WEBVTT - Rebecca Smith Pollard, aka Kate Harrington 0:00:01.320 --> 0:00:04.240 Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class, a production 0:00:04.400 --> 0:00:14.760 of iHeartRadio. Hello, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Tracy V. 0:00:14.920 --> 0:00:19.599 Wilson and I'm Holly Frye. Sometime last year, some folks 0:00:19.720 --> 0:00:22.400 here at work asked if we had anything planned for 0:00:22.440 --> 0:00:25.079 the show to go along with the two hundred and 0:00:25.079 --> 0:00:29.280 fiftieth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence that's being celebrated 0:00:29.280 --> 0:00:33.720 this year. I think it is safe to say that 0:00:33.760 --> 0:00:37.479 there is not a year in which either of us 0:00:37.560 --> 0:00:40.760 would really be interested in the kind of like over 0:00:40.800 --> 0:00:44.960 the top patriotism and national pride that is usually expected 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:48.240 to go along with that kind of a milestone observance. 0:00:50.479 --> 0:00:53.559 We especially were not in the mood for that when 0:00:53.600 --> 0:00:57.960 we were asked twenty twenty five. I did, though, go 0:00:58.120 --> 0:01:00.200 looking around to see if there was anything that was 0:01:00.280 --> 0:01:03.160 kind of more off the beaten path that might spark 0:01:03.200 --> 0:01:05.080 my interests and also let us say to the folks 0:01:05.080 --> 0:01:07.640 that work, yes, there will be something related on the 0:01:07.720 --> 0:01:14.000 calendar our recent episode on Kasimir Pulaski. Unrelated to that conversation. 0:01:14.200 --> 0:01:18.240 That is just a coincidence somehow in my search for 0:01:18.319 --> 0:01:20.959 something that would let us say, yes, we do have 0:01:21.000 --> 0:01:24.559 something on the calendar. I found Rebecca Smith Pollard, who 0:01:24.600 --> 0:01:28.800 also published under the name Kate Harrington, and her connection 0:01:29.560 --> 0:01:33.120 to the US Simmy Quincentennial is that she published a 0:01:33.120 --> 0:01:36.600 book of poems to mark the US Centennial in eighteen 0:01:36.640 --> 0:01:40.319 seventy six. That is not much of a connection, and 0:01:40.400 --> 0:01:44.280 this episode's also mostly not about that, because Rebecca Smith 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:47.760 Pollard's major influence was not this book of poems that 0:01:47.800 --> 0:01:51.360 she published. It was creating a method for teaching children 0:01:51.400 --> 0:01:55.360 to read that was really influential in her time and 0:01:55.400 --> 0:01:59.520 still has relevance today. She also wrote a novel that 0:01:59.600 --> 0:02:02.920 was meant in part as a critical response to Harriet 0:02:02.920 --> 0:02:07.040 Beecher Stowe's anti slavery novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, so we're 0:02:07.040 --> 0:02:10.320 going to be talking about that as well. Rebecca Harrington 0:02:10.360 --> 0:02:14.360 Smith was born in Allegheny City, Pennsylvania, on September twentieth, 0:02:14.400 --> 0:02:18.680 eighteen thirty one. Her mother, Marjorie, was born in Ireland 0:02:18.720 --> 0:02:21.080 and immigrated to the US with her family when she 0:02:21.200 --> 0:02:25.760 was a child. Rebecca's father, Nathaniel Ruggles Smith, was born 0:02:25.800 --> 0:02:29.280 in Massachusetts, went to Harvard and then became a teacher, 0:02:29.560 --> 0:02:33.280 mostly in private schools. He liked to teach the works 0:02:33.280 --> 0:02:36.400 of Shakespeare, and he wrote his own grammar and spelling books. 0:02:37.200 --> 0:02:41.079 A grammar textbook by Samuel Kirkham described Nathaniel Ruggles Smith 0:02:41.280 --> 0:02:47.160 as a quote distinguished and acute grammarian. Nathaniel also established 0:02:47.200 --> 0:02:51.520 and edited a literary journal called the Hesperus, and Rebecca 0:02:51.880 --> 0:02:55.959 was their youngest child. Yeah, that literary journal was apparently 0:02:56.000 --> 0:02:59.280 one of the first, if not the first literary journals 0:02:59.320 --> 0:03:04.000 published west of the Mississippi. It's been a running theme 0:03:04.320 --> 0:03:06.680 on the show lately that we don't know much about 0:03:06.680 --> 0:03:09.640 people's early lives. But we don't know much about Rebecca's 0:03:09.639 --> 0:03:13.720 early life. There's even some uncertainty about her middle name. 0:03:14.200 --> 0:03:16.959 A couple of