Spelling Class:
“The Kansas Speller” and Bernice Hamilton’s Liberation through Literacy
by Malorie Wagner
“Not to be able to spell accurately those words one has occasion to write is a disgrace. It has
caused many young people to fail to secure positions for which they were otherwise well fitted,
and has caused others to lose positions once obtained. . . your own self-respect, not to mention
your desire to hold your own in the race of life, should compel you to equal these averages.”
--The Kansas Speller
The year is 1912. New Mexico and Arizona are admitted to the Union, Juliette Low
founds the Girl Scouts of America organization, and the amazing Houdini performs his mindblowing magic from New York to Berlin. The Titanic strikes an iceberg and sinks to the ocean
floor. In El Dorado, Kansas, amidst these events of the pre-World War One days, a little girl is
born. Bernice Hamilton, the daughter of Credence and Cora Hamilton, began her life in the leap
year that began on a Monday, the year 1912. In this paper, I examine the significance and
traditions of the “Kansas Speller” and the importance of literacy for lower class Kansans like
Bernice Hamilton.
Credence and Cora Hamilton, Bernice’s parents, met in Kansas after both of their
families had migrated to the breadbasket state. Creed’s family came from Illinois, and Cora’s
from Indiana. They were married in 1899, when Cora was only 17. Love must have been key to
this decision, but one other reality certainly must have played an important role: financial
stability. Neither of the newlyweds came from well-off families, but together they were more
likely to create a financially stable life than alone. One must wonder, however, if there was not
more to the hasty marriage than simple economics. In 1899, the average age for a woman to get
married was 22.1 Cora, five years younger than that national average, was perhaps eager to begin
their family of ten; perhaps, she was even too eager. There is reasonable cause to assume that
her marriage to Crede was rushed because of the forthcoming arrival of their first child. This
would certainly explain the young Mrs. Hamilton’s decision to become a married woman at the
ripe young age of 17.
Crede and Cora settled into the Midwestern state of Kansas, Creed working as a farmer as
Cora began raising their family of eight: Bernice’s brothers William, Harry, George, and Lee,
and her three sisters.2 Because they got married relatively young and the male centered society of
their time, Bernice’s sisters hardly exist in the archives as anything other than a “Mrs.” In
marrying, women gave up their identity as individual females, and instead directly took on their
husband’s names—not only their surnames, but their first names as well. This surrendering of
identity for women, however, was the cultural norm. Growing up in this family of 10 was
certainly busy for Bernice, who, as the youngest child, was probably tended a great deal of time
by one of her elder sisters. Also from a young age, she surely had to learn to do things on her
own.
When Bernice Hamilton turned six in 1918, she began school in the small town of El
Dorado, Kansas. Not all children went to school. Bernice’s mother Cora, for example, never
1
Source: U.S. Census Bureau, Decennial Censuses, 1890 to 1940, and Current Population Survey,
Annual Social and Economic Supplements, 1947 to 2016.
2
For more on settlement in Kansas, see the page “Settlement in Kansas” by the Kansas Historical
Society.
received an education. This lack of schooling perhaps motivated Cora to send all her children to
school. Clearly due to her own illiteracy, Cora desired for her children to have educated lives.
When six-year-old Bernice Hamilton left 703 South Maine Street, in El Dorado, to head off to
the public school, she became one of the very first owners of “The Kansas Speller,” a school
book by M. E Pearson, Superintendent of City Schools in Kansas City published by the State of
Kansas.3 These spellers came out in 1918, the exact year in which Bernice was of the age to truly
need them.
1918, however, was not the first time that Americans were exposed to a speller; in fact,
the tradition of spellers dates back to 1783. Noah Webster sought to change eighteenth century
America through a small, blue book entitled The American Spelling Book; Containing the
Rudiments of The English Language for the use of Schools in the United States. Webster’s goal
was to distinguish the newly separated United States of America from their ‘fatherland’ of
England through literacy.4 Often called the Blueback Speller because of its sea-colored cover,
Webster’s creation spread so much more than just literacy. His little blue book illuminates timespecific knowledge: words and their pronunciations, state populations, state landmarks, and even
tales of morals. When Webster published his American Spelling Book, he sought to construct a
national language, and engender pride in America’s distinctiveness. Just as a child wishes to
differentiate herself from his parents, so too, Webster insisted, should America differentiate
herself from Great Britain:
3
Specifically published by W.R Smith, the State Printer of the Kansas State Printing Plant
4
Some interesting changes include the move from English –our endings to the more ‘American’ –or
ending in words such as honor and color, the removal of the second ‘l’ in words such as ‘traveling,’ and
the change from the distinctly English/European ‘grey’ to the very American ‘gray’ Language is the inheritance which the Americans have received from their British
parents. To cultivate and adorn it, is a talk reserved for men who shall understand
the connection between language and logic, and form an adequate idea of the
influence which a uniformity of speech may have on national attachments.
