ANNA KING PITTARD
That
the office of county superintendent of schools for Wayne
county should be filled by a woman, an office that is of the
foremost importance to the county’s inhabitants, speaks well
for the high ability of the incumbent. Mrs. Pittard, who
practically all her life has been engaged in teaching school
in various places in this section, was elected in 1910 and in
1912 was reelected to the same office in acknowledgment of her
services and as an endorsement of her policies.
Mrs. Anna King Pittard was born near Bethlehem, Iowa, December 7, 1869, her parents being William and Margaret (Murphy) King, natives of Indiana and West Virginia respectively. She attended district school at Bethlehem until the fall of 1886 when, at the age of seventeen years, she entered the Lineville school of Lineville, Iowa, from which she was graduated with honors under Professor F. E. King in the spring of 1888. Studious of mind, a lover of books and deeply interested in guiding the education of children along the right channel, she naturally embraced the occupation of teaching as a life work and in 1889 entered upon her first position in that connection, teaching school in Fairview district, Union township. She subsequently held various positions in the rural schools of Wayne, Lucas and Clay counties, Iowa, and also taught for several terms in Warren county, Illinois. Feeling the need of a more professional training to obtain even more satisfactory results, from 1892 until 1894 she attended the Humeston Normal School, an institution which has since become defunct, and later took special studies in Drake University. Mrs. Pittard has in fact never ceased to be a student and in the course of years has become one of Wayne county’s most successful teachers.
It
was while giving instruction in the village school at Iona,
Illinois, that she met George W. Pittard, their
acquaintanceship ripening into love and resulting in marriage,
the wedding being celebrated in Bethlehem, at the home of her
father, on the 10th of March, 1897. The bridegroom had
prepared a comfortable home near Alexis, Illinois, and there
the young married couple started housekeeping, but the happy
life to which they looked forward was soon rent asunder as the
reaper Death entered and claimed the husband and, only four
weeks after the marriage ceremony, at the same hour—high
noon—Mrs. Pittard saw her beloved one laid to rest. Under such tragic
circumstances she became a widow but there were left to her
two little sons of a former marriage of her husband, George,
Jr., and Guy Pittard, now doubly orphaned, and it was upon
them that she bestowed the love of a father and mother.
Subsequently Mrs. Pittard again took up her vocation of teaching, following it for several terms in the rural schools, and at the end of that time secured a position in the Corydon grade school, with which she was connected for ten years. She gave to her work in that direction the best that was in her and many of the children who learned their lessons under her able guidance have preserved for her a warm sympathy through all their later years. She became one of the most forceful and successful teachers in the city and her abilities were widely recognized. On account of ill health she was forced to resign her position. In 1910, however, she was nominated on the democratic ticket for the office of county superintendent of schools and although the democratic party was in the minority in the county she was elected by an overwhelming majority. The service she has rendered in this important office has brought about a direct and visible improvement among the teachers of the county, and this in turn has had a decided influence upon the improvement of the schools and the educational facilities and advantages thereof. In November, 1912, she was reelected to that position, which stands as an incontrovertible proof that her administration has been efficient and generally acknowledged as such, and she continues in her service greatly to the benefit of all concerned. She brings to her work the same earnestness and enthusiasm that has characterized her during all her life as a teacher and in the long line of county superintendents of schools Mrs. Pittard takes her place among the best and most highly respected.