State Legislature. He married in 1880 and had four children, three of whom lived.
But to the grief and disappointment of his family and friends, Wilbert was overtaken by alcoholism. His life became a sad decline, a spectacle, and ultimately a cautionary tale. On a icy February night in 1895 he went from saloon to saloon on a drinking spree, tragically drinking until he collapsed unnoticed on an empty street. He was found in the morning with his feet and hands severely frostbitten, and died at a hospital hours later. (16) His children were 10, 12 and 14 years old. His wife Kate kept the youngest with her, and Esther took in the two oldest, Wilbert Jr. and Katherine. It is somewhat puzzling why she didn’t take the youngest, Cleveland. She also didn’t provide her sister-in-law, Kate with a home. But maybe this is what Kate wanted. However, by1900 Kate found herself in a terribly diminished role as a servant in a large boarding house. (17)
Now Esther found herself in a mother’s role to a pre-teen and teenager. One thing that was a tremendous help to her as a working woman was that she always had a live-in servant, Irish and Polish. Even the middle class had live-in domestics in the 1800s, and Esther's mother did too. Esther remained close to her niece and nephew for the rest of her life.
To Engage a Male Principal
There were no indications that West Middle School was not operated in an efficient manner, that test scores for high school admission slipped, or that there were problems. There wasn’t widespread dissatisfaction with the school or with Esther’s leadership. At that 1896 school board meeting, when Everett Geer rose to present a resolution empowering the district hiring committee to find a male principal, it was simply because he thought a man belonged in that job.
Fellow board member William C. Skinner offered a slightly different means of ultimately accomplishing what Geer wanted. He proposed the formation of a committee that consisted of the members of the district hiring committee plus four others appointed by the chair, to make personnel changes, “if in their judgment, the best interests of the school demand any changes.” Skinner was another heavy hitter in the community. He attended Albany Law School and Trinity College, clerked for the New York Legislature and held an executive position with the Aetna Life Insurance Company. Later, he would serve as president of the Colt Manufacturing Company.
His proposal was debated and amended. A member proposed voting to postpone the creation of such a committee indefinitely. Skinner countered that creating the committee would satisfy those claiming dissatisfaction with leadership, and if there was none, the matter would be settled.
J.G. Rathbun, a retired long-time neighborhood pharmacist, said he hadn’t heard of any dissatisfaction with Miss Perry. Forrest Morgan, who was embroiled in his own problems and fired as editor of an insurance trade publication in February, said he’d heard vague rumors that some were agitating for a male principal.
Charles E. Gross, an executive with the Aetna Insurance Company, was on the hiring committee when they chose Esther. He said he didn’t think there had been a “single substantial complaint against her management,” nor, in his belief, did one single person in the district have any cause for complaint. Everett Geer repeated that he thought the school should be under the leadership of a man.
Dr. Edward B. Hooker, John and Isabella’s son, defended Esther, but said there was an “under-current” in favor of a cultured, broad-minded man, and it might be advantageous to employ such a man. He suggested adding two women to the committee.
Charles H. Lawrence, an executive with Phoenix Life Insurance, said he’d always wanted a male principal and believed his children had suffered because of a woman in the position. He said the children in other districts in Hartford were better educated because they had male principals, and he believed if the matter was put to a vote, the voters would overwhelmingly approve a man. (Of course, only men had the right to vote.)
E.W. Beardsley, owner of an insurance company and a graduate of West Middle, said it was unkind to depose of Esther after all her years of exemplary service. He appealed to board members to have consideration for her and to provide her with a pension when she got ready to retire. Pensions were still rare in the United States and not something teachers received.
Lawrence said he had nothing personal against Esther. Nothing personal – like Geer, he simply thought a man would do a better job. Skinner pushed his proposal again, saying there was nothing in his committee idea that said anything about males or females.
John M. Ney, former chairman of the West Middle District Board, former Hartford mayor, a future senator, and a member of Esther’s church said he knew she was a good principal. He said he believed she would welcome an investigation into her service, and that she would not want to stay on if she was not wanted.
Ultimately, the board voted to create the investigative committee suggested by Skinner. Since Isabella Beecher Hooker and the 25 or so women in attendance are not described as doing anything more than being present, one can infer that they did not speak. Unfortunately, as was often the case with newspapers in the past, there was no follow-up on the findings of the committee. But they must not have come to much. Esther kept her job.
