This is Roald Tweet on Rock Island.
By the time the City of Rock Island got around to establishing a public school system for its 800 children, the city fathers were already a bit gun shy. The various private and parochial schools had not always gone well. While the curricula of the schools had been quite satisfactorily composed of variations on the three “Rs,” the teachers, at best, had been uneven.The first Rock Island school, for example, opened by Joseph Gerard and his wife in 1839, was forced to close the following year after Mr. Gerard was convicted of murdering another man with an axe. Even clergymen teachers were not immune. The Reverend Mr. Hummer's school closed its doors after Mr. Hummer was chased out of town by several of the older boys in his school for mistreating another pupil, Miss Henrietta Hawley.
Thus, the Rock Island Public school board was very cautious to choose teachers of good moral character, when the first schools opened in 1855. After all, they were paying $55 a month for male grammar school principals (and $30 a month for female principals).
Nevertheless, several teachers who were not good role models apparently slipped past the board. By 1863 the board found it necessary to pass a resolution to remove from teaching positions anyone found to use tobacco.
The rules tightened. The board next disqualified all those "who habitually attend balls and theaters," because, as they explained, "these amusements distract the mind, make habits irregular, and consequently unfit a person for teaching."
These rules excluded all but the most pure. Almost. One last rule proved necessary for those wily teachers. In 1913 the Rock Island school board ruled that "no married teacher who lives with a husband shall be employed as a teacher in the schools. The marriage of any lady teacher shall be equivalent to resignation."
"Unless," the school board added, "the husband is permanently disabled"—a proviso that must have caused at least one or two married teachers who loved their jobs to glance over at husbands waiting to be served their pie, and consider some of the possibilities—especially if they were married to members of the school board.
Rock Island Lines with Roald Tweet is underwritten by Augustana College, Rock Island, Illinois.