sources I found gave it as Hutchinson 0:03:17.280 --> 0:03:21.480 rather than Harrington. I'm not totally sure, but I think 0:03:21.560 --> 0:03:24.800 this is because she had an older sister named Rebecca 0:03:24.880 --> 0:03:27.360 Hutchinson who only lived for a few months, and that 0:03:27.480 --> 0:03:32.120 was the year before this Rebecca was born. At some point, 0:03:32.200 --> 0:03:35.119 the Smith family moved west. First they moved to Ohio 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.400 and then to Kentucky. Apparently this move is because Marjorie 0:03:39.560 --> 0:03:42.040 was ill and they hope that the change of climate 0:03:42.040 --> 0:03:45.240 would help her. It's hard to say what impact this 0:03:45.320 --> 0:03:47.480 had but from what I was able to piece together. 0:03:47.720 --> 0:03:51.160 Marjorie Smith lived until eighteen seventy two, when she died 0:03:51.160 --> 0:03:54.760 at the age of eighty four. She outlived Rebecca's father, 0:03:55.000 --> 0:03:57.200 who died in eighteen fifty nine at the age of 0:03:57.240 --> 0:04:01.880 seventy five. While living in Kentuck, Ucky, Rebecca became a teacher, 0:04:02.040 --> 0:04:06.119 and she also started publishing her writing. She published poems 0:04:06.120 --> 0:04:09.440 in the Louisville Journal under the name Kate Harrington, often 0:04:09.520 --> 0:04:12.680 with a notation of prairie cottage and the year the 0:04:12.720 --> 0:04:16.159 poem was written at the end. In eighteen fifty four, 0:04:16.320 --> 0:04:20.240 she and another poet, miss M. E. Wilson, of Maysville, Kentucky, 0:04:20.720 --> 0:04:24.320 each wrote a poem called Moonlight Tryst that was inscribed 0:04:24.360 --> 0:04:27.560 to the other. These were published in the Journal, together 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:30.680 with a note from the editor saying that quote, two 0:04:30.720 --> 0:04:34.320 of our romantic young poetesses, living more than one thousand 0:04:34.320 --> 0:04:37.599 miles apart, made a covenant to meet in spirit on 0:04:37.680 --> 0:04:40.640 a particular night and talk to each other in poetry. 0:04:41.720 --> 0:04:44.680 When Kate Harrington didn't submit anything to the paper for 0:04:44.720 --> 0:04:48.200 a while, in eighteen fifty five, her next poem appeared 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:51.440 with this note from the editor, quote, we are heartily 0:04:51.480 --> 0:04:54.320 glad to see you back. Dear Kate, you must never 0:04:54.400 --> 0:04:58.640 play truant so long again. She also published essays in 0:04:58.720 --> 0:05:03.440 other newspapers around Kentucky. Sometime in the mid eighteen fifties, 0:05:03.480 --> 0:05:06.680 the family moved to Iowa, and in eighteen fifty six 0:05:06.720 --> 0:05:12.159 Rebecca published a novel titled Emma Bartlett or Prejudice and Fanaticism. 0:05:12.640 --> 0:05:16.080 The title page said that it was by an American lady, 0:05:16.240 --> 0:05:19.760 but the copyright statement lists it as the work of R. H. Smith. 0:05:20.560 --> 0:05:23.720 In the words of her review and the Ohio Statesman quote, 0:05:23.839 --> 0:05:27.240 the heroine, Emma Bartlett, is the offspring of a young 0:05:27.360 --> 0:05:31.520 and lively German woman who was driven with her relatives 0:05:31.760 --> 0:05:35.520 by political and religious persecution from her own land to 0:05:35.560 --> 0:05:39.560 seek a home in America. She illustrates, through a succession 0:05:39.600 --> 0:05:43.080 of thrilling scenes, the character of a gentle, noble, and 0:05:43.200 --> 0:05:46.760 gifted woman suffering from the evils with which a corrupt 0:05:46.760 --> 0:05:52.279 social system and an unwise and unjust prescription have surrounded her. 0:05:53.160 --> 0:05:55.839 So as Tracy mentioned at the top of the show, 0:05:56.000 --> 0:05:58.640 this book was written at least in part as a 0:05:58.680 --> 0:06:03.520 response to Harry at beecher Stowe's abolitionist novel Uncle Tom's Cabin, 0:06:03.960 --> 0:06:06.520 which was published in book form in eighteen fifty two 0:06:06.680 --> 0:06:11.040 and became a bestseller. Uncle Tom's Cabin, of course, has 0:06:11.080 --> 0:06:15.240 its own very complicated legacy. Among other things, it was 0:06:15.240 --> 0:06:19.800 straightforwardly anti slavery and as credited with sparking a surge 0:06:19.920 --> 0:06:24.080 in abolitionist sentiment in the US, but it also depicted 0:06:24.120 --> 