Electa Quinney

It would not be difficult for me to write up a timeline of the succession of Calvinist (Congregational and Presbyterian) ministers serving the Stockbridge Mohicans from the first John Sergeant to well into the 1900's. On the other hand, although notable schoolteachers also served the tribe, their comings and goings are not nearly as well documented. One reason for this is that teachers weren't always paid out of the same pot. Sometimes the mission society would hire a teacher, but at other times funds came from the federal government or from the tribe's own treasury. That increased the level of turnover.

I can remember the names of a few of the tribe's teachers: Timothy Woodbridge, John Konkapot (son of the first Konkapot), Daniel Simon (a Narragansett), Jedidiah Stevens, Chauncey Hall, Jeremiah Slingerland, Sarah Slingerland, and, of course, Electa Quinney.

Electa Quinney is relatively well-known as the first schoolmistress of what is now Wisconsin. It is generally believed she took on the job for the children of her tribe beginning in 1828. Within about two years after that, Jedidiah Stevens was hired to teach. But it seems that Stevens' teaching was somewhat sporadic because he was busy farming at certain times of the year - something the mission societies appear to have been in support of.

J.N. Davidson appears to have been the first to proclaim Electa Quinney as Wisconsin's first schoolmistress. I really don't know how he determined that she was the tribe's schoolteacher in 1828. Nevertheless, I've never come across anything that would prove him wrong on that point and I hope I never will.

However, in the early days of Cutting Marsh's ministry with the Stockbridges, Jedidiah Stevens was the schoolteacher. Since Stevens also farmed, his teaching was rather sporadic. In the ABCFM records Cutting Marsh noted - circa 1831 - that Stevens wasn't teaching and the tribe went ahead and hired one of their own members (a woman, and I'm not aware of any other Stockbridge woman from that era who was qualified to teach). What may have happened was that Electa Quinney taught from 1828 to about 1830 and then Stevens taught for a while and then Ms. Quinney taught again.

More than any other author, we have J.N. Davidson to thank for recording Electa Quinney's career:

Miss Quinney, Wisconsin's first school mistress, was educated at Clinton, New York, and at Cornwall, Connecticut. At the latter place she spent six years. It was in 1828 that she began to teach the mission school at Statesburg, probably, as I have said, the first free school in Wisconsin.

The [Judge] E. S. Miner of Necedah, one of her [former] pupils [and son of the missionary Jesse Miner], says that she was a better teacher than the average of teachers to-day [the 1890's]. Her methods, many of them, were similar to those of the present day. The pupils were mostly Indian children, but the language used was English.... She rarely whipped; opened her school with prayer. It was modeled after the best public schools of New England at that time.

The quote is from Muh-He-Ka-Ne-Ok, pages 56-57.


Addendum of June 17, 2009: An article from 1888 appears to be Davidson's source.