I was influenced to write this post about my mother at this time by the upcoming college graduation of my great-niece, which will be a virtual commencement due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Although it has been 83 years since my mother graduated from college, it struck me that both she and my niece chose teaching careers, graduated with NY State teacher certification, experienced a pandemic, and had their graduation experiences altered by grave societal events. While my niece has her future career to experience, I wanted to understand my mother’s experience in regard to career and employment.
As I pieced together relevant events from her life, it became clear that social context greatly impacted her success. Ultimately, her various efforts to gain employment were thwarted by three factors: the Great Depression, World War II, and the dominance of traditional sex roles. This story describes her efforts and the end results.
Virginia Pauline Brown was born on July 22, 1917 in Ogdensburg, NY.[1] The influenza pandemic raged in her young life from January 1918 through December 1920. Just a month shy of her twelfth birthday, on June 23, 1929, she received her elementary diploma from Holy Family School in Watertown, NY.[2] A few months later, in August of 1929, the US stock market crashed, ushering in the Great Depression.
She graduated from Holy Family High School on June 26, 1933[4] – the year US unemployment was at its highest since the crash. One story about her at this time is insightful: She apparently wanted to find a job after high school to help support her family. However, her mother insisted Virginia attend college as it would be less costly for her to do so than to stay at home.[5]
In 1933, at the age of 16, she entered college as the nation continued to stagger under the weight of the depression. In November of 1936 she applied for a Social Security Account Number. She was working at the William Hengerer Company, a department store chain, in Buffalo, NY.[6]
She graduated magna cum laude on June 2, 1937 from D’Youville College in Buffalo, New York.[7] She earned a Bachelor of Arts in Mathematics and was a licensed teacher in NY State. (Interestingly, in her junior year of college she took two “business” courses: stenography and typewriting.[8] Perhaps she was acquiring additional skills to increase her chances of finding employment post-graduation.)
Virginia P. Brown, 1937[9]
Both college and personal finances were quite limited during the depression and, consequently, in 1937 the customary hard covered D’Youville College yearbook, the D’Youvillian, was not produced. Instead the final issue of the D’Youville Magazine, a quarterly student publication, was devoted to the graduates.[10]
Margaret Summers, vice-president of the 1937 senior class, wrote a “Class Prophecy” that situated each of the graduates 10 years in the future. Regarding Virginia Brown she prophesized: A group of girls returning from the Philippine Islands after five years of teaching there tried to “convince Virginia Brown that she should leave her position as head of the Mathematics Department of the New York State Regents Review Board, and return to the islands with them. Virginia wisely declined their offer.”[11]
After graduation, she was employed as a teacher at her former school, Holy Family School, in Watertown, NY for the 1937-1938 academic year.[12] At the close of that school year she applied for a position as a mathematics teacher within the Tupper Lake Public Schools. She did not get the job as “unfortunately, the Board of Education decided to continue with a man teacher in the mathematics position”.[13]
In April of 1940, Virginia, age 22, was unemployed and living with her brother, James Brown, in Fulton, NY.[14] She had neither employment nor income in 1939. While US unemployment numbers in the civilian work force had improved between 1934 and 1937, by year’s end 1938 unemployment was essentially back to its 1935 level and the figures did not improve substantially until 1941 when the US entered WWII.[15]
It does not appear that Virginia had another teaching position in the early 1940’s. She worked as a social worker for a year in Ogdensburg, NY, likely in the 1940-1941 time frame. By 1942 she was living in Watertown, NY working as a stenographer at the Central New York Power Corporation (1942 and 1943).[16] [17]
Virginia married Edward Murray from St. Louis, MO in Watertown, NY in September of 1943, while he was still in the US Army.[18] In May of 1944, perhaps anticipating a move after the war ended to St. Louis, she wrote to St. Louis University enquiring about a degree in Social Service.[19] However, her growing family remained in Watertown and Sackets Harbor, NY and they did not move to St. Louis until 1950. In March of 1950, she was hired as an enumerator in Watertown, NY for the 1950 US Federal Census, which was enumerated April 1st of that year.[20]
At some point after her family’s move to St. Louis, Virginia applied for and was offered a secretarial job with McDonnell Douglas Corporation but declined the offer. Her decision may have been influenced by her husband who, like many people at the time, thought providing for the family was his job and not his wife’s.[21]
Nevertheless, in 1952, 15 years after her college graduation, she applied for a teaching certificate from the Missouri Division of Public Education. On the strength of her college transcript, she qualified for “a 5-year certificate for the teaching of mathematics in grades seven through 12 and English in grades seven through nine”, and she only lacked 2 credit hours to qualify for secondary school administration.[22] However, she never held a teaching job in Missouri.