0:06:27.559 black people in a very heavily stereotyped way, and Uncle 0:06:27.640 --> 0:06:31.120 Tom became an insult to describe Black people who were 0:06:31.160 --> 0:06:35.800 perceived as subservient or complicit in their own oppression. At 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:40.200 least thirty novels were written in response to Uncle Tom's Cabin, 0:06:40.440 --> 0:06:44.840 which are often grouped together under the umbrella of Anti 0:06:45.040 --> 0:06:48.960 Tom literature. At least a third of these novels were 0:06:48.960 --> 0:06:52.040 by women, and they were mostly written by writers living 0:06:52.040 --> 0:06:55.719 in the South. A lot of Anti Tom novels were 0:06:55.800 --> 0:07:01.480 explicitly pro slavery. I did not read this entire book, 0:07:01.800 --> 0:07:04.880 but I did read selections from it, and Emma Bartlett 0:07:04.880 --> 0:07:08.120 has kind of a broader focus than that. In the 0:07:08.160 --> 0:07:11.920 words of a piece in the Weekly Courier of Atumwa, Iowa, 0:07:12.040 --> 0:07:16.720 it was quote designed to illustrate the evils of abolitionism 0:07:16.880 --> 0:07:21.360 and no nothingism. The review from The Ohio Statesman that 0:07:21.400 --> 0:07:24.480 we read from earlier described the book as exposing quote, 0:07:24.520 --> 0:07:29.440 political and religious prejudice and fanaticism as seen in Abolitionism, 0:07:29.680 --> 0:07:35.800 No Nothingism, and Kindred heresies. Abolitionism was obviously the abolition 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:39.920 of slavery. The No Nothing Party was an anti immigrant 0:07:39.920 --> 0:07:44.240 and anti Catholic political party that flourished in the eighteen fifties. 0:07:44.960 --> 0:07:48.080 Its name purportedly came from the idea that if members 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.040 were asked about any nativist organizations they belonged to, they 0:07:52.080 --> 0:07:56.000 would say they knew nothing. Smith does not seem to 0:07:56.040 --> 0:08:00.480 have been Catholic herself. Her family were Presbyterians, but she 0:08:00.640 --> 0:08:04.200 was sympathetic toward Catholics and opposed to the anti Catholic 0:08:04.240 --> 0:08:08.640 prejudice that was widespread in the nineteenth century. Some of 0:08:08.680 --> 0:08:12.240 this prejudice was connected to the influx of Catholic immigrants 0:08:12.280 --> 0:08:15.920 from Ireland who were fleeing the Great Famine that started 0:08:15.960 --> 0:08:20.360 in the eighteen forties. So Smith wrote this novel, too, 0:08:20.440 --> 0:08:26.000 exposed No Nothingism as evil, and she apparently thought abolitionism 0:08:26.200 --> 0:08:30.400 was just as bad. The books, abolitionist characters are hypocrites 0:08:30.440 --> 0:08:34.840 and they have self serving motivations. There are rebuttals against 0:08:34.880 --> 0:08:39.439 abolitionist arguments scattered throughout conversations that take place among the 0:08:39.520 --> 0:08:43.360 various characters, like at one point, someone describes the idea 0:08:43.440 --> 0:08:48.400 of people as property as shocking, and the response is quote, 0:08:48.520 --> 0:08:51.600 and yet who first brought them into a position to 0:08:51.720 --> 0:08:55.240 be sold as such? Was it not the inhabitants of 0:08:55.280 --> 0:08:58.800 that portion of the globe whose descendants are now continually 0:08:58.840 --> 0:09:04.360 crying against the sin of slavery? Good gracious. Another conversation 0:09:04.520 --> 0:09:08.480 frames accounts of brutality being carried out on southern plantations 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:13.720 as overblown or even fabricated, basically the same kind of 0:09:13.960 --> 0:09:19.320 nonsense that still is in Internet comment sections today. We're 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.120 not saying that depicting something in a book is the 0:09:22.160 --> 0:09:26.720 same as believing or endorsing it. Plenty of writers depict 0:09:26.840 --> 0:09:29.760 evil or prejudice or violence in their books without it 0:09:29.840 --> 0:09:33.960 being an expression of their own beliefs or tendencies. But 0:09:34.080 --> 0:09:38.400 this book was explicitly written for political reasons. It is 0:09:38.520 --> 0:09:42.680 dedicated to the quote true upholders of the Constitution and 0:09:42.760 --> 0:09:47.400 of the firm supporters of our glorious Union. The preface 0:09:47.440 --> 0:09:50.320 