JEWETT, Myra - Putnam

MYRA JEWETT

Interesting though it may be, the limitations of space forbid further account of this now historic Sunday school but we cannot pass from the subject without a brief word respected the memory of Myra Jewett its founder. She was born in Pepperell, Massachusetts in 1802 and was the oldest in a family of 13 children. Her sister is authority for the statement that "the limited means of her parents made it a difficult matter for them to give their large family the advantages for education which they desired, but, with that persistent energy and determination which has always been a strongly marked characteristic, she overcame the obstacles that lay in her way. Her great desire was to qualify herself for the office of a teacher, that she might "do good" not only by imparting to the youth that knowledge which would prepare them for ative duties of life, but further than this, that she might by precept and example incite them to lives of unselfish devotion to higher and nobler aims than simply living for their own enjoyment or for the gratification of worldly ambition. "

For a time she was a pupil of Mary Lyons, who made the school at Mt. Holyoke famous and was deeply influenced by her teachings. Says her sister: "She taught for six or seven years in her native state, but her sympathies were early enlisted by accounts of the great need of teachers in the newly settled regions of the "far west" as Indiana was called in those days. But a journey from Mass to Ind at that time was a far different affair from what it is now. There was only one short railroad in the route from Albany to Schenectady. The rest of the journey was toilsome and tedious, being performed by stage, by steamer across the lake, by canal and by private conveyance. Her traveling companions on this wearisome journey were the late Prof. Caleb Mills and a Miss Wyatt, also a teacher.

Soon after her arrival in Greencastle, she rented and furnished a room and opened her school. This school she continued to teach, struggling along alone amid many trials, difficulties and discouragements for 3 years when a younger sister came to "share her labors. " The school was not a pecuniary success. Miss Jewett found at the close of the first term that after paying her board and the expenses of the school room she was in debt one dollar. At the end of the succeeding term she had a net surplus of one dollar, but at the close of the third term she again faced a deficit of a dollar. After this for one or two terms she managed to make the two sides of the account balance. There was scarcely ever a surplus again. "But hers was a true missionary work and this was a labor of love," continues her sister. "But she was not satisfied with the work of the day school merely and in 1834 she gathered together a few of her scholars and some others in her school room and taught the first Sabbath school. For many years - indeed as long as strength permitted she was an earnest, faithful teacher, always at her post and always enforcing by her own pure, lovely and consistent life the principles which she endeavored to instill into the mind of her pupils.

"In the spring of 1836 she was compelled in consequence of ill health to resign the school entirely to her sister, but upon the marriage of the latter, June 7th she again resumed the office of teacher, which she continued to fill till her own marriage to John S. Jennings, Aug 13, 1841. She was the mother of two children, both of whom died in infancy. Always delicate from a child her long life was attended by much suffering yet in all these many long, wearisome days of languor and the nights of pain no one ever heard a murmur of complaint from her lips. She passed from earth June 13, 1880.

Those who attended her and ministered to her wants can testify to her patient resignation and cheerful submission to the sufferings which she felt were sent by the loving "Heavenly Father for her good. " A modest, forebearing, but earnest woman, she shrank instinctively from any sort of public contact. She strove to do her full duty without popular acclaim. When ill health at last drover her into the privacy of her home, she welcomed the seclusion it insured. It was a congenial retreat and there, surrounded by her flowers of which she was devotedly fond, she spent the few remaining years of her useful and beautiful life confidently awaiting the summons which finally comes to us all. So lived and died this good woman and when the historian of the future shall undertake thes tory of Greencastle and Putnam County his work will surely come to naught if he fails to include among those entitled to the regard and veneration of posterity the patient zeal, the tolerant, angelic spirit and the unswerinvg devotion of Myra Jewett.