Register of the Abbie Parish Noyes Papers,

Documentation for the Protestant missionary efforts in Utah during the last quarter of the nineteenth century consists for the most part of either cold statistics or inflammatory sermons; there are few collections of papers that reveal the full personalities of the Protestant preachers and teachers. The papers of Abbie Parish Noyes Jaques are a happy exception, for they give a close first-hand view of the daily routine, as well as the religious and cultural values, of a teacher in one of the Protestant mission schools from 1889 to 1891.

Abbie Parish Noyes was born in Dedham, Massachusetts on 28 August 1861. Her parents are something of a mystery: her father was evidently a school teacher, for she later described her own teaching experiences to him as she would discuss them with a colleague. In an autobiographical sketch written later in life, she indicates that her mother died on 4 January 1871, yet her letters home during 1889-1890 are addressed to "Mother" or "Folks," which seems to indicate that her father remarried and that she developed a close relationship with her stepmother. She also had a brother, James Young Noyes, who was born 7 March 1864. She visited and wrote to her brother in Colorado Springs during the school year of 1889-1890, while he was evidently a student at The Colorado College, another Western outpost of the Congregational Church, though he is not listed among that college's alumni.

Illness and death seemed to plague the Noyes family during her youth. In addition to her mother, her paternal grandmother and an uncle died in January 1871. Most critical in terms of her own life, however, was the death of her mother's father while Miss Noyes was visiting her grandparents in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Her grandmother was seriously afflicted with rheumatism and unable to care for herself and Miss Noyes agreed to live with and care for her. It must have been a difficult decision for she had just graduated from high school and a friend in Dedham, Miss Martha Burgess, had offered to finance her college education.

Miss Noyes stayed with her grandmother until her death eight years later. No doubt aware that she was devoting the best years of her youth to the care of an invalid, she determined to make the most of the situation and to mitigate her loss of college training by seizing any other educational opportunities that presented themselves. Her grandmother, fortunately, was herself well educated and appreciated Miss Noyes' willingness to read aloud to her. During the summers, too, she took advantage of the close proximity of a Chatauqua program at Framingham and completed nearly the entire course for a diploma. Immediately upon her grandmother's death, Miss Noyes wrote, "I felt myself free to offer myself to the New West Education Commission to teach in some one of their many schools." The Commission accepted her application and sent her in 1889 to Ogden, Utah to teach in the Ogden Academy.

The New West Education Commission was a private missionary organization founded in 1879 by Col. C. G. Hammond, a former official of the Union Pacific Railroad who had lived in Salt Lake City and become concerned about what he perceived as the evils of Mormonism, polygamy, and the poor public schools of Utah. Although the Commission considered its role to be the establishment of quality schools all through the Rocky Mountain states and territories, it was mainly concerned with the education of Mormon children in Utah and poor children of Indian and Mexican ancestry in New Mexico. Although it tried unsuccessfully in 1879 to become an arm of either the American Home Missionary Society or the American College and Education Society of the Congregational Church -- neither of which appeared to Hammond and his associates to be adequately involved in the establishment of schools on the frontier -- the doctrinal orientation of the Commission's schools was nonsectarian, evangelical Protestant. The Commission's Thirteenth Annual Report indicated that it was supported solely by donations from "the Christian public," and the schools charged no tuition, a practice that originated in their experience with the poor children in New Mexico. The schools took no pains to conceal the fact, though, that their purpose was evangelical as well as educational: as one Congregationalist minister in Salt Lake City preached, "Mormonism in the West, illiteracy in the South, rum in the East and everywhere -- these are the elements of the Devil's Trinity."

The Commission founded Ogden Academy in 1882 and according to its report it was an instant success. The first building had only two rooms, two teachers and two students, but from the beginning it had to turn away applicants for lack of space and teachers. By 1885, the school had three teachers, 135 students, and an average attendance of 102. It was probably in the school year of 1892-1893 that Ogden Academy reached its greatest size, with six teachers and 220 pupils.

When Abbie Noyes arrived at Ogden Academy in 1889, there were five teachers: Professor H. W. Ring, who was the Principal; Abbie Noyes, who both taught and served as Assistant Principal (a weighty responsibility for her first position); Miss V. W. Ludden, who had joined Professor Ring and his wife in 1885 to become the third teacher when a salary for that additional position was donated by Judge E. S. Jones of Minneapolis; Miss Alice L. Hamlin, who had taught since the school year of 1887-1888; and Miss Mary L. McClelland, who, like Miss Noyes, had not previously taught in Ogden. Miss Noyes lived with the other single teachers in Miss Ludden's home for a time, then all began taking their meals at the Rings', then all returned to their cooperative arrangement. Most of the teachers were ill for at least part of the year, making truly cooperative arrangements difficult, but they became fast friends.

Miss Noyes enjoyed the new school building, which had been constructed during the school year of 1887-1888, finding it "unusually light, airy and well-adapted to its purpose." She had approximately forty students and taught both world and English history, English and American literature, Latin, rhetoric and arithmetic, in addition to the brief Bible lessons given to the entire school at the beginning of each day.