to the first edition said that she quote endeavored to 0:09:50.400 --> 0:09:58.080 present some facts in fiction just shaking my head. No, oh, Rebecca, 0:09:58.240 --> 0:09:59.959 I didn't know any of this when I picked her. 0:10:02.760 --> 0:10:04.800 That's what makes it good. That's what makes it a 0:10:04.840 --> 0:10:10.520 good thing to discuss. In the introduction to the second 0:10:10.720 --> 0:10:14.440 edition of the novel, Smith described it as demonstrating quote 0:10:14.520 --> 0:10:17.720 two or three notions which have of late grown to 0:10:17.800 --> 0:10:22.079 the importance of political doctrines to be great political and 0:10:22.160 --> 0:10:26.800 social evils. The two chief conclusions which she thought these 0:10:26.800 --> 0:10:30.720 facts established were that a fellow creature's place of birth 0:10:30.800 --> 0:10:33.439 should not be made the test of his capabilities or 0:10:33.480 --> 0:10:38.920 intrinsic worth, and that there is neither reason, religion, nor 0:10:39.240 --> 0:10:42.640 justice in crushing the white man in order to liberate 0:10:42.679 --> 0:10:45.079 the blacks from a bondage in which they have been 0:10:45.120 --> 0:10:49.400 placed by circumstances which no ordinary foresight of man and 0:10:49.440 --> 0:10:55.080 no ordinary exercise of humanity could have prevented. Once again, 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:59.040 I say, oh, Rebecca. In this book and other writings, 0:10:59.080 --> 0:11:02.080 Smith was also so deeply opposed to the idea of 0:11:02.160 --> 0:11:06.080 dissolving the Union over the issue of slavery. That's one 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:10.120 of the reasons that she framed abolitionism as a fanatical evil. 0:11:10.880 --> 0:11:14.080 She thought that the abolitionists were forcing the country toward 0:11:14.120 --> 0:11:17.599 a civil War. Near the end of Emma Bartlett, a 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:22.000 character even recites a five stanza poem that argues stridently 0:11:22.520 --> 0:11:28.160 against dissevering the Union. Unfortunately, this book, which was written 0:11:28.200 --> 0:11:30.800 when she was twenty five, is the biggest example we 0:11:30.960 --> 0:11:34.640 have of Rebecca Smith Pollard's thoughts on this. I looked 0:11:34.640 --> 0:11:38.160 through newspapers for other stories or essays or poems that 0:11:38.240 --> 0:11:40.719 she might have written later on to see if they 0:11:40.800 --> 0:11:44.240 revealed anything in how or whether her opinions might have 0:11:44.320 --> 0:11:47.760 evolved during and after the Civil War, and I really 0:11:47.760 --> 0:11:50.840 did not find all that much. Her eighteen seventy six 0:11:50.880 --> 0:11:55.120 books Centennial and Other Poems does include a dirge for 0:11:55.280 --> 0:11:58.720 Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune and one 0:11:58.720 --> 0:12:02.120 of the founders of the Report publican party. He was 0:12:02.360 --> 0:12:06.559 deeply opposed to compromising over the issue of slavery and 0:12:06.640 --> 0:12:09.520 the lead up to the Civil War. So this poem 0:12:09.640 --> 0:12:12.880 describes Greeley, who was one of the people who worked 0:12:12.920 --> 0:12:16.840 to convince Abraham Lincoln to commit to ending slavery with 0:12:16.920 --> 0:12:20.920 the Civil War, as a spirit who quote so nobly 0:12:21.120 --> 0:12:24.400 endeavored to save from disunion the land of the free. 0:12:25.600 --> 0:12:28.040 So does this poem mean that she came to see 0:12:28.240 --> 0:12:32.079 slaveholders as the threat to the union rather than abolitionists. 0:12:32.920 --> 0:12:37.040 I really cannot say I have theories. See you Friday. 0:12:37.800 --> 0:12:40.320 We will get to her work as an educator after 0:12:40.360 --> 0:12:53.439 a sponsor break. On April sixth, eighteen fifty eight, Rebecca 0:12:53.480 --> 0:12:57.760 Harrington Smith married poet and newspaper editor Oliver I. Taylor. 0:12:58.160 --> 0:13:01.360 An announcement of their marriage and The Little Journal described 0:13:01.400 --> 0:13:05.800 Rebecca as having achieved considerable eminence in the literary world. 0:13:06.559 --> 0:13:09.480 On their wedding anniversary a year later, they welcomed a 0:13:09.559 --> 0:13:15.360 daughter named Mary. Sadly, Oliver died of typhoid in eighteen sixty. 