A manuscript diary for the year 1886 kept by a Martha Brokaw (b. 1862) documenting her time as a school teacher in rural Pike County, Illinois and subsequent move to Normal, Illinois to pursue a degree program at Illinois State Normal University. Martha appears to have been raised in Pike County, a dozen or so miles across the Mississippi River from Hannibal, Missouri, in unincorporated Martinsburg, Hardin Township.

She was born in about 1862 to a Jasper and Martha (nee Maroon) and was one of six children the couple had together. The elder Martha passed away in 1863 and Jasper soon remarried, fathering another six children with Amelia (nee Toothacker).

The younger Martha demonstrates a strong drive for independence throughout the pages of the present diary. It opens with her in the midst of a term at the rural Oak Grove school where she makes multiple entries each week:

January 25: Henry Schwartz and I have had another collision. He is determined he will not get his lessons. I whipped him but did not conquer. Ella and I went to the school house this evening to see the magic lantern show.

Sunday [June] 6. My last day at Oak Grove I am sorry and glad too. I think I have made some warm friends here and I shall look back on the last eight months with pleasure. I have tried to duty but think I have failed sometimes. I hope someone here will remember me.

Her aspirations to attend college in Normal seem to run contrary to the wishes of her father:

“Monday [August] 30. Father and I had a quarrel this morning. We washed and I packed my trunk this afternoon. Mr Moore called and asked if I would take charge of little Jemes Petty to the Soldiers Orphan’s Home at Normal. I told him I would be glad to have the company so we will go on Thursday.”

Once at school, domestic work becomes a necessity and she struggles to maintain financial support.

Friday [October 15]. I have not received a letter from home for nearly a month, consequently have the blues very bad. I would not treat them so if they were away.

Saturday [October] 16. Mrs. Metcalf concluded to hire another girl so here I am among strangers and without money for I have heard nothing from home yet Mrs. Hall, our next neighbor wants a girl and I shall work nights and mornings for a week and if I do not get some money from home I shall have to quit school and work for Mrs. Hall.

1886 ends with her staying in Normal for the holidays and, by every indication, determined to finish her studies. Illinois State materials record her enrollment for 1886 (entry no. 1602 on pp.137 of the ledger found here). Census and ancestral records are spotty throughout her life, though we believe she may be recorded as teaching at the Indian School at Uintah, Utah in 1901. Sometime soon after, she married a George William Oshee and settled near Tacoma, Washington where she remained through the 1940’s. She appears to have returned to Pike County a widow to live with a sister near the end of her life (sometime around 1950). The cover of the diary bears an ownership signature of an Ella Sherer, though this is clearly the diary of Martha Brokaw (who mentions Ella Sherer as a Pike County neighbor with some frequency in its pages). A dense and unfiltered manuscript record of feminism and women’s education in 1880’s rural Illinois.

[BROKAW, Martha] : [Manuscripts] : [Women's Education] : [Illinois]. [Manuscript Diary of a Teacher in Rural Eastern Illinois]. Various, including Pike County and Normal, Illinois: (1886). Approximately 9" x 6" commercial notebook. Upper card wrapper panel with publisher's printed decoration. 28 ruled blank leaves with entries in an ink holograph cursive to rectos and versos. Upper wrapper panel and first two leaves loose from string-stitched binding. Rear wrapper panel perished. Some mild edge loss and flaking from page edges. Overall good. Appears complete, entries with some infrequent fading, though consistently neat and highly legible. Conservatively about 8,000 words total.

A document of additional transcribed passages can be seen here.