"how about you, ida? are you going to teach for a while?"

Teaching McConnells Meet Today
Union Valley Service, California - The Elmer McConnell family runs to teaching school. Mr. McConnell, 76, whose family will honor him at a reunion here tomorrow, was a school teacher. So was his wife, now deceased. So were two of his sons. So were both his daughters.

One of the daughters is still a teacher. Her husband is a retired college professor.
The McConnell family, 35 strong, will gather from all over California tomorrow to pay homage to the father, who came out from Wisconsin* and settled on the ranch where he still lives.

There will be a picnic and barbecue at the ranch, and in the afternoon neighbors will be invited in for open house.

In These Happy Golden Years, Mary Power asks Ida Wright if she is going to teach school. Ida laughed, "No, indeed! I never did want to teach. I'd rather keep house. Why do you suppose I got this ring?" (See Chapter 24, "Almanzo Goes Away")

Ida may not have wanted to teach, but teach she did. While Laura Ingalls taught in the Wilkins School north of De Smet, Ida was teaching the Langdon School in Manchester Township to the west. Ida had earned only a probational teaching certificate; it allowed her to teach for six months or one school term. Had Ida wanted to teach again, she would have had to take the teaching exam and pass with at least a third grade certificate. There is no record of Ida being re-certified in Kingsbury County. Elmer had taught school prior to moving to Dakota Territory; he also taught school after he and Ida were married.

*Wisconsin?
Ida and Elmer left De Smet after Reverend Brown died and moved to northern Wisconsin, where they lived until 1914. They followed a daughter and her husband to California and spent the rest of their lives on a ranch near Sacramento.
- posted by pioneergirl at 9:31 PM