An Iowa Schoolma'am: Letters of Elizabeth "Bess" Corey, 1904–1908, contains the letters Bess wrote home to her family during the years she was living with various rural Iowa families while teaching at nearby one-room schoolhouses.
February 15, 1906, Tennant, Iowa
"Monday
when I wrote to you. . . I told you it was raining well Monday evening it
turned colder and we had a blizard all day Tues. . . . They wouldn't let Gertie [the
school-age child of the family she was living with] go to school but I went
anyway—had to follow the fence and then it wasn't any too safe. I went early
and had the stove red hot before half past eight. The three Miller boys came
and that is all the [students] I had. They had taken some of their books home
the evening before and had learned their reading and spelling so we hurried
through and got out about eleven. I got to Wevers about half after eleven and I
couldn't have gone a quarter of a mile farther to have saved my life and if I
had attempted to cross the ploughing I wouldn't be writing to you now I don't
think. When I got here my clothes from my legging tops to my waist were wet
through and getting stiff so I had to change every dud I had on."
An Iowa Schoolma'am: Letters of Elizabeth "Bess" Corey, 1904–1908, edited by Philip L. Gerber and Charlotte Wright
