They received the Amidon Medal

From the Evening Star of January 7, 1871:

Last evening the pupils of the Fourth District Schools gave a grand concert, at Lincoln Hall, to aid in erecting a monument in memory of Mrs. Margaret Amidon, (formerly teacher of the female grammar school, fourth district.) They were assisted by the pupils of the second district and former pupils of Mrs. Amidon. The hall was crowded, and the duetts, choruses, and piano solos were well rendered. The choruses were under the conductorship of Professor Daniel. Miss Rachel Garrett presided at the piano. About seventy-five young ladies were on the stage. During the evening the Amidon medal was presented by Mr. J. O. Wilson, superintendent of the public schools, to Miss Susie Howison, with an appropriate address, which was neatly responded to.

Miss Howison was approaching her twenty-first birthday and so was older by several years than the rest of the winners whom I've been able to identify. Most of the young women were around sixteen. I think Susie Howison (later married to James Ratcliffe of Loudoun County, Virginia) was honored for her achievements in “amiability and scholarship” for the previous year or years.

The “grand concert” was not a recurrent event, but a singular one that inaugurated the Amidon Prize. After Susie Howison, all subsequent winners were announced by the District of Columbia Trustees in a regular fashion, together with a number of other prizes and scholarships, at the end of the school year in June, after the examination of the schools. Here are the names of the winners I've been able to spot so far, drawn from newspaper items or from annual Trustees' reports.

1871	Kate Maxwell (became a teacher for a time)
1872	Martha Travis
1873	Isabelle Haliday
1875	Sarah C. Dulin
1878	Ella S. Cooke
1879	Eugenia Hilleary
1881	Marie Madeleine De Vote (died June 8, 1888)
1882	Rose Mary McCauley
1883	Carrie McLaughlin (1866-1949) wife of Harry Howser
1884	Mary Violet Petty (daughter of J.T. Petty)

Nothing about the Amidon Medal shows up in the Washington DC news or reports in the years after 1884. How did the medal come to be discontinued? Was there no longer a need to encourage girls to be schoolteachers by this means? Did the funds for the prize dry up?

It would be terrific to see one of these medals. I count at least twelve of them: the ones given to these eleven young women, and one more, in bronze, which was presented to the Trustees.

Mrs. Gunnell

Margaret Milburn Amidon was not the only family member to teach in the District’s public schools. Her older sister Mary Ann taught there, too, though she never became a celebrated figure like Mrs. Amidon. And unlike Margaret Amidon, Mary Ann only taught for a short span during the years when she was a widow.

Mary Ann was married in 1843 to Mr. Robert Hinton. The marriage was performed by Rev. Mr. Richard de Charms from Philadelphia, one of the leading lights among the Swedenborgians. About Mary Ann’s husband Hinton I know almost nothing save that he died in Nashville at the beginning of 1848. It would be nice to know what he was doing there. During their marriage Mary Ann gave birth to at least three children. Two of those died in infancy. The third, a girl called Violet, lived to the age of fifteen. (Violet Hinton’s obituary declared, strangely, that “though young, she was willing to die.” I presume this was a pious formula of the New Church.)

During the first part of the 1850s Mary Ann Hinton and her daughter Violet were living with the two Margarets in the Milburn house. This was the period when Mary Ann was a schoolteacher. Then in 1854 Mary Ann got married again, this time to an older man, a widower named Henry Gunnell. Mr. Gunnell came from Virginia and operated a wood and coal business across the street from the Milburns. He already had seven children from his previous marriage, and in fact was a grandfather. Nevertheless Henry and Mary Ann did have one child, their remarkable son Frankie Gunnell. Frankie will need to be the subject of a future post.

Mary Ann Gunnell died in 1870. She had survived an accident earlier in which she was run over by an omnibus car. The obituary does not say exactly what took her off, only that her death followed a painful illness of two weeks’ duration. She lies now in Congressional Cemetery. Violet Hinton is also buried there, but for some puzzling reason mother and daughter are not near one another.

After Mary Ann died Henry Gunnell married for the third time. All three of his wives were named Mary.

Grandfather B on the telephone

It used to be that when Grandfather Bartholow would telephone our house and ask for Dad, if I answered the call he simply wouldn’t respond to me. Me: “Hello?” Grandfather B: “Is Jack there?” Me: “Hello, Grandfather! This is Thomas. No, Dad isn't around now, but if—” Grandfather B: Click. Sometimes, just before the click, I could catch that he said “oh” in a mild grunt, not to me but just into the air while he was already setting down the receiver. He lacked any feel for social talk, and took negligible interest in other people for their own sake. And he appeared to believe that, whatever his aim was in wanting to talk to Dad, it did not possibly concern anyone else. Communication of even trivial matters was handled on a need to know basis. And my wish to talk to him? It seemed as if no sensation could impinge on him when it fell athwart his intended business, not even a word from one of his grandchildren. One of my cousins mentioned to me that Grandfather B actually frightened him. I was never frightened, but I did come to feel a kind of awe of Grandfather as a paterfamilias out of an earlier century, an atavism in whose presence I would from time to time find myself.

