Typed Interview with Mary Ellen Mowinkle

Mary Ellen Mowinckle (later Johnson) on her years teaching at Eanes Rock Schoolhouse — how she was hired, classroom discipline, and a measles outbreak that left only two students attending class.

Transcribed text

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Mary Ellen Mowinckle, who taught at the school in 1903-04, boarded with the Henry Johnson family. It will be remembered that Johnson moved to his family's ranch in 1881, married and raised eleven children on the place. Miss Mowinckle, who was just eighteen years old in 1903 was herself a recent graduate of Thomas Springs School in south Travis County. Years later she remembered how she had acquired her first job. "At the close of school in May, 1903, several of the pupils were advised to take examinations to secure certifi- cates to teach school. This I did. On my 18th birthday I was awarded a certificate good for two years. Eanes school needed a teacher. My father took me to the home of Henry Johnson where I met the other trustees, Mr. [J.H.] Carlson and H.B. Marshall. I was elected." 8 Miss Mowinckle earned $30 per month in salary and she gave the Johnsons $6 a month for her room-and-board. Since she was so close in age to many of her pupils and to Henry Johnson's older children she shared many good times with the family, singing, playing parlor games such as Snap, sewing, and attending church and other socials with the Johnson girls. She also recalled the many visits to Henry's father's house in Austin at Deep Eddy. On one such visit, to attend a Halloween party, she met her future husband. He was Julius Frederick Johnson, Henry's younger brother, who courted her in a new, rubber-tire buggy. They were married in 1905. Mary Mowinckle Johnson went on to raise a family, teach at other schools and earn a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Texas when she was forty-one. She also authored a book about her forebearers called Oak Hill-Cedar Valley Pioneers. Years later, in 1976, Mrs. Johnson attended the ceremony dedicating the State Historical Marker which was placed at the site of the old Eanes School. At that time she reminisced about her teachNg days at the school. She remembered that at one time she had trouble with some of the boys who liked to fight. The school trustees told her to take away the boys' pocket knives so that they would not injure one another. This she did and then she told the "warring gladiators" that she would switch anyone who was caught fighting. And she did, recalling that most of the boys were larger than she. Mrs. Johnson also recalled that while teaching an epidemic of measles broke out in the community. For several days only Henry and Will Johnson went to school, everyone else stayed home. With only two students to teach she and the boys lolled their time away making bird traps and catching quail which nested in meadows near the schoolhouse.39 Finally, she remembered the children of the cedar chopper families who attended the school. She especially remem- bered their poverty and how some of them were mistreated at home. Two boys who were particularly abused, were Tom Young, Jr., and Rufus Young. Their father, Tom, Sr., had many "run-ins" with the law and was later handed for murder.

Original record: metapth1065507 on the Portal to Texas History.