0:13:16.360 --> 0:13:19.920 Two years later, Rebecca married James Pollard, who was elected 0:13:19.920 --> 0:13:23.520 to the Iowa State Senate that year. James had four 0:13:23.600 --> 0:13:27.160 children from a previous marriage, and he and Rebecca had 0:13:27.200 --> 0:13:33.080 three surviving children together, Adelaide, Eleanor, and Joseph Addison Smith Pollard. 0:13:33.920 --> 0:13:36.960 Most written mentions of Joseph refer to him by his 0:13:37.040 --> 0:13:42.600 initials JAS. In eighteen seventy, Pollard published a book of 0:13:42.640 --> 0:13:46.400 poetry under the name Kate Harrington. It was called In 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:51.200 Memoriam Maymy April sixth, eighteen sixty nine. It was in 0:13:51.280 --> 0:13:54.079 memory of her daughter Mary, who died on that date, 0:13:54.200 --> 0:13:57.960 which was her tenth birthday and the anniversary of Rebecca's 0:13:58.000 --> 0:14:01.800 wedding to Mary's late father. This was a series of 0:14:01.920 --> 0:14:04.760 poems that were written for her daughter, but also to 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:09.360 any other mother who had loved and lost a child. Quote, 0:14:09.440 --> 0:14:13.640 it matters little what her station proved, or of what nation, race, 0:14:13.840 --> 0:14:18.080 or tribe she'd be. I'll place her sympathy beyond all price. 0:14:18.320 --> 0:14:22.480 I'll give her confidence and perfect trust. Such friendship true 0:14:22.680 --> 0:14:26.400 and strong as never dies, but lives. When lips that pledge, 0:14:26.400 --> 0:14:31.560 it turned to dust. Pollard apparently had an ongoing correspondence 0:14:31.600 --> 0:14:34.720 with Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who wrote to her that this 0:14:34.840 --> 0:14:38.280 collection brought tears to his eyes. I found references to 0:14:38.320 --> 0:14:40.680 this in writing about Pollard, but I did not find 0:14:40.680 --> 0:14:45.200 the actual letter. Pollard's books, Centennial and Other Poems, came 0:14:45.240 --> 0:14:48.760 out in eighteen seventy six, also published under the name 0:14:48.840 --> 0:14:54.560 Kate Harrington. This collection starts with Iowa's Centennial Poem, which 0:14:54.560 --> 0:14:58.920 is a patriotic poem celebrating the American Revolution. Of course, 0:14:59.000 --> 0:15:02.400 Iowa was not really part of the Revolution at the time. 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:05.560 What is now Iowa was claimed by Spain and not Britain. 0:15:06.400 --> 0:15:09.840 This poem starts out describing Iowa as a barren wild 0:15:09.960 --> 0:15:13.720 one hundred years before, home only to indigenous people, who 0:15:13.800 --> 0:15:18.440 she refers to as the Red Man. But it goes quote, 0:15:18.480 --> 0:15:21.440 we share the nation's glory to by holding to the 0:15:21.480 --> 0:15:25.320 world's broadview. Our men of mark are genius, rare, scattered 0:15:25.680 --> 0:15:30.200 like sunbeams everywhere. The United States Centennial took place just 0:15:30.240 --> 0:15:32.880 a decade after the official end of the Civil War, 0:15:33.240 --> 0:15:35.600 so this was near the end of the reconstruction era, 0:15:35.800 --> 0:15:38.960 and federal troops were still stationed in South Carolina, Florida, 0:15:38.960 --> 0:15:42.440 and Louisiana, so for some people this was a strange 0:15:42.560 --> 0:15:47.040 and difficult time to be celebrating a national centennial. The 0:15:47.080 --> 0:15:50.720 country still seemed very divided. A lot of ways it 0:15:50.800 --> 0:15:55.400 was becoming more divided. This poem alludes to this, calling 0:15:55.520 --> 0:15:59.200 for quote prodigal suns to return and to be given 0:15:59.240 --> 0:16:02.600 a generous welcome, and to quote give them robes of 0:16:02.680 --> 0:16:06.160 a right royal hue. Let the rings that the restore 0:16:06.240 --> 0:16:10.440 them be offered by victors who honor the blue. The 0:16:10.480 --> 0:16:13.960 poem ends, quote, we ask you to pledge them, truehearted, 0:16:14.160 --> 0:16:20.240 a covenant promise anew remembering mong Patriots Departed No Line Parts, 0:16:20.360 --> 0:16:24.800 The Gray from the Blue Centennial and other poems. Also 0:16:24.840 --> 0:16:29.240 includes poems two and about members of Pollard's family, including 0:16:29.280 --> 0:16:32.640 her late daughter, a memorial to William G. Bell Knap, 0:16:32.840 --> 0:16:35.920 son of Grant's Secretary of War, William Wurst bell Nap, 0:16:36.480 --> 0:16:40.640 a temperance poem, some nature poems, and some poems that 0:16:40.640 --> 0:16:44.680 were written by her late father. In addition to writing poetry, 0:16:44.960 --> 0:16:48.120 Pollard continued to work as a teacher, mainly at schools 0:16:48.160 --> 0:16:51.920 for girls, including in Keokuk, Iowa. That's a school that 0:16:52.000 --> 0:16:54.880 she ran from eighteen seventy five to eighteen seventy seven. 