Anne Morrison Perley (1865-1932) - A Teacher in Puerto Rico

Pinterest Post Card - 1907

Anne Morrison Perley was born January 28, 1865, in Henry County, Illinois, to Peleg Stone Perley and Nancy Eliza Morrison.  Anne had three siblings:  Bruce, Grace and Harriet (known as Polly).  

Anne came from a family of teachers.  Her grandfather, Nathanial Perley, had been an educator for over 30 years, and her father Peleg was a teacher prior to becoming a lawyer and practicing law in Henry, Illinois.

  Peleg Perley was the postmaster of Henry, Illinois, in the early 1880s.  In 1883, he employed Anne as a postal clerk.   She was attending Washington University’s College of Fine Arts in St. Louis in 1887.

 The Perley family moved to Arizona where Peleg continued his legal career in a milder climate.  Anne travelled to Tombstone to fill the position of assistant principal at Tombstone High School in January, 1892. It was a temporary appointment, and she returned to Phoenix at the end of the school year in June.  Having acquired some administrative experience, she was then hired as the assistant principal for the old Central School at 201 North Central Avenue in Phoenix. 

Anne remained in Phoenix, teaching, until after the death of her parents--her father in 1898 and her mother in 1900.  Thereafter, she went to teach in Bisbee, returning to Phoenix in 1903.  A few years later, Anne departed Arizona for New York and accepted an offer to teach in Puerto Rico.  She arrived there in September 1909 aboard the Steamship Coamo.   The 1910 federal census recorded her as a schoolteacher living in Pueblo Norte, Aibonito. 

Anne may have learned to speak Spanish during her years of teaching in Tombstone, Bisbee and Phoenix.  Acquired by the United States from Spain in 1898, Puerto Rico had a need for bilingual teachers, especially after the Foraker Act of 1901 mandated that English should be the language of instruction in Puerto Rican high schools.

It is not known how long Anne remained in Puerto Rico teaching.  However, by 1920 she was back in Brooklyn, New York, and working as a translator for an export business.  Presumably, she was by then fluent in Spanish. 

Anne was still living in Brooklyn in 1930 when she fell ill and was sent to a private sanitarium in Stamford, Connecticut.  She died there on May 23, 1932.[i]  Her sister Grace arranged for her cremains to be returned to Arizona where she was buried in her parents’ cemetery plot in Porter Cemetery.

 - by Patricia 

Mary “Minnie” Perry Bassett (1878-1903) - Schoolteacher

 

PCA Archives

Mary Adeline Perry was born December 21, 1878, in Badger Springs, Arizona to William Henry Perry and Mary Agnes Clark.  William Perry was a rancher whose land later became part of Perry Mesa within the Agua Fria National Monument.   Mary was one of nine children, according to a homestead claim her father filed in 1889.

She and her sisters--Grace, Maud, Agnes and Charlotte “Lottie”—eventually attended Tempe Normal School (now Arizona State University).  Education for women was obviously valued in the Perry household.  Mary graduated in 1899 and became a schoolteacher.  One of her first teaching posts was in Arizola, Arizona.

Mary often visited friends in the Arizola area.  There was known to be a mountain lion in the area which had been taking livestock for some time.  One day, Mary was alone and on foot near the  Bellamy ranch when the lion appeared in her path.  Mary was certain that she was going to be attacked until she suddenly remembered reading about “the power of the human eyes on savage beasts.”  Mary looked the lion right in the eye and it turned and fled.  The lion, when later shot by a hunting party, was found to measure eight feet from nose to tail.

While teaching in Cordes, Arizona, Mary met Joseph Reuben Bassett, a cowboy who was working cattle on a nearby ranch.  They were married in Phoenix on April 17, 1902.

The young couple was living in Safford, Arizona, when on January 24, 1903, they welcomed a son, Walter into their household.   Unfortunately, Mary never recovered from the birth.  She died on February 4, 1903 in Safford, with childbirth listed as the cause.  She was buried in Masons Cemetery in Phoenix.

Although Joseph R. Bassett remarried a few years later, apparently little Walter was raised by his sister and her husband.  Joseph died at the Pioneers’ Home in Prescott, Arizona, in 1957.

Mary’s father, William Henry Perry outlived her by many years.  When he died in 1929, his ashes were scattered over Perry Mesa.

- by Patricia 

 

Maude Ball (1864-1899) - Teaching Instructor

PCA Archives - AOUW

Maude was born June 21, 1864, in Marshall, Michigan, to Dr. Alexander Rawson Ball and Delilah née Weld.  She was the youngest of their ten children.  Maude’s father was a well-regarded homeopathic physician until his death at the age of 79 in 1902.  Her sister Hannah became a homeopath like her father and sister Fannie trained as a teacher.

