Alta Araminta Warner

Alta Araminta Warner, the second of the five daughters of Charles A. Warner and Mary Elizabeth Maurer, was born 1 August 1881 on the family farm near Blair, Washington County, NE. Her middle name was derived from her father’s sister, and it was a particularly appropriate honor because her aunt -- better known as Minta -- was a near-at-hand presence throughout her childhood and was one of the three main female caregivers whose examples shaped her own behavior, the other two being her own mother and her paternal grandmother, Marancy Alexander Warner Balliet.

Alta never married. It is bluntly obvious her spouselessness was a choice. Within her era and within her generation, this may have simply meant she treasured her independence and wanted to forge a life for herself that did not depend upon a man. Yet it is fair to wonder if she might have been gay. One has only to contrast her story with those of her sisters to see why this possibility must be considered. While said sisters all -- like Alta -- exhibited the tendency to be self-reliant or even downright bold about accomplishing things for themselves, all of them nevertheless became wives. Edna and Sibyl became mothers as well, and Laura is known to have chosen childlessness only because she feared her severe asthma would kill her and result in any offspring she had being left without a mother at too early a point in life. There is absolutely no indication in family writings nor in Alta’s paper trail to suggest a romantic connection to a man. Neither is there any indication of a romantic connection to a woman, but this is harder to assess. In her era, to openly declare herself to be a lesbian would have a career-ending move. She was a teacher. No educational institution would have been willing to take the heat from the public by including a known homosexual on their faculty.

Alta was a product of the pioneer phase of northeastern Nebraska. It is fair to say the harshness of the environment in which she was raised served as a crucible that forged the most characteristic aspects of her character: resilience, decisiveness, and fearlessness. Though to be sure, these traits also arose from the influence of the family members around her, including the three female role models mentioned above.

Alta was part of a relocation in 1884 of her parents, her sisters Laura and Edna, and her grandmother Marancy from the farm in Washington County to a new homestead in Miller Township, Knox County, NE. Coming with them were extended family members consisting of Minta and her husband John Ladd, and their two school-aged kids, John Warner Ladd and Kate Ladd. During Alta’s infancy and toddlerhood, these relatives had been based on their own Washington County farm, but somewhat at a distance. By contrast, in Knox County the two households lived on adjacent parcels, the houses only a few dozen steps apart, sharing the same yard and probably the same barn, well, and other infrastructure. These circumstances significantly reduced the degree of isolation. Alta could count on the assistance and security wrought by the company of not just her parents and grandmother, but two additional adults and two significantly older cousins.

Alta might have found it hard to trust the world at large to give her a fair shake if not for that foundation of nurturance and support, because for the entire span of her childhood from age three to age seventeen, the double-household family cluster was hit by one major challenge and/or gut punch after another. No sooner had they arrived in Knox County than the Ladd family become burdened in an unforseen way by the birth of the third and by far the most junior of Minta and John’s three kids -- Ira Earl Ladd. Ira was profoundly disabled in terms of mental capacity, and perhaps had physical limitations as well. He would remain unable to read and write for his entire time on Earth. He would never be capable of living an independent life. He could not be left without supervision. As a result, much of Minta and John’s attention was consumed by caring for Ira. Naturally the extended family assisted with this effort and by virtue of that, Alta learned early what it was like to be responsible for the guidance of -- and even the physical safety of -- someone younger and less capable than she was. This experience undoubtedly helped prepare her for the responsibilities she would shoulder in her adult life as a teacher.

In terms of hardships, the weather was a major culprit. Time after time during the 1880s the temperature dropped precipitously during the winter months, in part due to the volcanic ash in the upper atmosphere following the massive 1883 eruption of the island of Krakatoa in Indonesia. One particularly frightful episode was the so-called Schoolhouse Blizzard of January, 1888, that might have cost the Warners and Ladds their lives if they had not made sure to keep plenty of fuel on hand, and had they not had the good sense to huddle in their homes and avoid the outdoors until the fierce conditions subsided. Then for five years running in the early 1890s, a severe drought ruined one harvest after another. The onslaught, combined with the economic hurdles caused by the Panic of 1893, led to Minta and John Ladd giving up on their homestead. Their 160 acres became part of the Warner holdings.

Weather-related ordeals were however not the experiences with the most lingering impact. After all, every year winter always gave way to warmer months. As for the drought, even that came to an end in the mid-1890s. Family members were always in the position to tell themselves “next year will be better.” Not so with personal tragedies. Those could not be shrugged off. There were three particularly bitter instances of that sort of heartache during the years Alta was growing up. First was that Ira Ladd’s condition never truly did get better. Second was the outright loss of a new member of the family. In 1886 the Warner household had welcomed the birth of Sibyl Bertha Warner. While this was a joyous event and supplied Alta with another sister to enjoy for the whole of her lifetime, it was followed in 1888 by another birth. Unlike Sibyl, the new baby was not at all healthy, and in fact was so afflicted that it was obvious she would die in infancy -- so obvious her parents could not bear to go as far as giving her a name. Somehow she clung to life for five months, but then as expected, reached the limit of her stamina. She was buried late that summer in the little graveyard that had been established several years earlier by the Ausman family, neighbors who lived a mile south of the Warner-Ladd homesteads.