Carrying On
Over these years as principal, Esther superintended the construction of an exterior building for “water closets,” (bathrooms, not outhouses), the addition of kindergarten, and of a manual training program. The school continued to maintain its high rank among city schools. Esther’s nephew Wilbert Jr. went off to Yale and she continued to be active in professional organizations. Just a few months before the flap over whether to retain her, she spoke at a convention of the Connecticut Association of Classical and High School Teachers. She criticized the system of a single exam determining whether students ended their education with middle school or were permitted to go on to high school. She suggested using a series of tests taken in grammar school. She also served as the secretary of the Hartford Principals’ Club.
In 1900 Esther had worked for 40 years. But she had no pension, and no children to support her. There was a reason people commonly worked until they dropped or were too incapacitated to do so any longer. Anxiety, especially among the childless and single women, was great. Americans had a tremendous fear of ending up at the poorhouse, the most shameful fate that could befall anyone. Teachers had begun to agitate for pensions, but in the meantime, in Connecticut they formed the Connecticut Teachers’ Annuity Guild, of which Esther was a member. At the annual Hartford County meeting in October she was appointed to the amusement committee. The Hartford branch of the guild already had arranged the services of an Austrian pianist to perform at the Parson’s Theater in November, as a fundraiser for the guild.
A Step Back
In April 1901, Esther tendered her resignation. The preference for a male principal had never gone away. Maybe she quit before she would be removed from her posts; maybe she was just plain tired of fighting to keep her job in spite of doing a good job. A report by the committee that controlled hiring, promotions and firing said that under her leadership the district retained its high ranking. The district had grown, a new school just opened, and, “The increased demands of the district have led Miss Perry to send in her resignation. It is not certain that her valued services will be entirely dispensed with, but the committee may retain her in some other capacity than that of principal.”(18)
At the June board meeting Alexander Merriam, a professor at the Congregationalist theological seminary in Hartford offered a formal resolution praising Esther. These resolutions were common in this era and marked occasions such as a death, resignation, or end of a term as president of an organization. They were printed in newspapers and a copy was delivered to the individual or surviving family as a token of esteem. The language was typical:
“Whereas, The school during this period has made marked progress in every direction under her faithful service; and Whereas Miss Perry has won the high esteem of the constituents of this district and the loyalty of a generation of of our children, therefore, Resolved, that we tender to her our thanks for this long and efficient service, our appreciation of her marked fidelity; our respect of her ability as a teacher and leader and our esteem for her character and influence in this community.”
Dr. Edward B. Hooker rose to say that the fact was that the school was not as good as it could have been, and without placing blame, there was no question that retaining a woman principal would be a foolish mistake, that the district needed a broad-minded man.
Charles E. Gross, who was on the committee that promoted Esther to principal, had never wavered in his opinion of her. He said he disagreed with Dr. Hooker’s assessment of the state of the school. After discussion and voting on other school matters, Charles H. Clark returned to the matter of Esther’s employment. He said he hoped the district would do more for her than pass “cold resolutions.” He spoke of her long service. He then proposed a resolution to keep Esther on the district payroll at not less than half her current salary and assign such duties as may be appropriate for her. This resolution passed.
Esther was replaced by Willis Ira Twitchell, a graduate of Middlebury College, Class of 1877 and presumably, a “broad-minded man.” He had 19 years experience as principal at Arsenal, another district in Hartford. Esther surely knew him well as he had been president of the Connecticut State Teachers’ Association and the Hartford Teachers’ Association, both of which she served as an officer.
Esther continued to work at West Middle in special assignments and as vice principal. She also stayed active in teacher organizations and was elected secretary of the Hartford County Teachers’ Association in May 1902. She was reelected secretary of the Annuity Guild in 1903.
In June 1903 she was elected president of the newly-formed Hartford Grade Teachers’ Club. Their first reception was attended by an estimated 400 to 500 people (the number of invitations sent) and featured Esther in a receiving line with the other club officers. The school board and all the principals in town attended. The editor of the Hartford Courant spoke, emphasizing the debt the community owed to its teachers, and the importance of them having an organization for intellectual stimulation and social discourse. He was followed by the superintendent of schools who joked about his position of grand importance: being the man who controlled the steam whistle that announced school closings due to bad weather. He then spoke in a serious manner about “the value of women’s work in educational matters.” There were musical performances before the meeting adjourned to a social hour.
In 1903 she hosted her niece’s wedding in her parlor, the home parlor being where most brides married at that time. The groom worked in the insurance industry as did so many men in Hartford.
In June 1910 Esther became ill at school. She had an attack of heart trouble and a doctor was called. She was taken home and the newspaper said it was expected that she would be able to return to work. She did.