The afterlife of Margaret Milburn Amidon

It began with her funeral, held at the Milburn home on Virginia Avenue. Rev. Jabez Fox spoke a sermon. Mr. Fox, representing the Swedenborgian affiliation of Hollis Amidon and of old Mrs. Milburn, was only the short subject. There was a second divine engaged for the main feature, namely Rev. George Whitfield Samson, at that time the president of the Columbian College. He was also a pastor, had been Mrs. Amidon’s pastor, at the E Street Baptist Church, and something like a spiritual advisor to her. He delivered a eulogy full of heavy piety, extolling her virtues of honor, duty, faith, and public usefulness. With the additional presence of the choir from E Street Baptist singing hymns to open and close the ceremonies, the house must have been crowded.

The following February saw two even larger memorials. At the first Margaret’s friend and champion Samuel Yorke AtLee gave an oration on her life and death to a crowd at the Seventh Street Presbyterian Church. Rev. Jabez Fox also appeared for this occasion. Various other trustees and dignitaries of the schools rose to speak about Mrs. Amidon, dwelling in particular on the elevation of the public schools which she accomplished by her own example and by means of her protégées, fifty-four of whom were said to have gone on to be teachers. Some few days later another gathering, this time of teachers specifically, listened to even more speeches commending Mrs. Amidon and building up the schools.

It’s interesting to note that although Margaret is shown in these speeches in relation to her school, her community, and her city, there isn’t much mention of her living family. Of course I can only go by what was afterwards told in the newspapers. Her parents are referred to and her stepmother, but Margaret Agnes is never called a beloved sister to her own sisters and brother, or said to be a dear aunt to her own nieces and nephew.

Mr. AtLee’s oration, the one from the principal memorial service in February, was in April issued as a pamphlet. At least two newspapers printed excerpts of the material, relating details of her childhood, teaching career, and marriage. (It’s from these excerpts, primarily, that I’ve learned so many details, or clarified them, about the Milburn family. There may be even more pertinent material included in the full printed work. I’ve not been able to see this yet, but there’s a copy in the Library of Congress according to their catalog. With the promise of a photograph as frontispiece!)

Over the summer of 1870 the school trustees considered a new plan for a prize to be given annually in Margaret Amidon’s honor. This was the “Amidon Medal,” a gold medallion designed by Goldsborough Bruff and struck by the Mint. The plan was underwritten by a published group of subscribers that included many of Margaret’s friends. (At least one family member contributed, her brother-in-law John Abell.) The trustees approved. The prize would be given to a girl from the Fourth District who was outstanding in the year for “amiability and scholarship” as judged by her teachers and fellows. There were a number of other awards and scholarships available to Washington students. This one was aimed to dignify specifically girls who might go on to become teachers (and several of the girls did), as well as to perpetuate Margaret Amidon’s name.

1871 began with a concert given by school pupils to raise money for some sort of Amidon monument. During the evening the first of the Amidon Medals was given out (to a Miss Susie Howison—really the 1870 medal). The concert was said to be a success, but I don’t know of any monument built from the funds raised. At the close of the school year the following June, the regular award for 1871 was made at the period of the yearly class examinations. Medals were given in this fashion year by year, continuing at least into the 1880s; after that time I’ve found no more mention of them.

1883 newspaper notice

It’s possible that whatever money was got from the 1871 concert was used instead to commission the portrait of Margaret Amidon that was mentioned in the newspaper in 1883. By that time there was a new school building that bore her name, and the painting, after being on public display, was placed in the school.

The Amidon School for the Fourth District stood originally at the corner of 6th and F Streets in southwest Washington. Used for seventy years or so, that original school is now gone, along with the entire neighborhood, obliterated in the middle of the last century as part of a vast renewal program carried out on Southwest DC. That former intersection 6th and F Streets would now lie in the traffic of a cross-town freeway. At some point around 1960 the Amidon school was reestablished on I Street. Amidon-Bowen is, I believe, the current official name, now that the school has combined with the former Bowen school, but the building today bears on its facade only the name Margaret M. Amidon. As recently as 2003 somebody dredged up details of Margaret Amidon’s life for a “ceremonial resolution” on behalf of the fifth grade class.