(Webster 33)
Changing language, Webster insisted however, was to be overlooked only by those men who
understood linguistic values. He obviously considered himself a major player of this select
group, and emphasized the importance of having no regional dialects for the sake of promoting a
truly uniform, and unique, American national language. Webster identified the significance of
such a united national language as a shedding of America’s linguistic and thereby cultural
captivity from England. He insisted that it was America’s responsibility to grow up and shed the
self-image of a ‘young dependent child’ of Great Britain, and instead establish herself as a free,
modern, and linguistically independent country:
As an independent nation, our honor requires us to have a system of our own, in
language as well as government. Great Britain, whose children we are, and whose
language we speak, should no longer be our standard; for the taste of her writers
is already corrupted, and her language on the decline. (Webster 34)
As Webster criticizes the corruption of English writers, he insists that America’s authors should
strive to become independent promoters of healthy un-European literary standards through their
national linguistic unity. Herein lies the motivation behind Webster’s American Spelling Book.
Webster discovered that literacy was more than simply being able to read and write: it was a
cultural platform to voice artistically American self-definition.5
In the early 1900’s, the Hamiltons and most Kansans agreed with Noah Webster: literacy
was much more than just a skill with words. To be literate meant to have opportunity for
advancement in society; it was a ticket to upward mobility.6 “Not to be able to spell accurately
those words one has occasion to write is a disgrace,” claims the Kansas Speller, therefore, and
continues, “it has caused many young people to fail to secure positions for which they were
otherwise well fitted, and has caused others to lose positions once obtained” (115). By sending
her children to school, Cora Hamilton gave her daughters and sons the opportunity for a life
outside their small farming community—an opportunity that she herself never had. In fact,
Bernice’s older sister Helen became a typist, using her education and control over language,
learned in her early years of school, to make a living.
Just as her sister left her mark on the world through type, so, too, did Bernice. On a
blustery autumn day in the year 1918, the six-year-old girl returned home from school. Her mind
was filled with talk of the War to End All Wars, the 15th World Series beginning a month early,
and the new school year. Bernice, both exhausted and excited from the first week of school, sat
down to her kitchen table at 703 South Main Street in El Dorado, Kansas, and pulled out a brand
new, wheat-colored schoolbook. For a youngest child who must have received plenty of hand-
5
For more on Webster’s views on language, see his “Declaration of Linguistic Independence” published
in Language Loyalties: A Source Book On the Official English Controversy, edited by James Crawford,
University of Chicago Press, 1992.
6
Just imagine high-ranking individual in society who was unable to properly pronounce or spell words. It
would be an embarrassment to their family, their social circle, and their entire social class. me-downs in her life, it is not difficult for us to picture with how much pride Bernice considered
the book that was brand new, and entirely hers.
As she opened the cover of the Kansas Speller for the first time, Bernice might have
thought of her mother, who never received a formal education. Her mother’s intimations about
the importance of education Bernice had to have echoed in her ears as she picked up her Number
2 pencil and took ownership of her new book. With supreme concentration and the diligence of a
girl who just had learned writing, Bernice scrawled her name in the front of her speller. She took
ownership of the world of letters, letting her classmates, teachers, and generations to come know
that she and her family were searching for a better life, a life of education, upwards mobility, and
life-long learning.
The actual, physical book that had such an enormous impact on Bernice’s life is held
today in Hale Library’s Special Collections and is a treasure to explore. Starting with the cover,
the Kansas Speller is rich in Kansas pride. The first word of the title is, indeed, “Kansas,” thus
drawing attention to our Midwestern state. This is not the Virginia Speller, nor is it the Colorado
speller—here we have a Kansas speller. The schoolbook is to teach the children of the sunflower
state literacy because they, as a state of students, deserved their own education. The book makes
clear right away that its purpose is not the education of anonymous masses, but rather the
promotion of learning among a special and select group: local Kansans.