0:16:55.800 --> 0:16:59.240 It seems like she and her husband, James were separated 0:16:59.320 --> 0:17:02.280 by eighteen seven seventy seven, so especially after that, her 0:17:02.320 --> 0:17:04.879 teaching and her writing would have been really necessary to 0:17:04.880 --> 0:17:08.560 support herself and her children. James died in nineteen oh two. 0:17:09.480 --> 0:17:12.280 It seems like Pollard was ahead of her time as 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:16.520 a teacher. Nineteenth century schools often involved a lot of 0:17:16.600 --> 0:17:20.719 learning by rote and strict discipline, but she taught hands 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.800 on history lessons with her students dressing up and re 0:17:24.000 --> 0:17:27.760 enacting battles. She cut up apples to help students learn 0:17:27.800 --> 0:17:30.800 about fractions, and she had a classroom garden outside of 0:17:30.800 --> 0:17:34.320 the school. Part of the lesson involved pulling up some 0:17:34.440 --> 0:17:37.040 of the plants at different stages of their development to 0:17:37.080 --> 0:17:40.680 see how they grew. In eighteen eighty seven, Pollard was 0:17:40.720 --> 0:17:44.560 awarded a patent under the name R. S. Pollard. This 0:17:44.760 --> 0:17:48.360 was for an educational appliance, and here's how the patents 0:17:48.400 --> 0:17:52.560 described this invention. Quote two or more plates connected together 0:17:53.000 --> 0:17:56.520 and shifting upon or within each other, and having upon 0:17:56.560 --> 0:17:59.959 their faces a series of characters, which, upon a proper 0:18:00.160 --> 0:18:03.320 shifting of the plate's form, and convey to the eye 0:18:03.400 --> 0:18:07.919 and mind different impressions, meanings and objects which singly or 0:18:07.960 --> 0:18:12.040 improperly grouped. They do not indicate whereby the mind of 0:18:12.080 --> 0:18:16.040 a student is trained by the constructive and synthetic methods 0:18:16.040 --> 0:18:20.359 in the formation of objects, characters, and the language. In 0:18:20.400 --> 0:18:23.480 one of the accompanying illustrations, one of the plates is 0:18:23.520 --> 0:18:26.000 a ring with a series of letters written on it 0:18:26.119 --> 0:18:30.480 like S, RP, and M. The other plate is in 0:18:30.560 --> 0:18:33.040 the middle and it has the letters A through T. 0:18:33.920 --> 0:18:36.480 So by turning that outer ring you can see how 0:18:36.560 --> 0:18:41.639 these letters combine to form words sat, rat, pat, and MATT. 0:18:42.200 --> 0:18:46.640 Another illustration shows this setup being used for arithmetic. These 0:18:46.680 --> 0:18:49.520 devices would be made from blackboard or something else that 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:51.960 could be a RaSE, so that a teacher could prepare 0:18:51.960 --> 0:18:54.720 the board to go along with whatever the day's lessons were. 0:18:55.480 --> 0:18:58.240 Pollard had started teaching back when she was living with 0:18:58.280 --> 0:19:00.959 her parents in Kentucky. At this point, she had at 0:19:01.000 --> 0:19:04.920 least two decades of experience as a teacher. She also 0:19:04.960 --> 0:19:08.200 had her father's example as a teacher, and she had 0:19:08.280 --> 0:19:12.240 decided that teaching children phonics was critical to their learning 0:19:12.280 --> 0:19:15.280 to read. This was right in the middle of a 0:19:15.400 --> 0:19:18.920 century's long debate in the United States about how best 0:19:18.960 --> 0:19:23.119 to teach children to read. The idea of teaching children 0:19:23.160 --> 0:19:27.679 through phonics very basically meaning the relationship between letters and 0:19:27.760 --> 0:19:30.000 the sounds that they make, goes back to at least 0:19:30.000 --> 0:19:33.879 the sixteenth century, when the first formal schools started to 0:19:33.920 --> 0:19:36.879 be established in North America. Children were typically taught the 0:19:36.920 --> 0:19:41.160 alphabet and the sounds made by each letter. Students put 0:19:41.160 --> 