The Two Miss Cooks: Pioneer Professionals for Utah Schools

Utah Historical Quarterly

Vol. 43, 1975, No. 4

The Two Miss Cooks:Pioneer Professionals for Utah Schools

BY JILL MULVAY

IN THE FALL OF 1870 some three-hundred fifty teachers opened schools in Utah Territory. A few have been remembered in local histories and one or two have been preserved in bronze. Amid the forgotten hundreds are Misses Mary and Ida Cook, highly trained and professional teachers whose impact on students and teachers was felt in Utah for almost three decades.

Less than a block of walking brought Mary Cook and her students from the Social Hall to Brigham Young's schoolhouse in October 1870. Two teachers, Miss Cook and Mrs. Mildred E. Randall, had decided to combine their classes for an "exhibition." a program of student recitations. The occasion caught the attention and commendation of Deseret News editor George Q. Cannon who returned to the Social Hall a month later to see the pupils of Mary Cook and her sister Ida, this time taking with him President Brigham Young, George A. Smith, and Albert Carrington.

"We remained while the classes were exercised in reading and in geography, and were much gratified at the manner in which the lessons were conducted," the editor reported. Apparently he sensed that Utahns needed some introduction to the Cooks since he explained that they had recently come from Saint Louis where Mary Cook had just "declined an advantageous offer of salary" to come to Salt Lake City. The sisters possessed what must have been impressive credentials to both Mormons and Gentiles in the community where district schools were sadly lacking in qualified teachers: both were graduates of New York state normal schools. Cannon rightly predicted that it would not be long before their classes would contain all the scholars they could conveniently hold, and in the next few years hundreds of children found their way to the Social Hall school.

Imposing a graded system upon the irregularly schooled Utah children must have exasperated the cultured Cook sisters. "They found a sad mixture of [skills] among their pupils, some far advanced in one study and far behind in others, no order, no uniformity, no regular books, and they had quite a struggle to grade their school properly, the pupils rebelling against such an unheard of system." So recalled a Social Hall scholar years later. Confusion eventually gave way to order and uniformity, but not necessarily boredom. Students familiar with the basic reading, spelling, arithmetic, and grammar that formed the core of the Cooks' curriculum found regular respite in dramatic and gymnastic exercises conducted on the stage of the old Social Hall. And there were excursions, probably equally enlightening to the teacher-sisters new to Salt Lake City and their young students. One spring the classes traveled up City Creek Canyon, and the following spring they made a train excursion to Draper. Ever ready to make these well-trained teachers a model to teachers throughout the territory, the press constantly publicized and praised the Cooks' efforts. In reference to the Draper excursion, "Miss Ida Cook," the News was informed, "learned after getting on the last up train, that some of the excursionists were left behind and fearing that they might be children, actually got out at Sandy station and walked back to Draper, a distance of four miles, that she might remain with them all night."

The Deseret News seems surprisingly supportive of Mary and Ida Cook considering the usual Mormon disdain for Gentile teachers. Mary was apparently studying the Book of Mormon when she came to Utah, or at least shortly after her arrival, and both sisters w^ere baptized members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints early in 1871.

By spring 1871 the expertise of the Cooks had been noted by University of Deseret chancellor Daniel H. Wells, who decided with the regents' permission to employ the Cooks for the university. At this time the University of Deseret offered two courses of study: collegiate and normal. An academic department served as a high school wdiere students were primed for their college course work, and a primary department provided a model school where normal students could practice-teach. In connection with the academic and primary departments the Cooks were to be employed. University president John R. Park and Chancellor Wells made Mary Cook an offer. She clearly stated her terms and Park arranged classes to meet her requirements. In less than a month Mary E. Cook was named principal of the university's model graded school, Mrs. Randall's classes at the Brigham Young schoolhouse were incorporated as a grade in the school, and the model school itself was moved from a building opposite the south gate of the temple block to the Social Hall.

Later that spring John Park ordered publication of the University of Deseret's third annual catalog for the school year 1871-72. Along with the instructors listed for the collegiate courses, Ida Cook was listed as an instructor in the academic department and Mary Cook as principal of the primary department or model school. But before the summer was out the regents asked Park to abandon his plans for a collegiate course. Karl G. Maeser, Dan Weggeland, and others who had been scheduled to teach college courses were excused, and Park himself was called on an "education mission" to visit schools in the eastern United States and Europe. M. H. Hardy was to take charge of the model school and academic department for the year Park was away; he resigned and the responsibility fell to Mary and Ida Cook. The primary grades continued under Mary at the Social Hall, and Ida moved her academic classes to the Council House.