Finally, in 1898, the third of the tragedies struck. Alta’s father passed away of stomach cancer. This not only meant the survivors were deprived of someone they loved, it was also a shock to the ability to pay debts and purchase vital goods, because the household breadwinner was no longer contributing. Fortunately -- if one can use the term “fortunately” here -- Laura had obtained a “rural school” credential to teach school, and had income to help out her widowed mother (not to mention her widowed grandmother as well). Alta was about to turn seventeen and soon was following her older sister’s example. This would be a watershed moment in terms of the course her life took, because she would be employed in the field of education from that point until she was an old lady and chose to retire. This was a unique choice among the children of Charles Warner and Mary Maurer. Laura would teach off and on for a number of years, but she did not make a career of it. Nor did Edna -- in fact Edna may have spent no more than a single term at the head of a classroom before becoming the wife of Clark Bonge, a Miller Township neighbor. Sibyl would teach even fewer years than Laura before going off to pharmacy college, and then marrying budding pharmacist William Lovett.

At first, Alta’s assignments were close to home -- so close, in fact, that she was able to continue living at the homestead, which had the benefit that she did not have to pay to lodge elsewhere and so her contributions to the family funds were accordingly greater. The 1900 census confirms she was still in place there. However, step by step Alta’s world expanded, in keeping with her mother’s decreasing dependency upon her assistance. In 1901, Marancy passed away. By 1903 Edna had left to live with Clark. By 1906 a series of good harvests and good prices for crops had done much to put Mary on a solid footing. That same year, Sibyl turned twenty. Alta no longer had to worry about her loved ones in the way that had once been true. At some point, probably already by 1906, she became based in Creighton, the village eight miles east and one mile south of the Warner homestead. The phrase “based in” is used intentionally because she may not have “resided” there in the normal sense. She just needed a place to come back to. During school terms she boarded temporarily near her workplaces. Her quarters in Creighton are likely to have been within the home of her first cousin John Warner Ladd and his wife Betty. John was by that point a thriving businessman in the community.

A view of Creighton, NE taken from the postcard Alta’s sister Sibyl sent 29 March 1909 to cousin Bert Warner of Fresno County, CA. This is how the community’s main street appeared back when Alta was still returning home in the summer between her early Twentieth-Century teaching gigs. The family farm was off in the direction shown in the righthand portion of the scene. The prominent building in the lefthand portion housed the Malm & Warner general store. Sibyl thought Bert would get a kick out of seeing the store, even though the co-proprietor of the establishment was a Warner who was entirely unrelated and was based in Creighton by happenstance.

Alta had reached the point where teaching assignments were not just “to help out” and as reflected upon above, they were certainly not something she pursued while waiting for a man to propose to her. She became dedicated to the profession. As part of that, she wanted her circumstances -- her stature among her colleagues -- to become more significant. The first way she demonstrated she was ready for such advancement was to accept assignments across the nation, including locales that were downright remote. The gigs might have daunted a young woman raised in a city or who hailed from a long-civilized region, but for Alta, rustic circumstances and isolation were not intimidating. When she had started school in Miller Township, the schoolhouse had been literally just a hole in the ground -- a sod-wall structure like the family dwellings her father and uncle had built upon arriving in Knox County. It was not until 1888 that Miller Township had been able to boast of a wood-frame schoolhouse.

The 24 December 1908 edition of the Nebraska State Journal mentions that Alta had returned home to Creighton for the holidays from her teaching job in Surprise, NE. That small town was in Butler County, the same county where her uncles Fred Warner and Clifford Warner had settled in the early 1870s. Neither lived there anymore -- Fred in fact was nearly a decade deceased by then -- and the reason for accepting a position there would not have been because of family presence. It was purely a career move. Alta was now no longer teaching a handful of students of many different grades in a building with just one classroom. The place featured additional classrooms, multiple teachers, and a substantial student body.

That said, the Butler County job was still quite modest. To do more, Alta had to do something about her training level. The first step was to obtain a serious set of academic credentials, a goal she appears to have embarked upon in the year 1909. She proceeded to earn a Bachelor of Science degree from Fremont College in eastern Nebraska, not far from her place of birth, then did did post-graduate study at Columbia University in New York City. Also she received some sort of instruction via the University of Colorado, as indicated on a 1922 résumé. Obviously when Alta decided to rake in a sheaf of diplomas, she didn’t kid around.