A few days later at a school board meeting a former student made a motion in honor of Esther, with thanks and congratulations on the occasion of her 50 years as an educator.
Changes
By 1914 there were two married women on the faculty at West Middle School. Times had changed and women were no longer believed to be incapable of teaching and being married, or expected to choose between having a career or a family in a way that men were never asked.
In October 1914 Principal Twitchell was walking the halls of West Middle when he had a sudden heart attack and died on the floor of the hallway. He’d had a brief phone conversation with the head of the school board, enthusiastically told him all was well at the school, and about ten minutes later a teacher heard him collapse outside her classroom. He was carried to the library but died before doctors reached the school. The children were not told of his death until dismissal. He was 62 and left an adult son and a seven-year old son from a second marriage.
A newspaper article about his death said he’d been hired as principal to replace Esther because at that time she was struggling with “very poor” health, and she was made assistant principal to “lighten her labors.” Maybe this is true, but it was never even hinted at in 1901. His leadership in professional and community organizations was lauded in a way that Esther’s never was, an example of him giving unstintingly of himself. In fact, her participation even in the same organizations was never mentioned in articles about her work. Her participation in other organizations that he served on, such as the parks board, was denied to her as a woman.
This time, Esther was not asked to become acting or interim principal while the hiring committee looked for candidates. A former principal, Wilbur Gordy, was asked to step in to act as an advisor to the teachers at the school until a new principal could be found. The board of course wanted him at the school full-time but his schedule did not permit it. He agreed to conduct the Tuesday morning devotional exercises in the assembly hall each week - still a common practice in public schools - and pop in as he could. Esther, as vice principal, wasn’t even mentioned.
In December the board announced that they were promoting James W. Freeman, who was principal of the district’s other school, a primary school. The newspaper said he’d been serving as acting principal at West Middle since Mr. Twitchell’s death. He was a 1901 graduate of the Worcester Polytechnic Institute.
In January 1915 there was a reception for Mr. Freeman. Esther poured tea and an orchestra, concealed behind a row of Christmas trees, played. There was “informal dancing” after the tea.
Endings
In September 1915 Esther added a frame addition and sleeping porch to her house at 179 South Beacon. She would have just a few years to enjoy it.
Esther died November 10, 1919 at her home. She had a bout of the “grippe,” or flu, two weeks earlier, but death was said to be due to heart problems. She worked in the schools a remarkable 59 years, never retiring, still serving as assistant principal at West Middle School. She was 77 years old.
The Principals’ Club, which she joined at its inception in 1892 till her resignation in 1901, released a statement calling her, “a woman of rare good sense, painstaking and conscientious in her work, helpful and sympathetic without ostentation, tactful and resourceful in administration.” She had a dignified and winsome personality, the notice continued, and a Christian spirit and character. Her influence was immeasurable and enduring. James Freeman said people would long cherish the memory of her life so faithfully devoted to children. “For nearly fifty years and even up to the day of her death the welfare of her pupils was her most absorbing interest,” Mr. Freeman said.
The Hartford Grade Teachers’ Club said of her:
It is quite impossible to speak adequately of Miss Perry’s school life…she was greatly loved and revered; she was ever a friendly and wise counselor; to pupils she was invariably kind and affectionate; two generations mourn her today and are better men and women because of her moral and intellectual influence.
During the recent war, Miss Perry was the enthusiastic manager of the Red Cross school work for the district, and it was largely due to her efforts that the school was given a banner for much excellent work.
Miss Perry exerted a marked influence for good in the city, and at the close of a long and useful life, the community, as well as this club, may truthfully say of her, “Faithful unto death.”
Afterward
Esther left her estate divided between her nephew Wilbert Latimer Perry, her brother Oliver’s son; the niece and nephew she raised, Wilbert Warren Perry Jr. and Katherine Perry; Kate Cleveland Snyder, Wilbert and Katherine’s mother, and two great-nephews. She left out Cleveland, the younger brother of Wilbert and Katherine, and other great-nephews who perhaps were born after she wrote her will.
Whether Mary C. Cone and Esther maintained a close friendship for the rest of Esther’s life is unknown. Mary stayed active in small ways. In 1904 she served on the entertainment committee of the Annuity Club. In 1905 she became a charter member of the College Club of Hartford, for the rarified women with four-year degrees, or who attended at least one full year at a four-year college. She would also become active in the Mt. Holyoke Alumni Association.