Feramorz Young, son of President Brigham Young and anxious thirteen-year-old candidate for the U.S. Naval Academy at Annapolis, studied under Ida Cook in the Council House during the winter of 1871- 72. A small diary he kept during this period provides glimpses of his curriculum and his instructress. He used Colburn's arithmetic, Cornell's geography, Greene's grammar, Quachenbo's composition, Anderson's U.S. history, and Wilson's speller — the same books recommended in 1868 by territorial superintendent Robert L. Campbell in an effort to get teachers to adopt uniform texts. At one point Fera lamented that he had "nearly lost spirit in school it being very dull," but a few days later he wrote proudly that he was "thoroughly established in the following lessons": history of the map and physical geography of North America, fractions, and extracts from the national fifth reader. Feramorz admired Ida Cook's thoroughness and dedication, and when she was ill and her sister Mary took the class, he simply commented that "Miss Cook is not well enough acquainted to teach us as Miss Ida does."

The academic year closed in the spring of 1872, the Cooks having run up a $1,643.10 deficit, due mostly to delinquent tuition fees. Six hundred and sixty-two students had been enrolled during the year, an indication that the Cooks had significant administrative responsibilities in supervising teaching assistants. The next fall the university opened under the principalship of Mary Cook; but Dr. Park returned in November, and when spring term opened in February he was again in charge. Park had been frustrated by the delay in setting up his collegiate course and was anxious to make the university an academic institution, less concerned for the time being with normal training and the model school. Thus, even though during the 1872-73 school year the Cooks' school at the Social Hall was announced as part of the university, its students were never recorded in the official books and it was not considered an integral part of the university.

But the sisters and their scholars at the Social Hall had by this time gained an unimpeachable reputation for excellence, and the Social Hall school was well supported for the next five or six years. The school was large and continued to require numerous assistants, providing opportunities for normal training which became almost as significant as the training of the younger pupils. Emmeline B. Wells, Woman's Exponent editor, praised Mary Cook's system that "prepared many young ladies well for practical work as teachers, giving several an opportunity to assist her, and thus having the benefit of her supervision and suggestions to fit them better for other spheres of labor." The Cooks concerned themselves with other aspects of normal training in Salt Lake City, conducting normal classes for the teachers' association and making presentations at one- and two-week normal institutes held for teachers in the territory during the summer and early fall.

Mary and Ida Cook did not continue long as a team, and their later lives in Utah are best illustrated in terms of their individual achievements. Mary Elizabeth Cook, an "apostle of education" as Edward Tullidge would ordain her, was thirty-five years old, steady, quiet, and dependable when she arrived in Salt Lake City. Her poised temperament and able handling of the University of Deseret for the year of John Park's absence placed her in the public eye and won her the respect and confidence of citizen-parents and leaders. She was engaged by John Park to work with him and John Morgan in recommending a program for grading territorial schools, and for some years she served on the executive committee for the Salt Lake City Teachers' Association. A model teacher in the minds of many individuals, Mary not only taught a normal course for Sunday School teachers, but Relief Society sisters in Salt Lake City elected her vice-president and teacher of their physiological class held in the Social Hall.

In July 1874, just four years after the opening of her first school in Salt Lake City, Mary Cook was named to the People's party ticket as nominee for Salt Lake County superintendent of common schools. Two days following public announcement of the tickets a concerned "Citizen" wrote to the editor of the Salt Lake Daily Herald: "Is Miss Cooke or any other lady eligible, under the laws of this Territory, to this office? The law creating the office of County Superintendent of Schools was approved Jan. 19th, 1886, and it is clearly manifested by that act that none other than male citizens were to be entitled to hold the office thus created." In fact the law referred to is stated in terms such as his office, his successor, he Shall qualify. Taking into account this law, the 1859 law regarding territorial officers and jurors, and the 1870 act granting the franchise to Utah women, the Herald concluded: "We think under the law, Miss Cooke — who is a very estimable lady, and we understand fully qualified to perform the duties of the office — is ineligible." Without publicized debate or objection, it was generally conceded that Mary Cook was ineligible, and a party caucus withdrew her name from the ticket. One wonders if Emmeline B. Wells's 1878 Exponent article praising Mary Cook for her "untiring perseverance under the most unpropitious circumstances" reflects unforgotten disappointment with the People's party decision.

