The diary of James Augustus Birch tells of MSTA's first meeting at Wyman's Hall in St. Louis.

In the beginning

By Sandy Watts

Some may have come by horse and buggy, some by train — the first rail service west of the Mississippi had begun the year before. But many of the teachers who traveled to St. Louis in May of 1856 for the first meeting of what would become the Missouri State Teachers Association probably arrived by steamboat.

The largest city in the Midwest, St. Louis was one of the busiest ports in the nation, along with New York and New Orleans. Some 60 steamers docked daily, often lining up three deep at the levee. It was a noisy, raucous scene, where floating Victorian palaces maneuvered alongside ramshackle cattle boats.

In the midst of this melee, the visiting teachers would have kept a watchful eye on carpetbags and steamer trunks as they disembarked and arranged transportation, possibly by horse-drawn streetcar, to their night’s lodging.

The 110 teachers who made that difficult journey to St. Louis were in pursuit of a noble cause. Their avowed purpose, in the formal language of the day, was set forth in the constitution they adopted:

“… to promote the sacred interests of education, by uniting the different members, advancing their mutual improvement, and elevating the profession to its just intellectual and moral influence on the community.”

They had their work cut out for them. In 1856 Missouri could hardly be said to have a school system at all. Only about a third of the state’s 300,000 school-age children attended school, and most who did went to private academies. Public schools, such as they were, were thought of as charitable institutions for the poor. Consequently, most met for only four months of the year in crude log cabins.

Determined to take the future in hand, on Thursday, May 22, 1856, MSTA’s founders made their way to Wyman’s Hall. Built in 1848 in grand Victorian style, Wyman’s Hall was a St. Louis landmark. Jenny Lind once sang in the high-ceilinged second-floor concert hall, and crowds gathered there to gawk at Tom Thumb. The building’s fourth floor was said to offer “panoramic views of the city” and a “constantly circulating pure, healthy breeze,” something women in hats and cumbersome long skirts and bewhiskered men in worsted wool suits no doubt would have enjoyed.

It is unclear whether the English and Classical High School founded by Edward Wyman was still meeting at Wyman’s Hall in 1856. According to one account, in 1854 there was a large, airy, well-lighted school room on the third floor. But by 1858 Wyman’s Hall, renamed The Odeon, had become a venue for minstrel shows, museum exhibits and curiosities.

Politically, mid-century was a time of great strife in the young country. Even in Missouri, the drumbeat of war was growing louder. While the teachers were in St. Louis, a steamboat brought news of a raid by pro-slavery “border ruffians” on Lawrence, Kansas, a stronghold of the abolitionist movement. To the east, in neighboring Illinois, a country lawyer named Abraham Lincoln was campaigning (unsuccessfully as it turned out) for a Senate seat and helping to organize the Republican party.

Aside from the constitution the teachers adopted, there are few records of the first MSTA convention.

James Augustus Birch, a delegate from Jefferson City, wrote in his diary on May 22: “Attended a meeting in Wymans Hall and organized a State Teachers Convention. Considered the propriety of establishing a Journal to be called the Missouri Teacher. Also the establishment of Teachers Institutes. Heard a beautiful discourse by Hon. Horace Mann.”

The teachers called their new organization the Missouri Teachers Association (the name was changed to Missouri State Teachers Association after the Civil War). Membership was open to “teachers and others who are actively engaged in promoting the interests of education.” Dues were set at $2 per year, with a $1 annual assessment, or $10 for a lifetime membership.

William T. Lucky of Fayette presided at the meeting and was elected president. An ordained Methodist minister, Lucky was the founder of Howard High School, the parent institution of Howard Female College and Central Male College.

The address by Horace Mann, who would be known to later generations as the father of American education, was a high point of the convention. He spoke passionately on the need for normal schools to train teachers. “A republic cannot long remain both ignorant and free,” he said. And how could there be an educated public without educated teachers?

Mann found a receptive audience among the Missouri teachers, who immediately answered the call. The next year President Lucky presented a memorial to the Missouri General Assembly, requesting the immediate establishment of a normal school. The Missouri Teachers Association, his petition said, “pledges itself to use all honorable means for the accomplishment of this goal.”

It was a long and frustrating campaign, interrupted by the Civil War and hindered by legislative foot-dragging and disagreements among the teachers themselves. Some wanted the legislature to create a new school devoted solely to teacher training. Others, such as Professor C. G. Swallow of the University of Missouri, favored incorporating teacher training programs into existing universities.

It would take 14 years for MSTA’s first legislative goal to be realized. (MSTA worked 40 years for a teachers retirement system.) A bill passed in 1870 led to the establishment of normal schools in Kirksville and Warrensburg, soon followed by normal schools in Cape Girardeau, Springfield and Maryville. And so the stage was set for 150 years of patient and persistent advocacy.

The names of many of MSTA’s founders are lost to us now, and yet we know them. We know them from their legacy, an organization that from 1856 to the present has championed every significant advance for Missouri teachers and their students. The story of the Missouri State Teachers Association is the story of Missouri education — told one victory at a time.