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Part of the American
History & Genealogy Project |
Edith R. Mosher
Edith R. Mosher, born on a farm near
Centerville, Michigan, is the daughter of Josephus and Lida
Stebbins Mosher. When a child she attended the district schools
and, later, moved to the village of Centerville, where she
graduated from the High School at the age of 16; she then
entered the state normal school, where she took the literary and
scientific course and graduated at the age of 18, with a life
certificate to teach in the state of Michigan, and immediately
began teaching in the public schools. While teaching in the
kindergarten and primary grade in Grand Rapids, she studied
kindergarten methods with the late Mrs. Lucretia Willard Treat
Having had considerable instruction in drawing at the State
Normal School, and having a natural, ready talent for it, she
was constantly called upon to do blackboard decorating, and to
illustrate science lessons, throughout the school building. In
connection with this work, she became impressed with the
necessity for finding easy, accurate illustrations of the
everyday blossoms and leaves of our trees, which so readily lend
themselves to board illustrating and interesting science
lessons, and began to realize the vast importance of the forest
as a great educational influence upon the growth and upbuilding
of humanity. From her somewhat varied experience in the
different grades, she grew profoundly conscious of the
significance of the early impressions upon the plastic mind of
the child, and knowing how children love nature, she believed
that it should be the constant study of the teacher to bring
into the schoolroom as much of nature and nature suggestions as
can be appreciated, thus to fill child life with pure wholesome
thought from the overflowing well-spirit of nature, and ideally
mold child character.
It was while standing before a blackboard in the schools of
Grand Rapids, preparing a science lesson suggested by a small
peach branch, which one of the pupils had brought, with only the
scientifically accurate, but unattractive outlines from a book
on botany and some pictured cards, that there came over her a
startling realization of the entire lack of any book really
useful to teachers in this kind of instruction, which she
believed to be fundamental, and she registered a vow to supply
this need in the form of a series of books to be used in the
school room. With this object in view she resigned and went to
Washington, D. C, to obtain a position in the government, and
there carry on her work with the better facilities offered by
the Congressional Library. In Washington, she again took up
literary work in the George Washington University, and has
continued to carry on studies along educational lines, taking a
summer course at Harvard University in 1909.
In the meantime the "Tree- Study" books planned in the Grand
Rapids school room were growing. A transfer had been obtained to
the Forest Service as the best place to perfect this work, which
was followed by special permission from the Forester, Mr.
Gifford Pinchot, to attend the Yale University Summer School,
which is not a co-educational institution.
The work of compiling and illustrating the first book on "Fruit
and Nut-Bearing Trees" was finished in 1907, and was
followed in 1909 by "Our Oaks and Maples," and "Our
Cone-Bearing Trees." The urgent demand of the publisher and
others interested in the work resulted in five more of the
series in 1910, under the titles of "Fruit Studies;" "Our
Queenly Maples;" "Our Kingly Oaks;" Studies of
Nut- Bearing Trees;" "Studies of Evergreens;" a
book entitled "Twenty Forest Trees," is now being
prepared.
Women of
America
Source: The Part Taken by Women in
American History, By Mrs. John A. Logan, Published by The Perry-Nalle
Publishing Company, Wilmington, Delaware, 1912.
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