The Teachers Club
A century ago, it was common for a teacher to live as a boarder in a local home, either singly, or as one of several boarders. Multiple teachers might board in the same dwelling. As she became more established in the community, Mabel came to like the latter situation. She must have appreciated the synergy of living among like minds, for by the late 1920s she was part of a fixed group of teachers who shared accommodations year after year. Based on an interview with her, a newspaper reported that this group called itself the Teachers Club; it eventually had formalized itself as a co-op, and it conducted itself according to a formal set of written rules.
Teachers Club members as listed on the 1940 U.S. Census, viewed via Ancestry.com
Readers may recognize some of these names.
Nina Plantz was the Principal of East Street School;
Helen Underhill taught both Foreign Languages and Mathematics;
Ruby Burt became Chair of Foreign Languages;
Mildred Clark taught Home Economics and became Chair of Homemaking.
The group's interests included lectures, travel (both within the U.S. and abroad), and theatre. Early in 1941, for example, Nina Plantz and Mabel Farley addressed the Women's Club of Hicksville, showing slides of their recent trip to Bolivia.
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