Although it was a difficult year for her, Miss Noyes performed her duties with distinction, a fact that is evident from the tone of the many letters written her by former students after she returned to Massachusetts. Her own letters to her parents indicate that she took a deep personal interest in her scholars and attempted to deal with them as individuals.

Much of her success that year was marred by increasingly difficult relations with her Principal, H. W. Ring. Miss Noyes considered him a careless and undemanding teacher and was especially annoyed by his use of school facilities and working hours for an assaying business. Her annoyance only smouldered during the 1889-1890 school year primarily because she and Professor Ring got along well personally, but additional complaints which reached her from other teachers (primarily Miss Ludden) the following year led her to write a couple of fairly tart letters to the Commission in an attempt to have him removed. Although the Commission rejected her cause the pressure that her letters exerted on Professor Ring was probably a major factor in his resignation at the end of the 1891 school year.

The Commission offered to renew her contract for the year 1890-1891 year and although her father had become seriously ill, she accepted. Upon her return home in the summer, though, she found that her father was in such poor condition that she felt obligated to resign and remain with him. During the following year, she served as a traveling lecturer for the Commission, describing conditions in Utah as she had found them and raising money for the cause. Her affiliation with the Commission appears to have ended with her marriage on 12 September 1893 to Samuel Foster Jaques, whereupon she accompanied him to Portland, Maine, where he was employed by the government.

The problems with Professor Ring were only the first clouds of a gathering storm that would eventually destroy the Ogden Academy. The great appeal of the Protestant schools in Utah had always been their superior quality to the Mormon-dominated public school system. As the training of Mormon teachers improved late in the century, Mormon parents were less inclined to send their children to the Gentile schools. Ogden Academy felt the effects of the improving public school system by the beginning of the 1890 school year.

The next serious blow was the Panic of 1893 which plunged the country into a severe depression that lasted until 1897. The effect of the depression upon missionary contributions was immediate and dramatic.

The Commission last succeeded, no doubt at least partly from financial desperation, in effecting a merger with the Congregational Church's American College and Education Society, forming together the Congregational Society. The merger, which Col. Hammond and the other founders of the Commission had so highly desired, proved to be poison to the mission schools which the Commission had created, for the American College and Education Society had never supported the idea of the schools and quickly let them die. Ogden Academy would almost certainly have been one of the casualties but for a wealthy benefactor, Nathaniel Gordon of Exeter, New Hampshire, who provided an endowment which enabled the school to continue. Ogden Academy then became Gordon Academy and either then or shortly thereafter radically altered its program dropping its elementary grades and offering a Normal course of four years and a Preparatory course of three years, the latter designed to prepare students for the Congregational Salt Lake College.

The heyday of Protestant mission schools in Utah was over. Miss V. W. Ludden, the most faithful teacher at the Ogden Academy, passed away, according to the recollections of Abbie Noyes Jaques, in 1895 or 1896, and the Academy barely survived her passing. The school year of 1897-1898 was the last year of its existence, and the buildings passed into the hands of the Mormon-sponsored Weber Academy.

Except for the biographical material in Folder 1 and two folders of miscellaneous material at the end of the collection, the papers of Abbie P. Noyes consist of correspondence during her year at Ogden Academy, 1889-1890, and the following year, 1890-1891, during which former students and colleagues wrote to her. The biographical material in the first folder is a photocopy of autobiographical recollections written late in life by Abbie Noyes Jaques and some supplementary material contributed by her daughter concerning the early days of the Congregational missionary effort.

Practically all of the letters written during her term at Ogden Academy are from Miss Noyes to her parents or her brother, and they contain a most intimate perspective on daily life at the Academy and the personal values and feelings of one of the teachers -- a perspective that is almost altogether missing in other sources for the history of Protestant mission schools in Utah. The rest of the letters are equally valuable. They are from her former colleagues, Misses Ludden, McClelland, Hamlin, her replacement, Miss Florence Blanchard (Miss Blanchard was later discovered to be of unacceptable moral character for service in the Academy because she attended dances, theaters, and card parties, she left after one year), several former students who corresponded faithfully, and a couple of letters from her former pastor and parent of two of her students, Rev. Bailey. News of the school is prominent in all of the letters and they constitute a valuable historical source.

Folder 8 contains a "Roll of Honor," which is a collection of pledges to good conduct which Miss Noyes elicited from her students. Some are humorously noncommittal and all reveal something of the Victorian standards of deportment required of students in the Protestant mission schools.

The final folder in the collection contains some of Miss Noyes' lecture notes, her certificate of appointment to her position at the Ogden Academy, various programs regarding the New West Education Commission's goals, procedures, and standards and photocopies of passages in the first ten annual reports of the Commission relevant to Ogden Academy (the original reports are in the Colorado College Special Collections).

Restrictions on Access:

Restrictions on Use

Creator:

Noyes, Abbie Parish, 1861-1951.

Language:

English.

Sponsor:

Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) grant, 2007-2008

Quantity:

1 box (0.5 linear ft.)

Language of the Finding Aid:

Finding aid written in Englishin Latin script

EAD Creation Date:

1999.