This month, Ancient Hixtory continues its look at Miss Farley, and attempts to capture the nature of the woman behind so many achievements.
Introduction
It has been many years since Mabel Farley walked the halls of Hicksville High School, so many years that her memory scarcely endures in the community. Older alumni recall her with fondness and admiration. To the rest of us, she is only a name, or perhaps the almost joyless face we encounter when leafing through the archives of past Comet yearbooks. It is difficult to see her, posed so obviously her at Principal's desk, and not have the word "spinster" cross our minds.
Last month, this column outlined the early years of her career. Let us now focus more sharply on, and make crystal clear, the sweep of change that they encompassed.
When 1911 began, the village of Hicksville had one school, which offered education only through tenth grade. For years, that school had steadily declined into dysfunction, because its Trustees had not been entrusted by Hicksville's taxpayers to adequately finance the expansion of its capacity. Meanwhile, in rural Pennsylvania, a bright schoolteacher was nearing 30, and she felt the time had come to leave her small home town, and tackle greater responsibilities elsewhere.
Twenty years later, a more populous Hicksville boasted three schools, and they all worked well. The showpiece among them was a new Junior-Senior High School, which sat on a 15-acre campus. To build it, a revitalized School Board had convinced the village's taxpayers to spend $525,000 ($345,000 for the original 1925 structure, followed in 1929 by another $180,000 for an addition) - an amount equivalent to nearly $8,000,000 in 2020 dollars. The country schoolteacher was now a seasoned administrator, and Principal of the High School. She had played a key role in getting the State to authorize four-year high school education in the village (she would later say that receiving that authorization in 1914 was the happiest day of her life).
Had the village - had Mabel Farley - changed overnight?
Before she had ever heard of Nicholai Street
All thirteen members of the Farley family sit for a portrait; Mabel (on the right) is about 17
Farley - Miller / Foose Family Tree on Ancestry.com
Of course not; the change took time, planning, and work. Many factors were involved, and many people played important roles. Most of those people, however, were male, they were accomplished in their careers, and they already enjoyed some well-founded prominence in Hicksville as business owners, bank directors, lawyers, or other professionals. Farley, in contrast, had arrived in town as yet one more teacher found by an employment agency. To accomplish anything, to become part of the machinery of change, she first had to prove her worth and build a reputation - and apparently, she did that quite readily, being made Assistant Principal by the start of her first full school year in Hicksville.
What was this dynamic young Miss Farley like? To understand her, one must consider her in a variety of contexts.
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