Panel IV: Cultural Effects of War

Event Title

I Mean to Teach: Exploring Civil War Era Education in New Hampshire Through a Schoolteacher's Diary

Start Date

31-3-2012 11:15 AM

End Date

31-3-2012 1:00 PM

Description

A teenage girl's diary kept from 1858-1864 in New Hampshire lay unidentified at Boston Public Library's rare books and manuscripts department. This paper attempts to identify and reconstruct the life and times of the mystery diarist, schoolteacher Mary Seline Whitcomb. The six years during which Whitcomb kept her record were a tumultuous and changeful time for the nation as well as for New England's beloved educational culture. While Whitcomb concerned herself with "roguish scholars," bureaucrats and politicians drew connections between public education and national security. While her superiors battled over funding cuts, infrastructure, and ethical concerns, Whitcomb communicates her own participation in Cheshire County's strong intellectual culture as a teacher, a coordinator of spelling bees (or spelling schools, as they were then known in New England), a private reader, a student, an audience member during lectures and sermons, and a presenter at lyceum debates. Concepts of national identity expanded as news of national events dominated local discourse and local men enlisted for and evaded combat. Reading Whitcomb's record against an array of neglected original sources, notable among them educational reports from the district, town, county, and state levels, what emerges is a multi-layered collection of educational experiences and trends during the Civil War era and an overview of ways in which the Civil War interrupted and interacted with these and other socially intellectual pursuits.

Comments

Panel IV of the 2012 Graduate History Conference features presentations and papers under the topic of "Cultural Effects of War."

Adrienne Naylor's presentation is the first presentation in this panel.

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Mar 31st, 11:15 AM Mar 31st, 1:00 PM

I Mean to Teach: Exploring Civil War Era Education in New Hampshire Through a Schoolteacher's Diary

A teenage girl's diary kept from 1858-1864 in New Hampshire lay unidentified at Boston Public Library's rare books and manuscripts department. This paper attempts to identify and reconstruct the life and times of the mystery diarist, schoolteacher Mary Seline Whitcomb. The six years during which Whitcomb kept her record were a tumultuous and changeful time for the nation as well as for New England's beloved educational culture. While Whitcomb concerned herself with "roguish scholars," bureaucrats and politicians drew connections between public education and national security. While her superiors battled over funding cuts, infrastructure, and ethical concerns, Whitcomb communicates her own participation in Cheshire County's strong intellectual culture as a teacher, a coordinator of spelling bees (or spelling schools, as they were then known in New England), a private reader, a student, an audience member during lectures and sermons, and a presenter at lyceum debates. Concepts of national identity expanded as news of national events dominated local discourse and local men enlisted for and evaded combat. Reading Whitcomb's record against an array of neglected original sources, notable among them educational reports from the district, town, county, and state levels, what emerges is a multi-layered collection of educational experiences and trends during the Civil War era and an overview of ways in which the Civil War interrupted and interacted with these and other socially intellectual pursuits.