Sorting Saturday-Time Capsule 3 - Teacher Certificate

Today we are continuing to examine the contents of the leather case found in my great grandmother, Frances Lowe’s suitcase that has been dubbed the Time Capsule. If you have missed any of the previous Time Capsule posts, check out the links at the end of this article.

I have heard comments from older members of the family that Frances was a teacher, or that she taught her boys (and maybe some of the other local kids) in her home; a sort of frontier homeschooling. It turns out there was something to those stories as two teacher certificates turned up in the leather case. I have to say that I got goose bumps when I first saw these. Those certificates must have been pretty important to Frances for her to have kept them close for so many years. Frances died in 1964[1] at the age of 93[2] so she kept track of these two certificates for a very long time. I am proud to be the caretaker of them for future generations.

Here's the first certificate:

So Frances was licensed to be a teacher in her home county of Boulder, Colorado about a year and a half before her marriage to Milton Clark Lowe. The following statement I am a little confused about:

…SCHOLARSHIP and PROFESSIONAL ABILITY as entitled her to a CERTIFICATE of the Second grade…

I am unclear as to whether she was entitled to teach children of the second grade (as we might think of second grade today) or if that is a grade, class or level of teacher relating to her teaching ability. At any rate, this piece of paper is nearly 107 years old and is amazingly good condition.

Preservation

Since I am now the caretaker for these two very precious documents, I have laid them out flat so they can relax a bit from being folded up all those years. They will each be placed in their own lightweight acid free, lignin free folder and stored in an archival safe box with the rest of the documents and photographs that are uncovered in the Time Capsule.

Thursday the other teacher's certificate will be up after I've had a chance to take a closer look at it.

Here are links to the other posts in this series as well as a couple of related articles:

The Time Capsule
First Steps
The Time Capsule's Top Layer
Part 2
Teacher's Certificate
Teacher's Certificate #2
Baby Shoes
Sewing Anyone?
Help! Do You Know What This Is?
Frances' Necklace
A Bottle of???
Embroidery
More Stuff To Sort
Doilies
Pictures, Announcements, etc.
Dress
Pictures, Announcements, etc.
Preserving the Time Capsule
Sorting Saturday - The Time Capsule is Sorted. What I learned.
COG-Scrapbooking Your Family History! Frances Lowe
Treasure Chest Thursday-You Are My Treasures

Citations:

[1] Washington Department of Health, death certificate no. 22770, Frances E. Lowe (1964); Olympia.
[2] Theodore Low Family Bible Records, 1831-1964. Holy Bible. Ziegler & McCurdy, 1872, “Births”; privately held by Russell Lowe, [address for private use,], 1997. Frances age could also be calculated from the birthdate on her death certificate cited in note 1.


© 2010, copyright Michelle Goodrum