Federal Writers' Project – Life Histories/2020/Summer II/Section 01/Isabel Barnwell

Isabel Barnwell
Isabel Barnwell was a primary teacher in Jacksonville, Florida. She was born circa 1854 and her death date is unknown. She was interviewed by Rose Shepherd in 1939 as part of the Federal Writers Project.

Early Life
Isabel Barnwell was born and raised in Georgia. Her father owned a plantation where they had slaves working in the fields. Her mother grew up in a nearby part of Georgia where there was nothing but another large plantation that belonged to a man named Don Domingo Fernandez. Fernandez married Barnwells's mother's sister, and eventually converted a portion of his land into a town he named “Fernandia” for his family. After her mother's sister died, Mr. Fernandez ended up leaving his children to Barnwell's parents. This led to Barnwell growing up with eleven other children, six siblings and five cousins. Barnwell's mother put a great deal of emphasis on education, due to her own struggles to become educated in the absence of nearby schools. At a young age, Barnwell witnessed her father educating the slaves on their plantation that wanted to learn how to read and write. She also noticed that her father only taught them discretely, typically in a place where no one can watch them. Barnwell's father enlisted the daughter of an early settler to Fernandia, named Matilda Seton, to teach Barnwell and the other children. Her father built a log house that eventually became their school. Deciding later that it was necessary to get a male teacher for his sons' growth, Barnwell's father hired two tutors from New York, one of whom was the cousin of Abraham Lincoln. They were very effective teachers, as nearly all of her brothers and sisters ended up going to top colleges. At the start of the Civil War, Barnwell's family fled to Hamilton County, Florida. It was during this time that Barnwell started to get her first official education. Due to there being no schools in Hamilton County, her father ended up white washing one of the houses that the slaves slept in in order to turn it into a school for the family. It was there she was taught many subjects by her sister Florence, from how to read and write, simple arithmetic and eventually algebra, chemistry, and French. Florence was very charitable, as she would make sure that all the children that lived nearby were educated. Her class size grew to thirty-two pupils and she did not charge a single penny.

Later Life
After the war, Barnwell and her sister Florence moved to Beaufort, South Carolina. After living in South Carolina for a while, she meets a man that would soon become her (unnamed) husband. They then move to Suwanee, Tennessee. Here, Barnwell's sister teaches multiple people at the Suwanee university, one of them being Barnwell's own son and others being Florence's own children. While Barnwell and Florence were in Suwanee, Barnwell's mother created a school called the Bishops Young Seminary which was a highly successful school. After her mother died, Barnwell's family is given the option by the Department of Education to obtain ownership of the public school her mother created with the condition that made Barnwell become a teacher there as well. She accepted and had to take the required entrance exam. She passes the exam and is granted a certificate that allows her to teach the school. Her wage was around twenty dollars a month for the first four years, and was then increased to forty-five dollars a month. While jobs available to women in the early twentieth century paid less, they were more stable. After seven years, the seminary grew large and attracted many students. Barnwell obtained a horse at this time, named “Lady”, which she would ride to school every day. Barnwell became such a good teacher, that she eventually was called “the great teacher of Nassau County". . She continued working at Bishops Young Seminary at the age eighty-five when she was interviewed by the Federal Writers Project. Barnwell's death time and place of death is unknown.

Education of Slaves
Subject to change. In the pre-Civil War era, slave owners were afraid of revolts and took many precautions to prevent uprisings. Not allowing slaves to be taught to read or write was thought to decrease the chance of the slaves coordinating with each other. Laws against educating slaves, eventually known as the “anti literacy laws”, had very strict punishments attached to them. As a result, very few slave owners took the risk of teaching their slaves how to read or write. These laws ended after the Thirteenth Amendment was passed.

Women in Education from 1850 – 1939
In the early 1800s, few children outside of the major New England towns attended school with any kind of regularity. Women regarded teaching as a mission, rather than as employment or a career This began to change around 1890 as teachers began to migrate west in order to obtain better jobs. Because of the higher wages that the west offered when compared to everywhere else, people would try to move over to the west in order to obtain better jobs. This also included female teachers, as thousands of women from the Midwest and East tried to apply for schools in the western states. Since women were paid less than men, women became a higher percentage of the education workforce, especially during the Great Depression. While jobs available to women paid less, they were less volatile. By 1940, ninety percent of all women’s jobs were in ten categories, like nursing, teaching and civil service.