The professional setback did not affect Mary Cook's work at the Social Hall. The graded school — covering primary, intermediate, and grammar courses — was advertised as a preparatory school, one that would ready students for class work at the university. Attesting that the school did just that, Salt Lake Daily Herald editor Edward Sloan commented in 1878 that from Mary Cook's school "the University of Deseret has probably secured as many scholars as from all others put together and satisfaction has been the result." Few if any ward schools could offer such a comprehensive course and almost none of them were graded. In 1874 inclusion of a high school department expanded the school into the Thirteenth Ward schoolrooms nearby where classes were offered in botany, mineralogy, Latin, German, algebra, and civil government.

For almost a decade the Social Hall school year never opened or closed without the press observing the occasion with fitting encomiums. These little blurbs are really all that exist to suggest the quality of the school or Mary Cook's particular competence in certain areas. She had an expertise in elocution. George Q. Cannon on his first visit to the school had remarked on the "particular pains being taken" to impress upon students "the necessity of entering into the spirit of what they read, and of expressing it naturally and in tones adapted to convey the full force of the sentiment to the listener." At the close of the 1875 fall term, the students held an exhibition for their parents. "Recitations, essays, select readings, Dialogues, songs and music composed the programme. All passed off successfully reflecting much credit upon the worthy principal and assistant teachers as well as the pupils."

Appropriate to their location at the Social Hall, the students of Mary Cook frequently presented dialogues and dramas — "graded school theatricals" they were sometimes termed in newspaper accounts. One well-reviewed program in 1876 consisted of songs, instrumental music, select readings, declamations, essays, and tableaux. Apparently the tableaux stole the show, especially the portrayal of "Girls of the Period," presenting a girl of 1776 spinning flax and looking happy and plump, and a girl of 1876 delicately reclining on a lounge with a novel in one hand and a poodle in the other.

Mary Cook's Social Hall school was of sufficient stature to secure as teachers some of the territory's most prominent women. In 1874 Eliza R. Snow, Zion's famed poetess and much-involved administrator of the women's organizations among Latter-day Saints, joined Mary Cook's staff as a special instructor in composition and elocution. Dr. Ellen B. Ferguson, accomplished linguist, able instructor in both vocal and instrumental music, and eventually first resident surgeon at the Deseret Hospital, teamed up with Mary Cook in 1877 as teacher of the senior scholars. That women of this caliber were willing to become involved with the Social Hall school reflects something of the high regard held for Mary Cook and her "model seminary."

The school's popularity among church and community leaders is further manifested in an account of the closing exercises in June 1878. John Taylor, president of the LDS Council of the Twelve, gave an address congratulating Miss Cook on her success. Apostles Wilford Woodruff, Daniel H. Wells, and Joseph F. Smith were also present, and though these men may or may not have had children in the school, their presence certainly indicates their support of Mary Cook's professional endeavors.

In the fall of 1877, St. George correspondents informed the Deseret News that their four school districts had been consolidated and that trustees Henry Eyring, Isaiah Cox, and A. R. Whitehead were preparing the basement of the tabernacle for the purpose of establishing a graded school there. "Miss Mary Cook, from your city, a lady thoroughly qualified and of no ordinary repute as a teacher, has been employed for the winter." Mary Cook must have stayed but a few months in St. George and then returned to Salt Lake City to finish out the year at the Social Hall. But she went back to St. George again the next fall, and the St. George Union carried an advertisement for her high school to be held in the basement of the tabernacle. Though Mary Cook's specialty was in primary grade work, it was probably easier to find teachers qualified to teach the primary and intermediate grades than to find one qualified to teach high school.

Exactly what influence Mary Cook had on schools and students in St. George or what her own response was to the community is difficult to ascertain. She stayed only ten months. In one of few St. George reminiscences of Mary Cook a student recalled that she "was a good teacher for the times,"

but we little girls thought she favored the boys; especially one day when she kept her whole arithmetic class in during the entire noon hour, with the exception of Thomas P. Cottam, whom she dismissed with the remark: "Mr. Cottam, I think your head aches."

When Mary Cook returned to Salt Lake City she continued teaching, although the press provides no telling glimpses of either "M. E. Cook's Graded School" or classes at the Social Hall during this period. Local directories for the 1880s list Mary E. Cook, schoolteacher, residing in Salt Lake City at 323 East Third South with her mother Sophia King Cook whom she had brought to Salt Lake City in 1875. A younger invalid sister, Cornelia, also lived with Mary until the younger sister's death in 1885.