For the next decade her employment situations were increasingly higher profile, but certainly they also constituted the obligatory phase of “paying her dues” and were not what she could have chosen if she’d had the clout, job history, and/or connections to arrange otherwise. First and foremost among the compromises was that she did not always get first-choice opportunities and instead simply accept what was offered, making sure not to complain. In the early 1910s, after leaving New York, she taught somewhere in Montana. For the 1914-15 academic year, her job was at South Ward School in Chehalis, WA. Next was a position at Lincoln School in Watertown, SD. Alta seems to have embraced these experiences as “youthful adventures” -- she was still in her thirties -- but there is plenty of indication she appreciated not only workplace stability but also wanted to be able to check in on her mother at far more regular intervals. Some time not long after her mother decided to leave Nebraska and retire to Nora, IL -- doing so in either 1916 or 1917 -- Alta began treating her mother’s home as her official place of residence with the intent of never being more than a daytrip away from her surviving parent by either automobile or train.

To realize that ambition, Alta understood that she needed to bring even more qualifications to bear. She dealt with that need by pursuing a credential through Gregg School. That institution was a business college co-founded by the inventor of shorthand and it was at that time the premier institution from which to learn not just secretarial skills, but how to teach secretarial skills. The expertise Alta gained there meant her subsequent career was concentrated upon the teaching of courses in business subjects, and in particular, stenography. She graduated in March, 1919. (It is not clear whether she was enrolled at the actual school in Chicago or if she completed her coursework remotely.)

By 1920, Alta was on the faculty of Davenport High School in Davenport, Scott County, IA. (The photo at right is from the 1922 yearbook of that institution.) The 1920 census shows her lodging in a private family residence along with a handful of other young career women. The 1925 state census and 1930 federal census also show her in boarding-house circumstances. In the summers, as mentioned, she treated her mother’s home in Nora as her base. That doesn’t mean she would linger there throughout the summer; in fact, during those months she tended to be found in places far from Iowa and Illinois. Alta engaged in a great deal of travel, often to foreign destinations, as is made clear by surviving ship manifests and port-of-entry records. An example is the manifest of the Mauretania, aboard which Alta crossed the Atlantic from Cherbourg to New York City when returning from a summer-of-1926 trip to France.

Davenport was an auspicious place to be a female teacher. In 1872, Phebe Sudlow had been appointed the principal of Davenport High School. Sudlow was the first female to reach such a post in the history of the United States. Sudlow might well have been Alta’s personal role model. And even before Alta had been born, the site of Davenport had played a role in her destiny. It was there that Chief Keokuk and General Winfield Scott had signed the treaty ending the Black Hawk War of 1832. The resolution of the two Black Hawk Wars was critical to the opening of northwestern Illinois to white settlement. Without that development, Alta’s grandparents John and Marancy Warner would not have settled in Winslow in 1840, nor would Daniel Maurer and Martha Brownlee have come in the 1850s, and without the occurrence of those two journeys, Alta’s parents would never have met.

Without question, Alta can be viewed as a career success. Posterity has even provided us with an objective measure of that distinction. Because the Davenport school system was supported by local tax revenue, the salaries of all public school teachers were published each year in the local newspaper as part of the disclosure of the wages paid to all city and county employees from the mayor on down to the janitors. While Alta was not paid exorbitantly -- teaching being one of the notoriously underpaid professions in our sociey, then and now -- she earned the industry standard at a time when females often were short-changed compared to their male colleagues. Alta probably did not mind that her pay level was a matter of public record. She knew she was earning benchmark amounts that ensured other teachers and administrators would be fairly compensated for their own labor.

Alta remained based in Davenport at least through the end of the 1940s, but after her retirement she made Nora her home -- she had perhaps inherited her mother’s house, and if not, purchased it either from her mother directly or from the estate (i.e. buying out her three sisters). As Alta was closing in on her eightieth birthday, her health took a turn for the worse, requiring her to move into the Rockford Nursing Home in Nora. She passed away there after a year-and-a-half convalescence. The date of death was 29 July 1962, three days prior to what would have been her 81st birthday. According to a family genealogical note, her remains were interred at Rock Lily Cemetery in Winslow. That note is not correct, though it is easy to understand why someone would make the mistake, given that Rock Lily is the resting place of her mother, her grandfather John Warner, Sr., and her great-grandparents Joseph Alexander and Olive Littlefield. However, the actual burial, undoubtedly arranged by her sister Edna, took place at Elmwood Cemetery, one of the graveyards that serves the community of Nora. (It also serves the town of Warren, IL). Edna herself would later be buried there, as would both of her children.

The four surviving daughters of Charles A. Warner and Mary Elizabeth Maurer in the 1930s. By the time this was taken it was rare for all four to be in the same place at the same time. From left to right, Edna, Alta, Sibyl, and Laura.

To go back one generation to Alta’s father’s biography, click here. To return to the Warner/Alexander Family main page, click here.