0:19:44.240 that into practice by reading the Bible or historic or 0:19:44.280 --> 0:19:47.920 political texts. Since there were no text books made specifically 0:19:47.960 --> 0:19:51.879 for children until the seventeenth century, I'll just say I 0:19:51.880 --> 0:19:54.960 did not look into the history of reading education outside 0:19:55.000 --> 0:19:57.199 of the United States. At all for this episode, so 0:19:57.560 --> 0:20:00.520 we are not going to be talking about that. Some 0:20:00.600 --> 0:20:04.200 of the earliest reading and spelling textbooks in North America 0:20:04.280 --> 0:20:09.359 were phonics based. Those included Noah Webster's The American Spelling Book, 0:20:09.560 --> 0:20:12.119 also called The Blue Backed Speller, which came out in 0:20:12.160 --> 0:20:16.040 seventeen eighty three. He also released A Grammar in seventeen 0:20:16.080 --> 0:20:19.199 eighty four and A Reader in seventeen eighty five. We 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.040 talked about Webster and his influence more in our two 0:20:22.080 --> 0:20:25.280 parter on the Dictionary Wars, which came out in June 0:20:25.280 --> 0:20:29.000 of twenty twenty three. In the mid eighteen hundreds, school 0:20:29.080 --> 0:20:32.240 started moving away from phonics in favor of a method 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:36.320 that focused on learning whole words, or the look say method. 0:20:37.080 --> 0:20:40.560 One advocate of this was Thomas Hopkins Gaaladet, founder of 0:20:40.600 --> 0:20:43.600 the first American School for the Deaf and namesake of 0:20:43.640 --> 0:20:48.200 Gallaudet University. In his book The Mother's Primer to Teach 0:20:48.200 --> 0:20:51.719 Her Child Its Letters, he wrote, quote in the common modes, 0:20:51.800 --> 0:20:54.640 what can be more uninteresting than to commence with teaching 0:20:54.960 --> 0:20:59.200 a child to call certain arbitrary marks or letters which 0:20:59.240 --> 0:21:03.239 in themselves have no meaning, by certain arbitrary sounds or 0:21:03.359 --> 0:21:07.040 names of the letters, which also have no meaning. What 0:21:07.119 --> 0:21:11.800 an unintelligible and irksome task it must be. So Galiadet's 0:21:11.800 --> 0:21:15.000 method paired words with pictures, like a picture of a 0:21:15.040 --> 0:21:18.159 cat along with the word cat, so that the student 0:21:18.200 --> 0:21:22.360 could learn that whole word rather than its component letters. 0:21:23.160 --> 0:21:25.960 This method probably made a lot of sense to Galandet 0:21:26.040 --> 0:21:28.080 because of his work with Death and Heart of hearing 0:21:28.119 --> 0:21:31.160 students who either couldn't hear the sounds that were made 0:21:31.200 --> 0:21:34.040 by different letters and letter combinations, or couldn't hear them 0:21:34.119 --> 0:21:37.760 very well. But this method did not provide a way 0:21:37.840 --> 0:21:41.960 for students to decode written words that they didn't already know, 0:21:42.560 --> 0:21:45.000 other than to try to work it out from context 0:21:45.119 --> 0:21:47.760 or maybe from illustrations that might be on the page. 0:21:48.600 --> 0:21:51.879 The first books designed for this method also only went 0:21:51.960 --> 0:21:55.000 up to the third grade, and by necessity, they were 0:21:55.040 --> 0:21:58.920 focused on words for concrete objects and concepts that can 0:21:58.960 --> 0:22:03.520 be illustrated, so consequently their vocabulary was kind of limited. 0:22:04.320 --> 0:22:07.919 The Mother's Primer was written for the parents of hearing students, 0:22:07.960 --> 0:22:11.959 and starting in the eighteen forties, Galliaut's method was popularized 0:22:12.000 --> 0:22:15.439 outside of schools for the deaf, in part by educational 0:22:15.480 --> 0:22:20.480 reformer Horace Mann. Man advocated teaching children to read by 0:22:20.520 --> 0:22:24.280 focusing on whole words and only after that to focus 0:22:24.320 --> 0:22:28.159 on the alphabet and spelling. This whole word model was 0:22:28.280 --> 0:22:31.680 fiercely debated among educators, but in the later part of 0:22:31.720 --> 0:22:35.280 the nineteenth century it gradually became more widely used than 0:22:35.359 --> 0:22:39.840 phonics based instruction in the United States. So that brings 0:22:39.920 --> 0:22:43.400 us back to Rebecca Smith Pollard in the late eighteen eighties, 0:22:43.440 --> 0:22:47.600 so about forty years after