The color of the speller’s binding echoes the golden wheat fields, the plains of the
‘breadbasket’ of the United States.7 The image at the center of the front cover shows four
sunflowers around one central, larger sunflower. Clearly an emblem of pride in the state flower,
this embossed illustration is also a visual example of how literacy sets you apart. Just as the
center sunflower is large, proud, and bold, so too will a sunflower-state student feel once they
have mastered literacy. The cover of the Kansas Speller, therefore, stresses the books underlying
argument for the importance of distinction, promoting further the significance of the Kansas
Speller itself.
“This is a speller with a message,” the preface tells you on the third page of the Kansas
Speller. This message can hardly be overlooked when you skim through the speller. On its 156
pages the Kansas Speller collects a large set of promotional subtleties stressing the importance of
the state’s unique culture. Often these are poetic mementos to Kansas that students were to
7
For more about the breadbasket state of Kansas, see the Kansas Historical Society’s page “Kansas as the
Breadbasket”
memorize as they progressed in their learning. The following, for example, is such a passage
celebrating local culture and pride from Bernice’s Speller:
Kansas culture, Kansas wealth,
Kansas iron rails,
Kansas climate, Kansas health,
Kansas empty jails,
Kansas books, and Kansas press,
Kansas prose and rhyme;
Kansas more but never less,
Kansas all the time.
While it is obvious that Kansas comes first in every line, there is an additional internal
message expressed as well. If you examining the structure of the list, you find that the first five
items mentioned—culture, wealth, iron rails, health, and empty jails—form each their own
entities. While these values are all related with and important in Kansas, they are larger local
descriptors of Kansas pride. The last four lines, however, turn to the task of the speller itself.
Listing books, press, prose, and rhyme, the poem zooms in on print culture and the relevance of
literacy in Kansas is intensely promoted. Addressed in four bookish ways, the speller insists that
literacy is key to almost every cultural aspect of Kansas life.
Literacy and learning had already been a longstanding American tradition by the time
The Kansas Speller touted the importance of education to Kansans. In 1635, the first Latin
Grammar School was established in Boston. The first class of the school took place in the home
of the headmaster, Philemon Pormort. Funded primarily by public funds of the town, the Boston
Latin School thrived for years and under many notable headmasters, including Ezekial Cheever.
Cotton Mather, the influential New England Puritan minister, inexhaustible early American
author, and pamphleteer, praised Cheever upon his death as the best teacher New England ever
had. Though, the Boston Latin School was designed only for sons of the upper classes destined
for leadership positions in church, state, or the courts. Young girls were not welcome to
education at this time, neither were the poor. Such early schools were not free for pupils to
attend: education was a symbol of elevated social status. Now located at 78 Avenue Louis
Pasteur in Boston, Massachusetts, the Latin Institute’s tall marble pillars are an emblem of these
undemocratic early educational principles.8 As years rolled by, national education began to
change and reformers began to promote general access to learning, convinced that education is
the key to emancipate marginalized groups and classes.
In 1829 and thus 83 years before Bernice Hamilton was born, education arrived in Kansas when
Reverend Thomas Johnson opened Shawnee Methodist, the first Kansas school. About a century
later, Bernice Hamilton received the education her parents never had, and it all began with The
Kansas Speller. We can explore this important local history thanks to the donation of Bernice’s
schoolbook to Kansas State University by the collector Kenneth Sterbenz in 1978. Sterbenz lived
in the small, Midwestern Kansas town of El Dorado, the very same place in which Bernice
Hamilton made her first steps into literacy. As public records indicate, the Kansas Speller
allowed Bernice not only to learn how to read and write but also to achieve a better life. Bernice
escaped Midwestern poverty. In 1940, she married Robert Miles, a tank-strapper from Iowa and
moved to Hobbs, New Mexico. There is evidence that Mrs. Miles worked as a clerk. Thanks to
our copy of the Kansas Speller in special collections, Bernice Hamilton’s rich life and world left
lasting traces and have come to life again.
8
For more on the Boston Latin School, see the Boston Latin School Association’s ‘History’ page at
http://www.bls.org/apps/pages/index.jsp?uREC_ID=206116&type=d
Works Cited
Pearson, M.E. The Kansas Speller. Topeka: Kansas State Printing Plant, 1918. Print.
Webster, Noah. The American Spelling Book; Containing the Rudiments of the English
Language for the Use of Schools in the United States. Hartford: Hudson and Co., 1822.
Print.
- - -“Declaration of Linguistic Independence.” Language Loyalties: A Source Book
On the Official English Controversy, edited by James Crawford, University of Chicago
Press, 1992, pp. 33-36.