By 1880, the Ball family was living in Mason, Shiawassee County, Michigan.  Maude herself graduated with a teaching degree in 1882 and eventually became an educator of teachers at Michigan State Normal School (now Eastern Michigan University) for several years. She then transferred to Whitewater Normal School (now University of Wisconsin--Whitewater) around 1897and served as secretary of the teachers' association.

Maude’s sister Delilah had married George Homer Jones in 1874.  On December 12, 1898, he died suddenly at the home of his mother in Michigan.  By September 1899, Maude was suffering from tubercular laryngitis, so her widowed sister Delilah accompanied her to Phoenix, Arizona Territory.

Like so many others who came to Phoenix during that time, Maude had been hoping that she would recover in the warm Arizona climate.  However, she died on December 26, 1899, at the home of her sister Delilah in Phoenix.

- by Patricia 

 

 

#3 Angeline “Angie” Piper (1876-1899) - Schoolteacher

 

Stock Photo

Angeline Piper was born 1876 in Kansas to Ray Piper and Sarah née Fortney.  Angie’s parents had been married in Bourbon, Kansas, on October 22, 1874.  Angie had a younger brother John, who was born in 1878, but he died in 1881.  Nearly two years later, Angie’s father also died, leaving her mother to raise Angie and her sister Raye, born after Mr. Piper’s death.  Since Angie’s mother did not remarry, perhaps she had sufficient means to raise two children on her own.

In 1887, a rabid dog bit Angie, her mother and sister.  According to one news report, only a “mad stone” (a bezoar stone found in the digestive tract of some animals) would save them from contracting rabies.  One was found in Chetopa, Kansas, and all must have gone well, as they all survived.

 Angie began attending Oswego College for Young Ladies in 1893 and obtained a teaching certificate.  At some point, she joined the Royal Neighbors Society.  The Society, established in 1895, was a progressive women’s fraternal benefit association and an auxiliary to Modern Woodmen of America.  It focused on assisting women and children in need and offering life insurance for women--an option never before available to women.  Today, Royal Neighbor is the largest women-led life insurer in the country.

In April 1898, Angie became quite sick while teaching in Fort Scott, Kansas, and her mother was sent for.  Under her mother’s care, Angie recovered and, in November, her mother left for Arizona to visit relatives.  Angie remained in Fort Scott at the home of an uncle, but later joined her mother in Arizona.

Angie went to Arizona primarily to recuperate.  Unfortunately, she developed typhoid fever and died December 30, 1899.  Although she was initially buried in Rosedale Cemetery, her mother later had her remains moved to the IOOF Cemetery when Angie’s Royal Neighbors Society insurance policy paid out.

by Patricia G.

 

Louis A. Geary (1869-1906) - Music Teacher and Orchestra Leader

 

Bing AI

According to his 1906 newspaper obituary, Louis A. Geary had been a music teacher and the leader of an orchestra in California before he fell ill with consumption and moved to Phoenix, Arizona, for his health.

Geary was born in 1869, probably in Binghamton, Broome County, New York, to Patrick Geary and Mary Garvey.  Patrick was an Irish immigrant and a shoemaker by trade.  The Gearys had five children.  Although Mr. Geary probably made a respectable living, it is still surprising that three of the Geary children were able to study music.

In 1892, Mary E. “Mamie” Geary, the eldest daughter, was listed simply as a music teacher but, by 1895, she was a violin instructor at Ward’s Seminary for Young Ladies in Nashville, Tennessee.  She is said to have studied with Madame Dove Boetti, Professor Giuseppe Vecchione, and Madame Carmilla Urso, a violin virtuoso—all important names in their day.  By 1915, Mamie was the head of the New City School of Music in Chicago, and her sister Margaret was also a piano instructor in Chicago

Their brother Louis seems to have come to his musical career by a more circuitous route.  In 1892, he appeared on the New York State census as a cigar-maker.  Not until later did he move to California, where he taught music and performed with an orchestra.

By 1906, Louis Geary was suffering from consumption, and he and his wife came to Phoenix, where they took up lodgings on North First Street.  Nevertheless, Geary’s health declined rapidly.  When he died on May 29th, his widow was practically penniless and sought financial help from the in-laws she had heard about but never met. 

Geary’s funeral was delayed while Phoenix Marshal Kinney telegraphed his father, who was by then living in Chicago, Illinois.  When Geary’s father responded a week after his death, Kinney learned that his family back East had not heard from him in two years and were not even aware that he had married.  Perhaps a family rift had caused the Gearys to stop communicating.

Louis Geary was buried in Rosedale Cemetery.   Since no headstone has been found, the exact location is no longer known.  The fate of his widow is also unknown, although she probably returned to California.