Virginia always managed her family’s finances and it may be that her desire for work reflected the difficulties of making ends meet or, conversely, her desire to have more ease in meeting her family’s expenses. Characteristic of her money/debt management is a February 1953 letter from Mercy Hospital in Watertown, NY. It states: “The Board of Trustees of MERCY HOSPITAL would like to express their appreciation for the consistent effort you have made in paying your Hospital indebtedness.” “We know it was a long hard pull, but it must be quite a satisfaction to have made it.”[23] Perhaps the Mercy Hospital debt would have been for one or more of the births of her four older children, born in 1945, 1947, 1948, and 1949.
Virginia finally did work in St. Ann, MO, a suburb of St. Louis, not as a teacher, social worker, or stenographer, but as a pricing clerk in the stock room of a Sears store prior to its opening at Northwest Plaza in August of 1965.[24] She was 48 years old and, in a curious twist of fate, working for a department store chain as she had done in 1936 at age 19 in Buffalo, NY.
[1] New York State Department of Health, birth certificate no. 219 (1940), Virginia Pauline Brown; Division of Vital Statistics, Albany.
[2] Virginia Brown Diploma, 23 June 1929, privately held by Kathleen Murray, daughter, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[3] Virginia Brown Student’s Certificate, 20 April 1929, privately held by Kathleen Murray, daughter, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[4] Virginia Brown Diploma, 26 June 1933, privately held by Kathleen Murray, daughter, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[5] S. Mary Murray, daughter, (Orangeburg, NY), personal memory related to Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2012.
[6] Virginia Pauline Brown, SS no. 133-12-2636, 27 November 1936, Application for Account Number (Form SS-5), Social Security Administration, Baltimore, Maryland.
[7] Virginia Brown Diploma, 11 June 1937, privately held by Kathleen Murray, daughter, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[8] Virginia Pauline Brown, Class of 1937, academic transcript; D’Youville College, Buffalo, New York; supplied 18 February 1952 to Virginia Brown; privately held by Kathleen Murray, daughter, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[9] The D’Youville Magazine (Buffalo, New York, 1937), 26:4, 29.
[10] Sister Mary Kathleen Duggan, GNSH, PHD, D’Youville College Archivist, (Buffalo, NY), personal memory related to Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2007.
[11] Margaret Summers, “Class Prophecy,” The D’Youville Magazine, 1937, 26:4, 24.
[12] Sister M. Camella, Principal, Holy Family School (Watertown, New York) to “To whom it may concern”, letter, 25 May 1938; privately held by Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[13] Robert E. Minnich, Superintendent of Schools, Tupper Lake Public Schools (Tupper Lake, NY) to “Dear Miss Brown”, letter, 10 June 1938; privately held by Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[14] 1940 United States Federal Census, Oswego County, New York, population schedule, Fulton, p. 11B, enumeration district 38-16, household visitation 220, Virginia Brown; digital image, Ancestry.com (https://www.ancestry.com : accessed 25 April 2020; citing NARA, m-t T627, roll 02714.
[15] Bureau of Labor Statistics, Historical Statistics of the United States Colonial Times to the 1970, Part I (U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975), Series D 85-86 Unemployment: 1890-1970, 135. United States Census Bureau (https://www2.census.gov/library/publications/1975/compendia/hist_stats_colonial-1970/hist_stats_colonial-1970p1-chD.pdf?# : accessed 26 April 2020).
[16] “Miss Virginia Brown is Wed”. Watertown Daily Times (Watertown NY), 28 September 1943, p. 14.
[17] Kimball’s Watertown (Jefferson County, N.Y.) City Directory (Watertown, NY: Kimball Directory Co., 1942, 110; also subsequent years by the same title: (1943) 101.
[18] New York State Department of Health, marriage certificate 368, Watertown, Jefferson County (1943), Edward H. Murray and Virginia Pauline Brown; Vital Records Section, Albany.
[19] A. H. Scheller, S.J., Director, School of Social Service, St. Louis University (St. Louis, MO) to “My dear Mrs. Murray”, letter, 3 June 1944; privately held by Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[20] Mrs. Virginia B. Murray, 27 March 1950, Notification of Personnel Action (Form 50), United States Civil Service Commission, Bureau of the Census Field Division, Watertown, NY.
[21] Personal knowledge of the author, Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas. Murray, the daughter of Virginia B. Murray and Edward H. Murray, lived with her parents in St. Ann, Missouri, 1951-1969.
[22] Leland A. Updegraft, Assistant Director of Certification, State of Missouri Department of Education, Division of Public Schools (Jefferson City, MO) to “Dear Mrs. Murray”, letter, 26 February 1952; privately held by Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[23] James F. McCullen, Secretary, Trustees of Mercy Hospital (Watertown, NY) to “Dear Mr. Murray”, letter, 19 February 1953; privately held by Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas, 2020.
[24] Personal knowledge of the author, Kathleen Murray, Dallas, Texas. Murray, the daughter of Virginia Brown Murray, lived with her mother in St. Ann, Missouri, 1951-1969.
Loved reading about your Mom. She was such a lovely woman.
A wonderful story, Kathleen! Your mother was certainly a woman to be admired (like her daughters!)
Your mom was very pretty. I loved her story!!