Grove. Taught there three months in the winter and two in the spring. It was a very large school also.
That fall I went to Fremont and enrolled in the Teachers' Course at the Fremont Normal. This was a private school run by Mr. Wm. Clemmons. I was going to stay one term of ten weeks -- then come home and teach. When the ten weeks was over Mr. Clemmons would not let me leave. He always said, "Why cross a bridge until you come to it?" He did the same thing at the end of each term so I stayed the five terms or fifty weeks and completed the teachers' course. Had very little money and few clothes.
In the fall I taught halfway between Madison and Battle Creek. Had a very large attendance. The next year I taught across the Elkhorn northwest of Meadow Grove. Had a big school here also. Taught four weeks and contracted typhoid. Never got to teach anymore that fall but taught the winter and spring term.
In the fall of '96, I began teaching in Battle Creek. There were four rooms --- the higher, grammar, intermediate and primary. I was hired to teach the grammar room. Had 6th, 7th and 8th grades with over 60 students.
The next year I was hired to teach the intermediate room. These grades I taught for a number of years until the attendance became so great more teachers had to be hired. Then I was given the 3rd and 4th grades which I taught for many years.
Last spring the school board thought for my age I was working too hard so they gave me the kindergarten on a half-day basis.
During all these years I worked hard. No doubt but what I made many mistakes. I always had the children's interest at heart more than they realized and often asked the Lord to help me bring out the best that was in them."
In the more than 60 years spend in the school room she taught more than 1,300 boys and girls, including three generations in some instances.
Parties were held for Miss Mollie when she had taught 25 years, again when she had taught 50 years and finally a big party on April 24th, 1953, toward the close of her last year in the school room. this surprise party was sponsored, not only by the school board but fourteen civic and religious organizations in Battle Creek and attended by more than 500 friends. More of her friends "attended" by hundreds of congratulatory letters and telegrams.
Her home was the one now occupied by Mrs. Ray Kirby, near the Catholic Church. She bought this home and through the years remodeled it. Most noteworthy, however, is that in her home
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