Her brother retired in 1907 and built a house at 41 Pleasant Street, where she would live for the rest of her life. She retired in 1912. After her brother’s death in 1913, she took in a boarder or two at a time. She also sold bunches of peonies from her garden.
Mary died in 1932. Her only survivors were a few cousins. She left an estate of about $300,000 in today’s dollars, ($15,100 in 1932) and left $2,000 to Mt. Holyoke; $5,000 to the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and $3,000 to her Congregational church for home missionary work. The rest went to four cousins.
Teaching is still an overwhelmingly feminine profession. Eight out of ten public school teachers are women. Until 2000, most principals were men. Now 56 percent of principals are women, though more high schools are headed by men than women. Up until the 1980s, 90 percent of school superintendents were men. Today that figure is about 75 percent.
Esther worked in a time in which the “separate spheres” theory was believed to be divinely ordained. This belief was that public life and leadership were exclusively the purview of men, and women were to be passive, submissive and at home. In 1905 no less than former President Grover Cleveland wrote that women should not even join clubs. They should confine all their activities to home and church.
As a single woman, Esther didn’t have that luxury. Teaching small children was considered within a woman’s sphere. Leading an entire school full of them was not. Esther was a trailblazer.
Notes:
Her father was Rev. Lyman Beecher, nationally known for his tract, A Plea for the West, which expressed an anti-Catholic stance, and for heading the Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati. Her brother was Henry Ward Beecher, a minister known in his lifetime as “the most famous man in America.” Her sister was Harriet Ward Beecher, author of the phenomenally successful, influential best-seller Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Another famous sister was Catherine Beecher, author and advocate of equal educational opportunities for girls and a strong proponent of women in the teaching profession. Isabella's husband was a descendant of Thomas Hooker, the founder of Hartford.
A bit of trivia is that Elihu Geer had 16 children, ten of whom lived, and gave each of them names beginning with “E,” such as Elihu, Everett, Eliza, Ethelbert, Erastus, Erskin, Ethel, Editha Eda, Elithan Eubulus and Elene.
Teacher preparation colleges were called “Normal” schools because they taught the norms of pedagogy and curriculum, and because of origins in the French ecole normale. New Britain State Normal School is now Central Connecticut State University.
Jurgen Herbst, quoted by Christine Ogren.
Walter Dyson.
Ogren.
Rev. W.W. Turner, “Reception at the New School-house.”
Ibid.
In years of looking at census records, I have never before seen “partner” used to describe the relationship between the head of household and another person under the same roof.
Esther's uncle Sylvester Barbour was the notary who signed both of their passport applications. Both women were five feet six inches tall; Mary’s hair was “graying” and Esther’s was “mostly gray.”
David P. Corbin was the son of Benjamin Corbin, a former state legislator, and the brother of a state legislator, William Corbin. He started at West Middle School in 1870. In 1877 he was elected president of the Connecticut State Teachers’ Association.
Hartford Courant, 24 April 1901.
Sylvester Barbour Reminiscences.
Rousmaniere.
Ibid.
See my blog post, “An Ignoble Fall: Wilbert W. Perry,” published June 2023.
Few women were able to support themselves and a family as Esther could. Widows were often placed in destitute circumstances, with no pensions, life insurance, and of course no Social Security. It’s not a stretch to imagine that in the last several years of his life Wilbert wasn’t bringing in a substantial amount of business in his law practice. Without family to help her, his widow had few options. She remarried in 1903 and was widowed again in 1907. Thereafter, she lived with her daughter and son-in-law.
“Miss Perry Resigns.”
Family Connection: This one is a distant connection. Esther’s grandfather Henry Barbour, and my fourth great-grandmother, Elizabeth “Betsey” Barber, were first cousins.
Sources:
Newspapers:
“West Middle School District,” Hartford Courant, 13 Jan 1866, p. 2.
“West Middle School District - The School-house Question,” Hartford Courant, 16 Sept 1868, p. 2.
“Presentation and Farewell,” Hartford Courant, 29 Jan 1870, p. 2.
“Our Public Schools,” Hartford Courant, 13 Sept 1870, p. 2.
“West Middle School District Annual Meeting,” Hartford Courant, 19 Jan 1871, p. 2.
“The West Middle School - Reception at the New Schoolhouse,” The Hartford Courant, 12 Jan 1874, p. 2.
“School Light Gymnastics,” Hartford Courant, 29 Jan 1880, p. 1.
“Funeral of Mr. Corbin,” Hartford Courant, 29 March 1880, p. 1.
“City Briefs,” Hartford Courant, 30 Aug 1881, p. 2.