In 1876 Eliza R. Snow had invited Mary Cook to serve as first vicepresident of the committee for the ladies' centennial territorial fair. Yet, despite Edward Tullidge's assertion in his 1877 Women of Mormondom that Mary Cook was a "rising leader among the women of the church," Mary was never long in the foreground. In 1887 she was called as general secretary of the Young Ladies' Mutual Improvement Association under president Elmina S. Taylor but served only until the fall of 1891 when she left Utah to live in the east.

If Mary Cook's star was setting during her last years in Utah, her sister's star was rising. Ida lone Cook, "the gifted original thinker" known for her "somewhat erratic temperament and her scorn of male dominance," was barely twenty when she arrived in Salt Lake City with her older sister. That she was soon esteemed capable is apparent from John Park's willingness to employ her at the University of Deseret. Ida subsequently worked as an assistant but never as copartner at the Social Hall which, it would seem, was really Mary Cook's enterprise, Mary being fifteen years her sister's senior. Young Ida, restless for independence, did not continue at "M. E. Cook's Graded School." In September 1875 the Woman's Exponent announced that Ida Cook would open a high school in Logan, Utah, commenting: "She is a young lady of pleasing manners, possessing intelligence, culture and refinement and one infinitely calculated to carry an influence for improvement among the circle where she associates."

Ida Cook's influence would be felt in Logan for the next twenty years. In the summer of 1876 she served as principal of a two-week Cache County normal institute, the object of which was to bring about some uniform method of teaching throughout the county. In August she returned briefly to Salt Lake City to work with the normal institute there, demonstrating the "word method" of teaching reading, probably a method similar to the current word recognition technique. September saw Ida Cook's plans for a high school materialize. The Logan board of education employed her on the following terms: "Ninety dollars per month if the school makes it, if not Eighty dollars per month. In the event the school makes $100 per month or over, she is to receive one hundred dollars per month." This salary indicates the board's high regard for the twenty-five-year-old professional, since starting salaries for teachers were as low as $25 per month. By 1877 Ida Cook's high school (advanced third, fourth, and fifth readers) claimed 114 of the 456 students attending Logan schools.

Even greater successes for Ida Cook were in the offing. In August 1877 Feramorz Young's "Miss Ida" made the improbable leap from young female high school principal to superintendent of district schools for Cache County. With no hesitation she shouldered the responsibility and headed up a month-long normal school during the few weeks preceding the academic school year. Orson F. Whitney, in referring to Miss Cook's election as superintendent, declared that she was "the first woman in Utah, perhaps in the entire West, to hold a position of that prominence." Still there is some question as to how long Ida Cook served in that capacity. The laws regarding county superintendents had not been changed in the three years since Mary Cook's name had been quietly withdrawn from her party's ticket because of her sex, and apparently there were problems for the younger sister as well. Annie Wells Cannon, paying tribute to Ida Cook some years later, said that Ida had been "elected to the office of school superintendent for Cache County, but owing to existing laws against women holding office was not allowed to act; the word male in the organic act prohibiting women as teachers from occupying positions of emolument and trust." In 1880 Charles W. Penrose, pleading unsuccessfully for a bill to remove the political disabilities of women, argued that "Cache County would have elected a lady to the office of County Superintendent of Schools, one who had proven to the people her ample qualifications for the post, but the law forbade it."

If the Utah legislature was insensitive to the abilities of women like the Cooks in education, Brigham Young was not. A month before his death he had deeded to a board of trustees a tract of land in Logan to be used for the support of a new academic institution — Brigham Young College. Parties named in the deed of trust included Brigham Young, Jr., M. D. Hammond, and Ida lone Cook. President Young had been anxious for the school to open in September 1877, but due to some financial difficulties the first term did not begin until September 9, 1878, when rooms were rented in Logan City Hall and Miss Ida lone Cook took charge as the school's first principal. Her term as principal of the Brigham Young College would extend until she resigned the position in 1884.

Brigham Young had stipulated in deeding the land that in the college "all pupils shall be instructed in reading, penmanship, orthography, grammar, geography and mathematics . . . and the Old and New Testaments, Book of Mormon and Doctrine and Covenants shall be standard textbooks in the College . . . and further, no book shall be used that. . . in any manner advances ideas antagonistic to the principles of the Gospel." In this regard Ida Cook seemed a promising choice as principal, her particular determination being that a student's knowledge of the gospel should be manifest in his conduct. She told students:

All the doctrines of the faith which we have espoused tend to train our faculties and enable us to subject ourselves to the laws of God, but we sometimes act as if possession of the law was all that is required and do not measure our conduct by the law, hence we do not acquire the discipline and culture we so much desire.