Horace mann started popularizing the 0:22:47.640 --> 0:22:52.200 look say method, she created a whole system for teaching reading, 0:22:52.560 --> 0:22:55.639 including a reader, a speller, and a teacher's manual, and 0:22:55.680 --> 0:22:57.800 it was based on phonics, which we will talk more 0:22:57.840 --> 0:23:10.840 about after a sponsor break. In eighteen eighty nine, Rebecca 0:23:10.880 --> 0:23:15.239 Smith Pollard published her first synthetic reader, synthetic Speller, and 0:23:15.480 --> 0:23:19.640 a complete manual Pollard Synthetic Method of Reading and Spelling, 0:23:20.080 --> 0:23:22.359 which was a step by step guide for teachers on 0:23:22.480 --> 0:23:25.080 how to use the other two books with their students. 0:23:25.720 --> 0:23:28.439 She wrote in the preface to the manual, quote, instead 0:23:28.480 --> 0:23:32.000 of teaching the word as a whole and afterwards subjecting 0:23:32.000 --> 0:23:36.000 it to phonic analysis, is it not infinitely better to 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:39.200 take the sounds of the letters for our starting point, 0:23:39.600 --> 0:23:43.399 and with those sounds lay a foundation firm and broad, 0:23:43.600 --> 0:23:46.760 upon which we can build whole families of words for 0:23:46.840 --> 0:23:51.400 instant recognition. Her method included what she referred to as 0:23:51.520 --> 0:23:55.159 busy work, in which children practice sounding out letters or 0:23:55.240 --> 0:23:58.159 drew latters that were used to illustrate the progression of 0:23:58.240 --> 0:24:01.919 tones that different vowels could make, or drew wheels with 0:24:01.960 --> 0:24:04.320 a sound in the center and a spoke for each 0:24:04.359 --> 0:24:06.560 word that can be made by adding a letter to 0:24:06.640 --> 0:24:10.760 that sound. She described these as families, so for example, 0:24:10.920 --> 0:24:15.640 the ot the Aught family included words like pot tot 0:24:16.040 --> 0:24:19.400 rot and cot uh. There was a lot of busy work. 0:24:19.440 --> 0:24:23.000 Those are just examples, but Pollard also acknowledged the need 0:24:23.040 --> 0:24:26.880 to make things fun, incorporating drawing and sketching and singing 0:24:26.920 --> 0:24:30.560 to illustrate different concepts. In the preface, she wrote, quote, 0:24:30.600 --> 0:24:33.679 why should not something be used to awaken and hold 0:24:33.720 --> 0:24:36.280 the interest of children in the drudgery of the first 0:24:36.440 --> 0:24:41.199 lessons in reading? Are not splints, balls, toothpicks, clay and 0:24:41.440 --> 0:24:44.760 sandwork used for this purpose In teaching the first principles 0:24:44.800 --> 0:24:49.439 of arithmetic and geography. Every intelligent teacher knows when the 0:24:49.480 --> 0:24:53.080 developing mind of the child no longer needs these devices 0:24:53.200 --> 0:24:56.280 or helps in the last names branches, Why should there 0:24:56.359 --> 0:24:59.320 be any question as to when the devices of this 0:24:59.440 --> 0:25:04.000 method have served their purpose. Pollard's method of teaching phonics 0:25:04.080 --> 0:25:07.119 involved focusing on the twenty six letters of the alphabet 0:25:07.520 --> 0:25:11.800 and all the different sounds they can be used to represent. Students' 0:25:11.880 --> 0:25:16.040 textbooks were illustrated to help students remember sounds associated with 0:25:16.160 --> 0:25:19.639 different letters, like r R was shown next to a 0:25:19.680 --> 0:25:23.600 growling dog, while H was next to a panting dog. 0:25:24.400 --> 0:25:27.640 Stories incorporated the words and sounds that were the focus 0:25:27.680 --> 0:25:31.359 of a particular lesson, and these became more advanced over time, 0:25:32.000 --> 0:25:35.320 so lesson one in pollard Synthetic first reader focused on 0:25:35.840 --> 0:25:39.560 single syllable words that rhymed with hat, can, or bag, 0:25:39.880 --> 0:25:42.440 while the first lesson and the second reader is focused 0:25:42.440 --> 0:25:46.560 on words ending in ing, as well as talk, walk, 0:25:46.880 --> 0:25:51.960 each piece, and square. These textbooks sorted the letters into 0:25:52.080 --> 0:25:55.720 vowels and consonants, and then sorted the consonant sounds into 0:25:55.760 --> 0:26:01.119 subvocals or voiced consonants, and aspirates or whispers. She also 0:26:01.200 --> 0:26:06.200 described sounds as labial, lingual, dental, guttural, and pure aspirate 0:26:06.400 --> 0:26:09.399