Information Sheet

 

 

R         Henry, Mattie, 1892-1978.

191                  Grammar notebook, n.d.

                                    One folder.

 

 

 

This is a grammar notebook used by Mattie Henry to instruct grade school students at Charleston, Mississippi County, Missouri.  The book includes rules and examples for English gram­mar and sentence diagramming.  The book was edited by Benjamin Bird Moore and was pub­lished by the Mississippi County Historical Society in 1983.

 

Known as the most successful grammar teacher in southeastern Missouri, Mattie Henry was a familiar figure to generations of grade school students in Charleston.  She was born in 1892 at Marion, Kentucky, and moved to Charleston with her family in 1906.  She graduated from high school in 1911, and began teaching the same year.  She was hired by the Charleston Public School in 1917, the beginning of a tenure that lasted until 1962.  She died of cancer in Charles­ton in 1978.

 

It was said that Henry’s students could be identified easily by their writing.  She em­pha­sized English grammar and vocabulary, and insisted that schoolwork be flawless.  A large part of her success was due to the grammar notebook, which each student in the seventh and eighth grades was required to keep.  Word-for-word, they were laboriously copied from the blackboard.  The notebook was so effective in reducing the English language to outline form that the president of Southeast Missouri State University at Cape Girardeau sent copies to all school superinten­dents and English teachers in the region served by the college.  Any student who mastered the note­book, he said, would have no problems with college English.

 

The notebook published by the Mississippi County Historical Society was compiled from three extant copies; Mattie Henry’s own copy, and those of two of her former students.  It is ar­ranged in three parts: the sentence, sentence diagramming, and parts of speech.  The notebook is indexed for easy reference.

 

 

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