She required courteous conduct from her pupils. "We were taught to raise our hats to Apostles, Bishops, and officers of the various organizations, and always to women. Those who adopted [Miss Cook's] instructions are among the leaders in the communities where they reside," reminisced a student years later. 31 The first year 71 students enrolled. The next year the number had increased to 198, of whom 49 were in primary grades, giving older students opportunity for normal training. Ellen Nash Parkinson remembered her "adored principal" Ida Cook as a teacher-trainer:

She scared me at first because she demanded hard work, but we got along famously, though my schooling had been so irregular I had to take a very heavy course to catch up. When I had been there a year, she suggested my name as a teacher for the Franklin school. I felt utterly incapable but with her insistence and that of the trustees I went home to teach.

Ida Cook's influence on young people extended beyond the circle of her students. At the same time she served as principal of the college she was active in local church organizations, being called to the Cache valley stake YLMIA presidency as first counselor. She encouraged the YLMIA girls to use the money they raised at parties and entertainments to purchase books for their libraries, and Ida herself took charge of coordinating orders and supplying the books.

Her work even extended into adult education. In 1885 the Logan Temple Association organized a school to be conducted in the temple. Appointed instructors delivered monthly hour-long lectures in theology, civil government, languages, history, domestic and political economy, and natural philosophy. For some time Ida Cook served as a regular instructor, the only woman to do so during the school's fifteen-year history.

Ida was not only well respected as a fine teacher and administrator, but she was personally well liked. As a young man, George Thomas, later president of the University of Utah, became acquainted with Ida Cook at a dance in Benson to which she had been escorted by one of her students.

Her piercing black eyes, prominent nose, and outstanding personality impressed themselves upon me to such an extent that I shall never forget her. She asked that I be introduced to her, although I was a mere boy, and following the introduction I made bold to request a dance with her, which was graciously granted.

In 1890 the laws governing the election and responsibilities of county superintendents wore changed, making any registered voter eligible for the office. In 1892 Ida Cook became principal or general coordinator of the Logan schools. When she resigned after one year in the position, the school board refused to accept her resignation and elected her superintendent of the city schools at a salary of $1,500 per year-— the highest salary ever offered a Logan teacher up to that time. She immediately set to work instigating the numerous reforms she considered necessary. Recognizing that month-long normal institutes could not adequately train teachers for the higher grade levels, Ida proposed to hire some competent woman teachers she knew in Chicago, and the school board agreed. With full support from the school board it seemed the government of Logan's schools was totally in the hands of Ida Cook. She set the rules and regulations, examined teachers for certification, and hired, assigned, and dismissed them. She fired one male teacher when he hugged and kissed young girls and a female teacher who protested; she dismissed another for frequenting saloons.

The zealous Miss Cook held the position of superintendent for one year. Maybe her high-powered changes disturbed the school board and parents and lessened their confidence in the woman whose eastern training and background must have seemed at times so alien to their own. Or perhaps Ida Cook herself, having reached the pinnacle position for a schoolteacher in a small western city, did not find it sufficiently stimulating and prepared to move on. In any case, the year following her short term as superintendent found her in Salt Lake City, not teaching school but marketing patent medicines. By 1896 she was on her way to Denver where she again became involved in education.

The two Miss Cooks disappeared from Utah as quietly as they had arrived twenty-five years earlier. Whether either or both married or whether they spent the remainder of their lives together or apart is not easily determined. They had ties in Denver where their brother had served two terms as mayor, in Saint Louis where they had spent some eight or ten years prior to coming to Salt Lake, and in New York where they had been born, raised, and educated. Their destination is not so important as their mid-career departure and the comment that that might make on late nineteenth-century life in Utah. Was there insufficient culture and sophistication for educated easterners? In a society that placed such value and emphasis on marriage could the single career woman feel comfortable? Did the well-established and homogeneous Mormon culture ostracize newcomers?

Both Mary and Ida Cook made significant contributions during their stay in Utah. Their schools served as models and their training in curriculum and methodology gave many new teachers exposure to normal training that they could not have had otherwise. If the two Miss Cooks had remained in Utah, they may never have made more outstanding contributions than they did in their first twenty-five years here, but they may not have been so easily forgotten.

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