“Hartford Public High School. The Successful Candidates For Admission to the Next Class – Averages of Different Schools,” Hartford Courant, 29 April 1882, p. 2.
“The “Hill” School - Miss Perry Chosen As Principal,” Hartford Courant, 3 May 1882, p. 2.
“Cadets Drilling For Prizes,” Hartford Courant, 12 April 1883, p. 1.
“Mount Washington. Some Points of Interest in the Ascent of the Great Granite Hill,” The Philadelphia Times, 19 Sept 1886, p. 9.
“West Middle School,” Hartford Courant, 26 April 1889, p. 8.
“High School Teachers Annual Meeting at Fraternity Hall Saturday,” Hartford Courant, 24 Feb 1896, p. 6.
“West Middle Principal - Talking of a Man to Succeed Miss Perry,” Hartford Courant, 17 June 1896, p. 8.
“Making a Fight on the Ladies - School Board Ring Aided by Ziegenhein Club,” St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 8 May, 1897, p. 8.
“Two Principals Will Be Women,” The Meriden Daily Journal (Meriden, Connecticut), 27 May 1899, p. 12.
“State Teachers’ Guild. Annual Meeting Saturday – Financial Condition and Membership,” Hartford Courant, 29 Oct 1900, p. 5.
“Miss Perry Resigns. Retirement of the Principal of West Middle School,” Hartford Courant, 24 April 1901, p. 3.
“West Middle School….Miss Perry to be Retained on Payroll,” Hartford Courant, 12 June 1901, p. 9.
“Grade Teachers’ Club. Reception By It At the Brown School Hall,” Hartford Courant, 10 June 1903, p. 8.
“Fine Exhibition at West Middle School,” Hartford Courant, 8 April 1914, p. 7.
“W.I. Twitchell, Educator, Dies In School House - Stricken in Corridor of West Middle School - 13 Years Its Principal,” Hartford Courant, 17 Oct 1914, p. 3.
“Miss Esther C. Perry,” Hartford Courant, 12 Nov 1919, p. 24.
“Tribute to Memory of Esther C. Perry - Late West Middle School Teacher’s Life’s Work Praised,” Hartford Courant, 18 Nov 1919, p. 22.
“School Heads Pay Tribute to Memory of Esther C. Perry,” Hartford Courant, 18 Nov. 1919, p. 22.
“Mt. Holyoke Benefits From Woman’s Will,” Hartford Courant, 11 Sept 1932, p. 11.
Other:
Barbour, Sylvester. Reminiscences: Fifty Years a Lawyer, Hartford, Connecticut: Hartford Press, 1908.
Dyson, Walter. “Connecticut Normal School, Established at New Britain in 1859,” Howard University Studies in History: Vol. 6 No. 1, Article 3 (1925) t:http://dh.howard.edu/hush/vol6/iss1/3
“History of Asylum Hill,” Asylum Hill Neighborhood Association, https://www.asylumhill.org/history-of-asylum-hill.html
“Judge and Attorney Biographies,” Connecticut State Libraries, https://libguides.ctstatelibrary.org/law/judge-attorney-biographies/home
“Nathan Barrows (1830-1900): Charter Faculty,” Rollins College, https://lib.rollins.edu/olin/oldsite/archives/golden/Barrows.htm
Ogren, Christine A. “A Large Measure of Self-Control and Personal Power”: Women Students at State Normal Schools During the Late-Nineteenth and Early-Twentieth Centuries,” Women’s Studies Quarterly, Vol. 28, No. ¾ (Fall/Winter 2000), pp. 211-232.
Phillips, Vicki. “Women in School District Leadership: Rarer Than You Think,” Forbes, 17 March 2023, https://www.forbes.com/sites/vickiphillips/2023/03/17/women-in-school-district-leadership-rarer-than-you-think/?sh=2c32584e3879
Rousmaniere, Kate. “Presidential Address: Go to the Principal’s Office: Toward a Social History of the School Principal in North America,” History of Education Quarterly, Vol. 47, No. 1 (Feb 2007), pp. 1-22.
Rugoff, Milton. The Beechers: An American Family in the Nineteenth Century, New York: Harper and Row, 1981.
Somma, Ann Marie. “World-Renowned Maker of Axes: The Collins Company of Canton,” Connecticut History.Org, 28 April 2022.
Winship, A.E. “The Annuity Guild. The Teacher’s Relation to the Future of New England,” Journal of Education, Vol. 63, No. 21 (My 24, 1906), pp. 563-564.
Copyright Andrea Auclair © 2023
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